I always call this “The Buzzard Tree”, but really it looks like it should have the 4 vultures from The Jungle Book perched in it to insult walkers passing by.

The acid-eroded covers of my 27 year old paperback copy of CJ Cherryh’s “Finity’s End” fell off when I pulled it out of the bookcase. So I rebound it into a case-bound hardcover book. I just need to work out how to put the title on it.

I spotted these two beeches being sawn up for removal after Storm Éowyn. Their trunks were still tightly encircled by the clinging remains of the woody ivy that had covered them.

It’s autumn in the garden and I’m finding beauty in decay and decomposition. 🌱📸

I think my cat has melted. It was 32º in the glass-roofed conservatory but he persevered with his Madame Récamier impersonation.

So happy to have a dry and sunny day after weeks (months) of rain. Woodland is scant around here but we found a lovely trail and it was absolutely awash with the white starry flowerheads of wild garlic! The smell was incredible and I came home craving garlic bread and pizza.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Bonus Day 2: unputdownable (Jim / @jimmitchell)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Bonus Day 1: bubble (@paulrobertlloyd) With no time to take a new image for today’s prompt, all that came up when I searched my Google Photos was this really bad phone shot of a mermaid in a bubble I took at a street carnival a couple of years ago 😕.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 30: hometown (matt / @mattypenny) My hometown is on the Greenwich Meridian line. This is, one of three sculpted figures around town that mark the Meridian Line, “Searching”

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 29: drift (Simon / @SimonWoods)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 28: community (@stupendousman) “Our Game” was a huge community project celebrating Ashbourne’s annual Shrovetide football game. Local people made about 5000 terracotta figures representing the players and supporters of the game.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 27: surprise (Sam / @Sdevore) This is not what I was looking for under the bed 🐱

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 26: critter (Jefferson / @7robots)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 25: spine (Ian / @thedimpause)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 24: light (Esteban / @eumrz) Or rather, headlights.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 23: dreamy (@maique)

I resisted posting a photo of a blue sky for today’s prompt! Not hard to do as I can’t remember when I last saw one…. 📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 22: blue (Elizabeth / @lzbth)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 21: mountain (David / @dejus) At the top of Mount Srđ, Dubrovnik

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 20: ice (@the)

While drinking my coffee in the conservatory today, I was treated to this shameless display of thievery in the neighbours' garden. I wonder if this is the same squirrel who’s been digging around in my potted acer tree? Maybe that’s where he’s been stashing his stolen loot.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 19: birthday (David / @crossingthethreshold) This is an older photo that came up when I searched for “birthday” in my Google photos. My partner used to make themed birthday cakes for friends, this Egyptian one was made for me one year because I love camels.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 18: mood (@agilelisa) This was the most moody and dramatic sunset I have ever seen, even for a place on the coast known for its beautiful sunsets.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 17: transcendence (Drew / drewbelf)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 16: flâneur (Chris / @chrisaldrich) Today’s prompt got me head-scratching. Are these dapper gentlemen flâneurs?

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 15: small (James / @jmanes) I felt VERY small standing under this redwood, looking up into its canopy.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 14: cactus (Christopher / @christopherchelpka)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 13: page (Rob / @robj)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 12: magic (David / @DaveyCraney)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 11: sky (Jedda / @jedda)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 10: train ( Jason / @starrwulfe)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 9: crispy (Rom / @rom)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 8: prevention (Anne / @anniegreens) Because nothing spoils a tranquil walk like an unexploded bomb.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 7 : wellbeing (Ridwan / @ridwan) Lunch with friends is very good for my well-being!

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 6 : windy (Miraz / @Miraz) What do you do on a windy day at the beach? Fly a giant orange octopus kite!

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 5 : serene (Chi / @chiawase)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 4 : foliage (Pratik / @pratik)

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 3 : card (Valerie / @val)

Just a few card offcuts left over from making some book covers this morning.

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 2 : flowers (Dave / @davegullett)

A little late but hopefully not too much!

📷 April 2024 Photo Challenge Day 1 : Toy (Pedro / @pcora)

I found this little pasta machine in a charity shop for £10. A bargain! I think people buy (or are gifted) them, use twice then let them languish in a cupboard. I’ve used it 4 times already - I adore homemade tagliatelle, there’s nothing so satisfying. A glass of wine, and dinner was sorted!

I’ve enjoyed attending pottery workshops for the last couple of months. It’s an expensive hobby and I’m having to take a financial break from it, but I did make a few pieces I’m rather pleased with. And hopefully return to it later in the spring when other expenses have settled down.

What better way to spend a wet, rainy morning than baking a crusty rustic loaf of cranberry and walnut bread? 🤤 I’m still experimenting with flavours - plan on trying a cheese and herb combo next time - but I’d do this one again too.

Surprised myself by making what looks like a successful small batch artisan bread loaf to go with my homemade celeriac soup for lunch. Of course the proof will be in the eating 😆

Day 30: treasure (suggested by @agilelisa) 📸 #mbsept
The window of a jeweller’s shop in Dubrovnik.

I thought the red car made a striking contrast to the blue house.
Day 29: contrast (suggested by @gregmoore) 📸 #mbsept

Day 28: workout (suggested by @rom) 📸 #mbsept
The only kind of workout I enjoy is a nice long walk, taking in some scenery along the way.

Day 27: embrace (suggested by @mroutley) 📸 #mbsept

The breakfast of champions.
Day 26: beverage (@Annie) 📸 #mbsept

I am totally awed by the photos posted for today’s prompt, but submitting my take on it anyway!
Day 25: flare (suggested by @matt17r)📸 #mbsept

🌱 Admiring the stunning display of dahlias at Gunby Hall gardens has convinced me that I must make space for more of them in my onw garden next year. I’m on the look-out for tubers of interesting varieties.

