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.

Simba...

Asian lion cub at London Zoo

One of the main reasons I wanted to go to London Zoo was to see the baby Asian lions they have at the minute. They were born in October 2011 so they're growing up fast but they are ludicrously cute. When we got to the lion house, it was late afternoon and they were snuggled up in a big pile of fur with their mum in a patch of sunshine, right up against one of the viewing windows in their enclosure.

Asian lions are super endangered. Although they used to have a range that continued as far west as Greece and Italy, these days they are only found in the wild in the Gir forest of Gujarat, India; a census of the lion population in 2011 indicated that there were about 411 Asiatic lions in the world, up from a total of 234 in 1936 when the first ever census was taken. They are threatened by habitat destruction, and are killed by electric fences and open wells.

Give Me Your Answer, Do

Taken on a cliff-top walk in Cornwall. It was a really lovely walk, although unfortunately like an idiot I managed to get a fairly horrific sunburn on the back of my legs and spent the next few days slathering them in
olive oil and E45 moisturiser. Also, because we were camping, every time I had to crawl into the tent, the backs of my knees registered serious complaints with my brain. It was painful! So don't do that.

Interestingly, I was reading recently that the song "Daisy Daisy" (you know the one… about a bicycle made for two), was apparently first written about Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick and mistress of Edward VII. Apparently she was known as the "Babbling Brooke" for her inability to keep things discreet and was thought to be partially responsible for the leaking of the Royal Baccarat Scandal in 1890, which resulted in Edward being called to testify in court and the whole affair turned into a bit of a society spectacle. It's strangely comforting to know that even a hundred years ago, tabloid gossip was still tabloid gossip.

I also like how the Wikipedia article on the scandal states that Prince Edward restrained his gambling afterwards, by taking up whist instead of baccarat. An altogether more respectable card game. And, incidentally, one which I learned how to play whilst on holiday in Cornwall. So the cycle of facts turns full circle.

Elephant Rhubarb

This is a photograph of the leaf of a giant gunnera plant (I'm guessing gunnera manicata?) taken at Trebah Gardens in Cornwall. Along with other curiosities (including a Stumpery and bamboo maze), the Gardens sport a Gunnera Passage, which winds along underneath the huge leaves of these plants. They have giant spikes on their stems, and their leaves are several foot across (there's even a picture of me pretending to sit on one). It was one of my favourite areas in the garden; it's very cool to feal like a tiny midget creature creeping along in the shade of leaves the size of umbrellas.

Even though gunnera manicata is known as Elephant's Rhubarb, it's not related to rhubarb at all and sadly isn't edible. If it were then I guess we'd be one step closer to solving the world food crisis because one stalk could probably feed you for a week - some of the stalks were as thick as my arm. Interestingly, although rhubarb is usually classed as a vegetable, it's legally a fruit in the United States. For tax purposes.

Also, rhubarb leaves are poisonous, although you'd have to eat about five kilograms for it to kill you. In news of other toxic plants, I recently discovered that wild almonds are all poisonous as well! They contain cyanide. So if you're ever wandering desolate through a forest and you're feeling peckish, avoid anything that looks almondy.

Petals

This is one of my absolute favourite photos. And one of my less original post titles, oops. The disadvantage of the way I post pictures on this blog is that they're all teeny so you don't get to appreciate the clarity of the photo at full resolution. I originally intended to put them all up on flickr and then cross post them here, but a) it seemed like effort and b) I managed to lock myself out of my flickr account (genius, I know).

I am considering adding some of the photos to posts at full size under a cut, if I can work out how to do it, and this is a prime candidate! No clue what kind of flower it is, though. A pink one?

I did consider using it as my desktop background, but it would mean ousting two very charming narwhals, to whom I am very attached. Did you know that the narwhal's tusk is actually a tooth which grows right through the top lip of the male narwhals? Some of them even have two.

National Geographic's website does the classic "size of whale compared to a bus" analogy on all its whale pages (a humpback is the size of one large bus; a blue whale about three buses; a narwhal less than one bus). Why is it that whales are always compared to buses? It seems strange that "a bus" has become an informal unit of measurement for sea mammals.(And dinosaurs). How did this begin? Why the relentless association with buses? Why not a train? or a tank? or a herb garden? Has anyone found the first instance in which a whale was compared in size to a bus? And how does it work across national boundaries? A London double-decker bus seems to be the standard measurement in the UK, but judging by the pictures on Nat Geo's website, they're using an American yellow school bus. These buses are different sizes. Is this accounted for in the comparison? Will we ever know?

Glass Light

This is actually a shot of the very modern stained glass windows at Buckfast Abbey which I mentioned previously. As well as the very traditional main building of the church, complete with elegant windows depicting various saints, they have a large and startlingly modern chapel section right at the back. The entire east wall of this chapel is taken up with a stained glass depiction of Jesus which, to be honest, I found wildly disconcerting. It's something that I would associate more with the very commercialised wings of American evangelism rather than a community of Benedictine monks, but there you go. Personally I'd rather not be stared at by a giant Jesus with square pupils, but whatever floats your boat. Or illuminates your monastery, possibly.

Anyway, alongside freaky Jesus there were some modern abstract stained glass windows which I actually rather liked, and this is a close-up short of some of the chunks of glass. I like the texture particularly.

Sunshine After The Rain

I went on a trip to the local Botanical Gardens with my mother one day and we had the most peculiar weather. All in all it rained - heavily - on four separate occassions, but always at a relatively convenient moment; on our first trip to the tea rooms for lunch (delicious soup... tomato and chorizo, I believe, which I loved), then when we were standing right by the large greenhouses, then twice when we were back at the tea rooms, enjoying another couple of well-earned cups of tea. These gorgeous flowers (my mum told me their name and I promptly forgot. She would be very disappointed in me) grew all around the greenhouses, and when the sun suddenly emerged from behind the clouds, like an increasingly confident streaker at a public sports match, they looked fantastic, all damp and fresh from the rain.

Yellow Tutu

Just coming to the end of its summertime life.

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.

Sunshine Flower

Despite yesterday's outpouring of a single interesting fact, I'm back to wallowing in my own ignorance with today's flower. The photo was taken on a recent visit to Cornwall, where we visited several gardens, all of them absolutely gorgeous. My favourite was Trebah Gardens, which not only boasts its own private beach, but also has a bamboo maze, a shady secret passage beneath the giant leaves of huge gunnera plants (also known as "Elephant's Rhubarb") and (my new favourite word), a stumpery. Yes, even their collection of tree stumps is awesome.

Violent Tulips

Violent Tulips, a photo by EmerGrey on Flickr.

Some manner of exciting and oddly triangular tulip. I just love the colours.

My mother has also informed me that the flower in yesterday's post is known as a "bleeding heart" which seems a rather gruesome name for such an inoffensive flower.