A final favourite

Isn’t it difficult to choose a favourite photo, from a vast archive? Some of the photos I love best are of my grandchildren, but posting those would add even more problems because I’d have to pick four!

So I decided to think about places I’ve been, and I think that our favourites are likely to be the ones that evoke the strongest memories. I’ll always remember the morning I took this photo and I’ve posted the story of it here and before.

I’m not sure if linking to the final weekly photo challenge  is still possible, but I will really miss creating the posts. I’ve been blogging for 7 years and have probably only missed 20 in that time.

Thanks to WordPress and the amazing  Daily Post team, I’ve made lots of friends around the world and learnt about things and places I’ll never see,

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Twisted bits

I’m having one of those spells where I’m all behind with everything, blogging included, and it’s not likely to improve much for a couple of weeks. I did read that the Weekly Photo Challenges are coming to an end, so I decided to post for the penultimate one, the theme of which is twisted. I hope these images, taken in Sicily, fit the bill.

It’s a pity it’s ending, but as Jude said it has become a bit repetitive recently. It’s been a great way of making friends, from all over the world. there are lots of smaller challenges of all kinds, and who knows, Lucid Gypsy might become a little less photo lead.

The spring at Okohia

Early on a September morning in the year 2000, I was told to get up to go for a walk through the bush. It was hot and humid, but not unbearable, and I was intrigued to know where we were heading. The path was narrow, mostly just one person wide, and with low undergrowth both sides.

Here’s my daughter with my cousin Kelvin.

After a while I began to wonder what might be sharing the path with us , after all there’s no bush without bugs. My sister Patricia laughed and said, yes there are snakes and many things that will bite you. Well I was already bitten, mozzies see me as their own private banquet, and I told myself that most snakes would scuttle away.

After half an hour, we reached our destination, the village spring, with, so I was told, the best water I’d ever taste.

It was definitely a delight for our feet, the best tasting? I can’t remember, but the experience of walking to collect it, makes it the most memorable liquid ever.

Here’s Patricia carrying it home.

My Place in the World

Most of you know that I live in Exeter, and over the years I’ve posted quite a few photos of my city. So when it comes showing my place in the world, I thought I’d focus on east Devon, some of my favourite places, east of the Exe.

East Devon is where I belong, and my heart will always be in Exeter.

 

Ancient lines

After seeing this weeks photo challenge, I began thinking about different types of lines, in a sleepless hour the other night. The next day I found the lines of tiles that I posted on Friday, man made, twenty first century city lines.

My mind wandered to ancient lines, and lines that may or may not actually exist, ley lines.

If you believe they do, this is one place where you may be close to one. If you don’t then these stone rows are Neolithic or bronze age.

The lady in the hat with lines is Christine of Dadirri Dreaming, she was very happy to be there in that ancient land. She was a dear friend to many of us, who died in 2014, a few weeks after this photo was taken.

Millenium Lines

The Guildhall shopping centre in Exeter was created in a historic area right in the middle of the town in the 1970’s. Although there’s a lot of concrete, there are a few little gems ,like the tiny church of St Pancras, first recorded  in 1191 and the former Turk’s Head tavern building that’s at least 700 years old.

A mosaic was created, for the shopping centre at the turn of the millennium, by schools and community groups. Somewhere around a thousand 10 cm wooden squares were decorated and mounted in eleven lines on a shop wall.

Wouldn’t it have been nice to be involved in something like that, and still see your square eighteen years later?

This is my post my the weekly photo challenge of lines.

Sloe gin a plenty

If the amount of blackthorn flowers is anything to go by, there’ll be plenty of sloes this year. Has anyone ever made sloe gin, I bet Tish has.

The river and mill leat area is my favourite place to walk the dogs at the moment, it’s filled with wild flowers and the sound of birdsong, there the blackthorn is prolific.

Join this weeks photo challenge at the Daily Post.

 

Awakening

There’s something about transitions and thresholds that I find fascinating, yet I can’t pinpoint it. Walking the dogs today, I saw this very handsome, but still very sleepy tree.

Then  further across the fields I spy this blossom.

Last year’s oak leaves hanging on.

This little wood wasn’t here the last time I came to Eastern fields.

Hooray for hawthorn, creamy flowers in May, Hawthorn Jelly later in summer.

The tops of these trees are waking up, I must re-learn the tree names that I knew in infant school.

Oh the limitations of a phone camera!

A serpent awakening?

Let’s end with damsons – or sloes?

We’re all observing the late arrival of spring in the UK, and this is my second post for ‘Awakening’, this weeks photo challenge.