Living the Dream

This photo makes me laugh and cry in equal measure. Cry, because it's just a bit too darn unclear and if I'd only been standing about a foot further forward in the crowd it would have been a really awesome picture because you'd be able to see the guy's face properly instead of just a weirdly bright nose and mouth. In case you can't tell, it's a guy sitting on his friend's shoulders at a concert, facing into the stage lighting and getting overexcited. Laugh, because the band in question were S Club 3, the last survivors of S Club 7, who were actually surprisingly good, considering. Bradley, Paul and Jo brought the house down with their renditions of such classic songs as "Reach (For the Stars)" and "Bring It All Back", to an ecstatic audience of twentysomethings. Paul may now looks like a chubby builder straight off the site, but their enduring appeal would seem to live on.

Flutter By

Butterfly in London Zoo's Butterfly Paradise

It's a butterfly! And a very pretty one too. I like going in butterfly houses and admiring the pretties (and also, they're really warm and cosy, which is nice when there's snow on the ground outside). Admittedly I am less keen when they flap in my face, but as long as they're hanging off leaves looking pretty/eating rotten fruit, I'm happy.

While we were in the butterfly house, my boyfriend told me that some butterflies drink blood. Thinking he had gone briefly mad, I laughed and said he was confusing them with bats. But no! I was entirely wrong. It was there in black-and-white on one of the signs in the exibit. I googled it, and found this picture of butterflies drinking blood from a sock. Yes, you heard me. A sock. If you didn't know already, it turns out that butterflies are one of the sock's few natural predators. Also, here is a National Geographic article about vampire moths. Apparently in Slavic folklore, vampires were able to take the form of butterflies.

This whole discovery has rather changed the way I view these insects. I used to think they were nice decorative creatures to have around the place, sort of like nature's bunting. Now I know they are opportunistic greedy blood-sucking horrors. The butterfly house will never be the same again.

Snowy Gates

Not as wonky as my previous offering, happily! If you look closely you can see the nubbins of snowmen that appeared to have been decapitated by the time I got there.

Wonky Architecture in the Snow

There's a reason why I hardly ever post pictures of architecture or buildings or even landscapes on this blogs, and it's because I struggle like a small child to take pictures that are even vaguely level. The even sadder thing is that my camera actually does have a "grid" function that you can turn on, superimposing a grid onto the screen, and then you can line up the picture with the lines on the screen and not take photos that look like they've been captured by a seasick photographer on the high seas. Alas, I have only ever turned the grid function on by mistake, and I have no idea how to do it on purpose. Consequently I fear that my photographs will continue to be as ludicrously wonky as this one.

Another snowy architecture photo. I do like the colours in the photo, especially the weirdly green trees, covered in lichen. If only my hands weren't so ludicrously wobbly!

White Bobble

Some kind of cool white berry type thing that I discovered on a recent walk in the wintertime. The wind was blowing like the blazes while I was trying to take this damn picture, but I got there in the end. If only I knew what kind of plant it was, I would share said information!

Incidentally, this is my one hundredth post on this blog! That is quite a few. How exciting :D

Still Lily

Just found a lily, sitting in a bit of wood. And took a photo, because obviously that's the right and proper reaction to such a situation.

Purple Zebra

A zebra-striped iris. Apparently irises get their name from the Greek word for 'rainbow', because they come in so many different colours. Without much hope of success, I typed the words "purple iris" into Google to attempt to identify this fine specimen, and sure enough I completely failed at my task. But I'm pretty sure it's an iris of some description! What more do you need?

Cyclamen

These are cyclamen, and very nice they are too. I like their little wiggly stalks, they're like pig's tails. And they grow out of a corm, which is an excellent word.

Another excellent word I discovered recently is globster: an unidentified mass of organic matter washed up on a shoreline, and the source of many a sea monster myth. Apparently decomposing basking sharks strongly resemble plesiosaurs. Who knew?

Incidentally, Wikipedia has a page entitled "exploding whales". And believe me when I say it's a blast.

Balancing Act

I believe this is a european honeybee, aka apis mellifera, although I'm not entirely sure. I hope it is, because honeybees are nice. For one thing, they make honey, and honey with butter on toast is one of my favourite breakfasts (second only to toasted cinammon fruit bread. And ice cream, except obviously I don't actually allow myself to have that for breakfast because I don't want to turn entirely spherical). For another, they pollinate things in a useful and civic-minded manner. What's not to like?

And of course the poor honeybees are suffering from colony collapse disorder, which seems to me a rather ridiculous name, but there you go. No-one knows why the bees are disappearing, and it probably doesn't help that, bizarrely, there is genuinely a booming black market for bees, with thefts happening all over the place. On the one hand, it shows that British criminals are displaying an impressive level of knowledge and expertise in the field of beekeeping, which can only be admired.
On the other hand, they're stealing all the bees.

Crumpled Glory

I adored these flowers. They're absolutely huge, with great blousy petals; even just looking at the picture, they're such a wonderful texture that I just want to reach out and touch them.

Raspberry Ripple Flower, and a Fact of the Day

The pattern of these petals is stunning and reminds me of an interesting thing, which I hereby present to you as my Fact Of The Day: some flowers have markings on their petals which we can't see, because they reflect UV light that our eyes don't pick up. Certain pollinating insects can see into different spectral bands than humans, and the flowers' colouring reflects this; sometimes what appears to us as a fairy unexciting bloom looks quite different if you use a camera which is able to record ultra violet or infra red light. There's a really nice website here which has photos of different flowers shown as they normally appear to us, and coloured to show the UV patterns and fluorescence which we can't see. Some of my favourite examples include this picture, which I think is featured in Richard Dawkins' book The Greatest Show On Earth, this very jazzy example, and this rather dramatic bloom, which clearly shows the "bulls-eye" pattern that a lot of UV-patterned flowers exhibit.
So next time you see a rather plain and insipid bouquet, just remember: perhaps it's your eyes and not the flowers which are at fault...

Rave Poppy

This poppy is just gorgeous, and I actually worked out what it is! Papaver orientale picotee, an oriental poppy. The colours are bright in this photo, but it's nothing compared to how bright they are on a sunny May day in a garden near Bristol.

Purple Dahlia

This one I can actually identify. It is a dahlia. Of some kind. For those desirous of further information, Wikipedia tells me that the "dahlia is a genus of bushy, tuberous, perennial plants native to Mexico, Central America, and Colombia."

Interestingly, "the Aztecs gathered and cultivated the dahlia for food and ceremonies, as well as decorative purposes, and the long woody stem of one variety was used for small pipes."

It is also the name of Bertie Wooster's favourite aunt. And I think we all know that's more important.