Lavender Fields of Kent

Lavender fields in Kent

This photograph was taken on a trip to a lavender festival in Kent. Yes, you heard me correctly. A festival of lavender. Definitely one of the more obscure annual jamborees I've attaneded, and I speak as one who's been to the Ely Eel Festival not just once but twice.

The lavender festival offered all kind of purple-flowered fun. There were a wide selection of lavender-based foods to try, including (but not limited to) jams, pickles, ice cream, cakes, cheeses and sausages. Some were definitely leaning to the "weird" rather than the "delicious" end of the food spectrum, but as Heston Blumenthal would (probably) tell you, no-one ever got anywhere by keeping herbaceous plants out of the jampot.

Outside of the kitchen, there were other lavender-themed delights on offer as well, like soaps, perfumes, little pillows stuffed with lavender, massage oil and more. But the best part was the fields and fields of lavender plants, which were absolutely gorgeous, smelled amazing and were crammed with bees. You should know by now that I love taking photographs of bees anyway, but I have to say I think they look best against a purple background. possibly because I think everything looks best against a purple background. I love purple.

The Mermaid Inn

The Mermaid Inn

After my gap year travels were over, I went with my family on a summer holiday to Wittersham, in Kent. This is a photograph I took in Rye, another nearby town of the Mermaid Inn pub (see the silhouette of its sign?). I can't remember if we even went in the pub, but I do recall darting back to take a picture as the sun was setting and my family were heading off up the road.

Sunset on the Lake

Sunset over Lake Garda

Another old picture, this time from a family holiday to the town of Bardolino by Lake Garda in Italy. It's a really lovely area and a great spot for a holiday - this fact was reinforced when I went to uni and the subject came up in conversation one night, it turned out that of the four people in the room, three of us had been holiday to the exact same town!

Most curious moment of the holiday: going for an evening walk by the lakeside we came across a concert being held by an Italian Pink Floyd tribute band, in aid of the orphans of the Chernobyl crisis. It also featured one of the orphans rapping in Ukrainian. The ceremonies were conducted in both Italian and German, and I was just about able to get the gist of what was going on and explain to my family. Never have I felt so proud of my dodgy grasp of the German language.

Queenstown, NZ

By Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, New Zealand

And we're back to our regular every-other-day photography service! I've been kicking myself lately because there's been a few times when I've been out and about and seen opportunities for some really interesting photos...and I haven't had my camera with me. Fail! But along with a new resolution to try to carry a camera with me more often, that's also inspired me to dig out some old pictures from before I started this blog. This one, as with several upcoming photographs, was taken on my old camera which was nowhere like as good as my current one. For a fairly reasonably-priced non-DSLR camera, my current one is great, but my previous one was not as good - but it would be a shame to let all the nice pictures I've taken on it languish on my hard drive, so I'm posting them anyway.

This photograph was taken on my gap year, when I was staying at a youth hostel by the shore of Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, on New Zealand's South Island. I was there in May/June 2007, right as the winter season was beginning. Queenstown's a big spot for adventure tourism; me and the friend I was travelling with wanted to go hang-gliding, but the weather wasn't good enough. But we did manage a trip to an ice bar, a cruise around the incredibly beautiful Milford Sound and a speed boat trip.

Oh, and a canyon swing, which was terrifying. I refused to go bungee jumping, because I can't think of anything worse that doesn't involve actual bodily dismemberment. But we wanted to do something adventurous, and as hang-gliding was off, we settled on the canyon swing as a good alternative. I thought I could probably cope better with falling off a cliff if I was at least the right way up.

What the hell is a canyon swing? I hear you cry. Well, in this case it's a platform 360ft (109m, if you're feeling metric) above the Shotover River. You stand on said platform, after being tied into a harness, and then you jump off it, freefalling for 60m and then the "swing" aspect kicks in and you're transformed into a giant pendulum swinging wildly back and forth above the river. If you're a complete mentalist - like my friend - you can mix it up by, say, tipping yourself backwards off the platform while tied to a plastic chair. If like me you're terrified of heights, you can just jump off, though I should warn you that a split second after doing so you will be genuinely convinced that you've just accidentally committed suicide.

Blue Morpho Butterfly



Peleides Blue Morpho Butterfly

This photograph makes me highly annoyed that my hands are so wobbly. I tried so many times to get this shot and this is sadly the best one I have, I still completely failed to centre it nicely and managed to chop the tip of the butterfly's wing right off. I need a tripod or something!

Anyway, even if it's far from perfect, I just love the colours in this picture. Blue Morpho butterflies are completely stunning anyway. I hadn't realised that there are actually three species of butterfly which are commonly referred to as the "blue morpho" - morpho rhetenor, morpho menelaus, and morpho peleides. This one is a peleides blue morpho, also known as the Common Morpho, also known as The Emperor. Of course, controversy is rife in lepidopteric circles and some believe that morpho peleides is merely a subspecies of morpho helenor.

