purple pictures

I really do need that new camera if I am to stop taking pictures like the one on the left. Though what it will take to stop me writing purple prose is anybody’s guess.

I also need it so I can take better pictures than the one below (which comes from the same set as the previous one). After all, if the local area provides me with such wonderful subjects, it would be nice to be able to do them justice.

Not that getting a new camera will make me a better photographer, of course, but it shouldn’t make me any worse.

one last prayer

It seems awfully late in the season, but we still have lots of insects about. As soon as the sun comes out, the ivy is busy with honey bees and wasps, and I found this green bug-eyed monster on the verandah earlier on today:

A late prayer

autumn strawberries

Not all the local flora is as reminiscent of my childhood as yesterday’s plane trees. This, the madroño, (arbutus unedo), is called a strawberry tree in English, and, although it’s been introduced elsewhere as an ornamental shrub, the only part of the British Isles where it’s native is Ireland.

Not my kind of strawberry

plane speaking

I find it very strange – though in some ways, quite comforting – that one of the most popular trees in public gardens and plazas in this part of Spain is what I thought was a London plane. Perhaps even more strange is the fact that the Latin name is Platanus x hispanica. Why should a London plane be “hispanica“? Not to mention the questions arising concerning their relationship to plátanos, which is Spanish for bananas.

Pruned bananas?

crouching tiger, wary cat

The cats don’t often come inside the house, but I was sitting reading beside the log fire last night and thought I’d see if they wanted to join me. The one in the photo is the tamest of the lot and, on the rare occasion he gets the chance, he’s usually very happy to settle into an armchair and make himself at home. I’d forgotten that we’d rearranged things in the kitchen, though.

A cat can look at a king

Almost the first thing he saw when he came in was the tiger statue. He then spent over twenty minutes stalking, reversing and approaching with caution from different angles, before deciding that he’d really rather go back into the cold and dark of the garden than spend time in the same place as that fearsome creature.