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.

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.

Say What?

This curious fellow is a face in a tree :D

Apparently the phenomenon of seeing faces or shapes in objects like clouds or trees is known as pareidolia. Carl Sagan theorised that seeing faces like this is common because we're hard-wired to recognise them; but precisely because we have the ability to distinguish faces at a distance and in poor lighting, we end up seeing faces when they're not there. Hence we see faces here and here and here... even though they're not there. Unsurprisingly, when faces are distinguished they're often given a religious slant, hence all the bizarre stories about jesus appearing in a bit of marmite. Or a chapati, depending on where you're from.

People who can't recognise faces correctly suffer from prosopagnosia.

Canopy

I like the contrast between the texture of the tree bark and the smooth black surface- I assume the tree was damaged and had to be sealed to repair it or something. I don't know much about treelore, alas! This is a sibling of the hollow tree I showed a picture of recently. Or maybe not a sibling but just a neighbour. Who knows? I'm sure they have been

Guest Photographer

I did not actually take this picture! My boyfriend did. But it's such a nice shot it had to go on the blog, and I'm sure he won't mind. Plus I did hassle him about making sure he got a picture of the cool hole in the tree, so. I totally contributed. Even if he had already taken one >.>

 This particular tree lives in Killerton House, in Devon, another stop-off on my travels there.  As well as attractively hollow treetrunks, Killerton sports the Bear's Hut, a curious little cottage in the grounds. It has a roof lined with pinecones, a stained glass window and a floor made out of the knucklebones of dead deer; one of the family kept a bear in there in Victorian times, hence the name.