The Common Morpho is found in Central and South America, and the amazing blue colour in its wings is created by the diffraction of light from tiny scales which cover its wings. The underside of the wings is brown and much less exciting, so when it folds up and settles on a tree trunk, it's highly camouflaged.

Tell Me A Tail

Squirrel Monkeys at London Zoo

And... we're back to the squirrel monkeys. Because they're oh so adorable. I took a frankly worrying number of photos in their enclosure, and I don't regret it for a moment. Although the foolish lady who tried to prod one and got a nip on the finger for her trouble may do. Seriously, there are signs everywhere that say "Don't touch the monkeys. The monkeys will bite you. Just don't touch them. They bite. No really, they do. LOOK AT THIS PICTURE OF A BLEEDING HAND-STUMP. THAT IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF YOU TOUCH A MONKEY".

And what did she do? Tried to touch a monkey. Oi vey.

Hey Hey We're The Monkeys

Two squirrel monkeys

And we're back to photos of squirrel monkeys! This photograph was taken, as you've already worked out, at London Zoo.

The most famous squirrel monkey of them all was of course Miss Baker, one of the first two animals who were launched into space in 1959 and survived, along with the rhesus monkey Miss Able. She went on to live for twenty five years afterwards, receiving copious amounts of fanmail from children who'd heard of her exploits, and when she died of kidney failure in 1984, over 300 people attended her funeral.

Who knew!

The Miscreant

Escaped Pelican at London Zoo

In my last post, I mentioned that when I visited the Penguin Beach at London Zoo there were two naughty Eastern White Pelicans who sneaked into the penguin enclosure; here's a picture of one of them. Apparently the pond that the pelicans usually live in had frozen over, so they were moved to temporary accomodation next to the penguins, from which they promptly escaped, climbed onto the roof of a shed by the penguin beach, and proceeded to jump over and flap across to the pool.

Various keepers were on hand to herd the mischevious pelicans back to their temporary home, and they were both recaptured fairly quickly! It was highly entertaining though, I must admit.

Squirrel Monkey

Common Squirrel Monkey

As promised, another squirrel monkey photograph, taken on my recent trip to London Zoo. Whilst I took dozens of photos of the monkeys, it was admittedly tricky to get pictures of them that weren't crazily blurry. They don't like to sit still (probably because in the wild this might result in being eaten).

The Common Squirrel Monkey comes from the Amazon Basin in South America, and lives in the middle canopy of the rainforest. At first, when I saw the monkey in this photo carefully examining and later nibbling his tail I wondered what he was doing, but apparently squirrel monkeys have a habit of smearing food onto their tails, and may smear urine all over themselves as well. A charming habit! I suspect that advertising that particular fact in the squirrel monkey enclosure would actually be more effective at persuading people not to try to touch the monkeys than all the signs warning that they bite.

An interesting fact about squirrel monkeys relates to their colour vision; in these monkeys, one gene on the X chromosome codes for colour vision, and there are three versions of this gene, each of which produces a pigment sensitive to a different wavelength of light. Because male squirrel monkeys have only one X chromosome, they are dichromatic (i.e. any colour which they can see can be created using a mixture of just two pure spectral lights - similar to what we call colour blindness in humans); however, because female squirrel monkeys have two X chromosomes, about two-thirds of them have trichromatic vision like humans (i.e. a mixture of three pure spectral lights is required to create all the colours which they are able to see). Researchers have successfully used gene therapy to give adult male squirrel monkeys trichromatic colour vision.

Welcome to the Jungle

Squirrel monkey at London Zoo

It's a monkey!

This weekend I went to ZSL London Zoo with my boyfriend. We had been meaning to go for about a year, because last year for his birthday present I adopted a squirrel monkey for him from the zoo,* but obviously we had to wait until the coldest weekend in the year. Being a naturally chilly person (both in temperature and personality), I wore eight layers of clothing to ensure I wouldn't get too cold. I was so bundled up I couldn't lift my arms above shoulder-height. But it was worth it!

But anyway, we had an awesome day! It was the first day of half-term, so I had expected it would be pretty busy, but in fact it was fairly quiet - I think the cold kept people at home. It was really nice being able to walk around the zoo without being buffeted by hordes of people. We went to visit my boyfriend's adopted squirrel monkey, Bounty, who lives with his monkey clan in an awesome exhibit which you can walk through. It's highly entertaining to watch them all bouncing around the place, and consequently I have a whole lot of monkey photos which will probably take over this blog for some time! Prepare to learn more than you ever needed to know about squirrel monkeys...

