A riverside walk unexpectedly turned into a family meeting when a swan and her young came to greet us …
Seven cygnets and a swan, on River Wensum: 4 June 2019
No denying it. Those cygnets qualify from the 2019picoftheweek challenge title Soft.
For details of #2019picoftheweek challenge see MariaAntonia
Crimson’s Creative Challenge
Now settle down and listen well,
for a rambler’s tale I here do tell:
I walked, you see …
Through fens and fields in various states,
over broken stiles and five-bar gates;
I took a break upon a bank
(shoes removed, already rank).
But hark, list you, what’s that?
A thunderous throb and it approaches,
booms and bellows quite atrocious,
roaring along that narrow lane.
Yay, it’s Atilla the Tractor been driven insane.
Up that grassy bank I scrambled
Almost was my final ramble
True story. There wasn’t a toe’s gap twixt those big wheels and where I’d sat.
CCC#30
Welcome to my weekly challenge—open to all—just for FUN, FUN, FUN
Here’s how it works:
Every Wednesday I post a photo (this week it’s that one above.)
You respond with something CREATIVE
Here are some suggestions:
You have plenty of scope and only two criteria:
If you post a link in the comments section of this post I’ll be able to find it
If you include Crimson’s Creative Challenge as a heading, WP Search will find it (theory)
If you tag it #CCC others should be able to find it by ‘Searching’ in the WP Reader (fingers crossed)
Here’s wishing you inspirational explosions. And FUN.
And this was the result
‘Oh wow!’ exclaimed the camera-cluttered photographer, ‘how am I ever to capture this?’
With his camera setting changed to “burst”—what more could he do—he followed the mercurial mating dance of the brimstone butterfly.
38 words
Written for Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt
Raja Ampat Regency, West Papua: photo from Google Maps
Far out to sea beneath the heavy swell
There is a land the ancients trod, so I hear tell.
Their way of life we cannot know,
What they ate, what plants did grow;
They fished, of that no doubts I’ve got,
But did they fashion clay to pots?
They knew the skies
And they were wise,
They knew to sail a boat,
To navigate and stay afloat.
They were there once, they are no more,
Fled before a rising tide eight thousand years before,
Drowned now beneath three hundred feet at least,
This garden, this Eden in the East
99 words
Written for What Pegman Saw: Raja Ampat Regency, West Papua
Last week I featured two butterflies and remarked that the restless flutterers tend only to pose with wings displayed for the patient photographer in the early morning in early season and on a warm day.
This first photo shows an Orange Tip doing that.
An Orange Tip takes a much-needed break to pose for me: 24th May 2019
This next one was playing shy, its wings folded.
Brimstone butterfly appends itself to a pink campion: 24th May 2019
And the final photo I declare to be a shot in a million …
The mating dance of a Brimstone couple. With a shutter speed of 1/800 sec my camera wasn’t fast enough: 24th May 2019
I impose my own criterion for my Sunday Picture Post: Whether Flora or Fauna, they must be native and found growing wild. But occasionally I find something simply stunning, that doesn’t conform. Fortunate for me, one of the titles in the #2019picoftheweek challenge is Flower. So here I submit it.
Rhododendron and Bee: 24th May 2019
For details of #2019picoftheweek challenge see MariaAntonia
Crimson’s Creative Challenge #29
Yesterday a squire,
Tomorrow a knight.
And for this darkness between?
The wizard had told him to pray for a vision;
A vision would show him what he would be.
But now first light was breaking, and no vision granted.
So, what did he hope for?
To be the bravest knight that served a lord?
Or the most loyal son, to free his stolen family from their foreign enslavement?
He blinked against a blinding light.
At last his vision had come …
And headless, he collapsed at the feet of warriors from the neighbouring nation.
Written for Crimson’s Creative Challenge #29
A couple of weeks back (11th May), in answer to MariaAntonia’s #picoftheweek challenge, I featured an oak gall (The Very Gall). An oak gall is also known—incorrectly—as an oak apple. These are oak apples.
An oak apple: 3 May 2019
And another oak apple: 3 May 2019
It’s the gall’s immature form—the newly formed uterus, as it were—and it appears around this time of the year. Which explains why Restoration Day is more commonly known as Oak Apple Day.
However, for readers not steeped in British history, this might require some explanation.
Restoration Day, aka Oak Apple Day, dates back to May 1660 when Parliament passed into law—in its wonderfully convoluted language—that all British citizenry were henceforth to keep every 29 May as a public holiday.
Why that day? It was the day Charles II (son of the deposed and executed Charles I) rode triumphantly into London to restore the English monarchy and put an end to the Protectorate (think Roundheads, Cromwell, and the abolition of Christmas and all fun and games; the restoration of the fun and games was certainly worth celebrating). The oak was chosen because, it was said, after the Battle of Worcester (September 1651) Charles had hidden in an oak tree to effect his escape from the Roundhead army.
However, said public holiday was abolished in 1859. So, there you know. Is it worth reinstating? We could beat each other about the body with oak leaves!
Information gleaned from Wikipedia.
CCC29
Welcome to my weekly challenge—open to all—just for FUN, FUN, FUN
Here’s how it works:
Every Wednesday I post a photo (this week it’s that one above.)
You respond with something CREATIVE
Here are some suggestions:
You have plenty of scope and only two criteria:
If you post a link in the comments section of this post I’ll be able to find it
If you include Crimson’s Creative Challenge as a heading, WP Search will find it (theory)
If you tag it #CCC others should be able to find it by ‘Searching’ in the WP Reader (fingers crossed)
Here’s wishing you inspirational explosions. And FUN.
crispina kemp 