Day 24: belt (suggested by @allaboutgeorge) 📸 #mbsept
A shelter belt of trees, looking stark on a wintry day.

This afternoon, a leisurely stroll through the potential unexploded bombs amongst the mudflats and salt marshes.
Day 23: a day in the life 📸 #mbsept

Day 22: Road (suggested by @jomalo)📸 #mbsept

Day 21: fall (suggested by @pcora)📸 #mbsept
I hope the little cat doesn’t fall into the stream.

Day 20: disruption (suggested by @crossingthethreshold)📸 #mbsept
It doesn’t take a lot of snow to cause disruption in the UK!

Living on the edge.
#mbsept day 19: edge (suggested by @rnv)📸

Day 18: fabric (suggested by @adam) 📸 #mbsept
Lots of little scraps of fabric here, and threads and buttons and felt shapes and all kinds of sewing notions.

Day 17: intense (suggested by @Rori)📸 #mbsept
The rudbeckias are currently providing an intense hit of bright colour in the late-summer flower borders.

Day 16: oof! (suggested by @bkryer) 📸 #mbsept
The aftermath of a mad burst of the zoomies - ouf!

Day 15: red (suggested by @chiawase) 📸 #mbsept

Day 14: statue (suggested by @christopherchelpka) 📸 #mbsept
The Spirit of the Medieval Huntress by willow artist Anna Cross, in Skipton Castle Woods.

Day 13: glowing (suggested by @anniegreens) 📸 #mbsept
The welcoming glow from the pub windows…

Day 12: panic - suggested by @maique 📸 #mbsept
Hack Green nuclear bunker. The 4-minute warning of a nuclear missile strike received here would give just enough time to panic…

Day 11: retrospect 📸 #mbsept Today’s prompt was a tricky one, but I found this shot I took at a 1940s event.

Day 10: cycle (suggested by @agilelisa) 📸 #mbsept
Yarn-bombing at its best!

Day 9: language suggested by @thedimpause 📸 #mbsept

Today’s prompt almost had me beat until I found this shot I took of a doorway in Ischia a few years ago. Italian is not a language I know very well but I did spot the Thucydides quotation from Pericles’s funeral speech.

Day 8: yonder (@jidabug) 📸 #mbsept The Humber Bridge, stretching 2,200 metres (1.4 miles) over the estuary. The UK’s longest single-span suspension bridge.

Visiting Australia for a month in 1997 was the trip of a lifetime for a working class girl from the UK. Sadly most of the photos I took on slide film during the trip have perished, but I’m scanning the few that still have something left to see on them. This is the Bolands Centre in Cairns 📸

Day 7 #mbsept panorama 📸 Danes Dyke in East Yorks, taken on my mobile phone’s very basic panorama setting.

St Winefride’s Well (Ffynnon Wenffrewi) in the town of Holywell, Wales, is the oldest continually visited pilgrimage site in Great Britain. Day 6 Well #mbsept 📷

Day 5 #mbsept Forest suggested by Oskar @ovr 📸

I’ve already posted for day 4 of #mbsept (orange) but then came across this old photo. Back in the early 90s I had orange hair and an orange 1972 VW Bug called Siegfried.

#mbsept day 4 Orange 📸

Day 3 #mbsept Precious 📸 Butterflies are such a beautiful and precious part of of our biodiversity, and their decline is a sad indication of how unhealthy our ecosystem has become.

Day 2 #mbsept Buildup 📸

Our local church has the tallest mediaeval parish church spire in England.

Since moving, I’ve swapped trees and moss and fungi and craggy hills for open, empty beaches, windswept salt marshes and big skies filled with towering masses of cloud. I’m finding beauty and interest in completely different things. Who would have though I’d become enamoured of beach huts? 📸

Day 1 #mbsept Abstract

Happy New Year to all Microbloggers! It’s been a dark and wet day to start the year here, best suited to a bit of knitting, homemade soup and a new book.

Waiting for my bus home, I thought the city centre, run-down and dreary as it is in reality, can still look like the setting for an 80s elves-in-the-city kind of urban fantasy.

Cold but bright, with a lingering frost. The perfect afternoon for a winter walk.

The frost on the inside of my car windscreen this morning looks like abstract art in the early morning sunshine.

I woke up to a light frosting of snow and pale sunshine. The world outside looks prettier! And fortunately yesterday I finished the big woolly scarf I was knitting so that will get worn this weekend for sure.

Christmas Greetings! Because it’s that time of year.

A treasure snagged from the local charity shop, this will be my Christmas read - 650 pages, good grief! That will keep me quiet for a while.

As the temperatures drop, the cats retreat into the curtains over the radiator. I’m not sure where the 3rd cat went to but it will be a warm nook for sure.

I used to visit this shop in Leicester all the time when I was a student there back in the late 70s. Today was the first time in 40 years I’ve been back to the city, and I was so, SO happy to find it still exists! It is still run by the same family, still sells exactly the same things, and even still smells exactly the same. When I stepped through the door I was 18 again for a moment.

I seem to have been on something of a deconstructive trend this past few months. While doing the seasonal switch-out of my wardrobe from t-shirts to sweaters I realised I have a whole bunch of garments I’ve made over the last few years that I’ve never or rarely worn for one or another reason. So, rather than buy or make anything else new this season I have ripped out and re-knit parts of a cardigan for a better fit, completely deconstructed a sweater and reused the yarn to make something different, and over-dyed another sweater that I hated the colour of. I feel like I’ve got new clothes for nothing, which is very satisfying!

Now, I’m knitting up a nice big scarf using oddments of yarn left over from other projects. 🧶