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*Because I kept asking what he wanted for his birthday and he kept giving me silly answers like "a monkey". I am nothing if not literal :D

Tangled Up In Blue

The latest controversy to strike the office at my place of work is the vexed issue of tea scum. One half of the office insists it's caused by leaving the teabag in too long; the other half have an unshakeable belief that scum will occur if you put the milk in last.

 I once had the formation of tea scum explained to me by a scientist friend, so when the debate got heated for the second time and my opinion was canvassed, I couldn't stop myself from pointing out that although I couldn't remember the scientific explanation, I knew that neither camp was right and that the scum could be reduced by introducing acidity to the tea in the form of a drop or two of lemon juice.

This was met with a stony silence and then my colleagues resumed the debate. But my curiosity was piqued again and so I had to Google it. Turns out that tea scum was unexplained by science until the 1990s when research was conducted into the question that concluded that the calcium carbonate found in hard water is what allows scum to form in tea through oxidation at the tea's surface, and that scum can be eliminated either by using soft water or by introducing acid to the mix, for example with a drop or two of lemon juice.

Who knew?

On the Hedge Of Glory

Regular service is resumed! I apologise profusely for the break, I hadn't realised it was almost a week since my last post. That is most disgraceful of me. I need to head outside in the sunshine again and get snapping some new wintery pictures! Although the only real hint that this photo of a hedge was taken in the depths of January is the profusion of brown twiglet leaves (this is a technical botanical term).

Hedges do not normally strike me as something particularly photo-worthy, I have to admit, but sometimes you just have to strike out in a fresh direction and risk looking like a hedge-obsessed madwoman. For the sake of art!

Tree Trunk

Oh, how I wish this was in better focus! It was just a bit too dark for the camera to cope well with it, but the colour of the wood was what I wanted to capture and using the flash just deadened it completely. So it remains, a teeny bit too blurry to be good, but still alright, I guess. This was a particularly cool piece of fallen wood, anyhow, and the red ferns and blue-green lichen are an interesting contrast. I guess I shall just have to return to the tree trunk on a sunnier day.

Winter Berries

Lovely red winter berries on a sunny (yet extremely cold) day. It's enough to make you want to cook some kind of delicious red berry strudel.

Except I didn't know whether or not they were poisonous.

The Moon in the Afternoon

A picture of the moon in the afternoon: does what it says on the tin. I was actually impressed that my camera was good enough to take more than a blurry picture of the moon really - you can see the seas and everything. If only it had been a full moon, my day would have been made!

Metal Implant

I have no idea what this random yet very specifically shaped piece of metal was doing on the top of a wooden post near my house, but I rather liked the colours it's made as it gently rusts away. It's hard to find nice flowers to photograph in the winter, but I guess that doesn't mean there's nothing at all of interest around and about.

Pastel Perfect

I was surprised to see that I hadn't already blogged this picture, because I am quite fond of it! I love the colours of the hydrangea and the contrast with the little marmalade hoverfly (which looks like it's balancing on one leg in that picture).

Whilst I don't know the name of this kind of hydrangea (I would guess it's hydrangea macrophylla?), it's apparently a lacecap as opposed to a mophead - meaning that it has large, showy but sterile flowers around the outer edge of a number of much smaller fertile ones -you can see the two types in the picture. Mophead hydrangeas are the ones you immediately think of when someone leaps out from behind a wall and shouts "hydrangea!" - i.e., the ones with big round fluffy-looking flowerheads. The colour of your hydrangeas will be affected by the pH of the soil, which is rather interesting.

Foxglove

This is a foxglove. I believe it is the Common Foxglove, digitalis purpurea (which sounds like some kind of hideous rash you might get on your hands.. but no matter). It's an interesting name and one apparently widely open to debate, but according to some 19th Century book of botany quoted on Wikipedia: "In south of Scotland it is called 'bloody fingers', more northward, 'deadman's bells'", which seem like unnecessarily gruesome names for what is quite a pretty plant. Probably this comes from the fact that it's extremely poisonous, as the leaves, flowers and seeds all contain digitoxin. Digitoxin has been used as a treatment for heart failure, as pioneered by William Withering (fabulous name for a botanist).

Withering also recommended it for the treatment of dropsy, a hilarious-sounding old fashioned disease which, I've just discovered, was an archaic name for oedema (Edema, if you're American. Or just can't spell). I always feel faintly guilty when I find the names for medical conditions funny. Like botulism. I don't know why, but the name just amuses me, whereas I suspect the actual condition itself would very definitely not...

Campsight

When we arrived at our campsite in Cornwall this summer, this was the view over the fields at the back. Sadly it didn't stay quite as sunny for the entire duration of our stay. One evening it was raining so hard that we drove from our tent to the sinks to brush our teeth...

Some Sunny Day

Ah, summer. Please come back.