sweet corn

when we first moved to Saffron Walden area, all those, oh my, almost twelve years ago, most noise during market days was produced by the fruit and veg seller. He was putting real passion into his "Strawberrrrieeeeeees"! and "We have ba-na-nas in their pi-ja-mas!".

Nowdays, very similar, but even louder and more piercing noises are produced by a young guy who, I assume, is his son. At least, voices and intonations are quite remarkably similar. The "original" guy sells, but doesn't shout any more.

Sweetcorns above is from their stall today

summer reading

there is this huge beech tree in Brandon country park that kids never pass just like that. They always climb, with various degrees of success.

Timur came to it this time with a firm idea that he'll sit on a branch and read. But, being still small(ish), he had difficulties finding a spot and then getting there. He got there in the end, with some help, and finished his book there, but I didn't get a good picture of him.

Yuri had no troubles at all, he found this angled low seat on one branch and spend some time reading Sherlock Holmes stories. He got this book after watching last movie, and likes it. Old-fashioned language or the fact the movie and the book have little in common don't seem to bother him much.

Oncidium

original plan was to go to Wandlebury for a little walk or something. but soon as we got off the front porch it started to drizzle, so went to Scotsdales. kids like it there because there are fish and some pets to look at and I like it because I can buy myself a new flower every time. this time the orchid gallery had some plants there that I immediately labeled as "suspiciously cheap" to which Yuri (I think it was him) added "going all the way up to outrageously expensive".

the plant of the picture is from suspiciously cheap end of the spectrum - 3.99 I think it was, cheap for a tall bright orchid.

And another bit of useless information learned today was its name - Oncidium. I hope writing it will help me remembering it.

and we did go to Wandlebury after that, too. Heavy rain only caught us on the way home.

cannibal pacman

it's not really my idea - I was minding my own business, photographing lemons on our brand-new blue plastic cutting board, when Kirill took my models off me and made them do his bidding.

picture came out nice and cheerful though

iguana again

ok, it had to be done. It's not the exact tracing of the drawing by Timur, but it is close and got his approval. When we get to do henna tattoos again, I will try this one for sure.

and a variation on the theme

una iguana se cayó de arriba de una escalera

School holidays are finally upon us and a lot of school project work came home over the last few days.

and here is Timur's T-shirt with iguana. I thought they were two iguanas, but no, its a reflection in a stream. and sure, he didn't get the optics right here, but the way he uses available space amazes me. I wish I can do as good as he does now. Of course he might loose this graphic freedom at some point (Yuri did, according to himself "I can't draw as good as before any more"), but I right now he's very good.





as to the title - no, this particular iguana didn't fall off any stairs, I just like this song

Liverpool carnival

This beautiful young lady was one of the dancers at Liverpool carnival parade this saturday. The parade was not nearly as big or impressive as one in Luton, (I think there were maybe five floats, and ten or whereabouts groups of drummers and dancers), but it was a nice experience anyway. If I understood correctly, it's a relatively new thing, organized just for the last few years by a samba school in Liverpool, so it might grow into something much bigger eventually. that might make it a lot less accessible, though.

It was good to visit Liverpool. I was there only once before, years and years ago, on a dismal winter afternoon, and had mostly unpleasant memories. Now it looked lively and vibrant, very liveable. Sure, there are still parts of it that will probably benefit from a extensive flamethrower treatment, but hey, it's a city, what city doesn't have those, I ask you.

alarums, excursions and wandering commas

our next door neighbours had a problem with their house alarm - it went off during daytime a couple of times over the last few days, last time today. as a well-trained house alarm, it was making noises for 20 mins or so and then stopped. both times I went out to check the front and back doors and of course it was nothing, so I didn't think too much about it. I saw our neighbour after it went off the first time, and she apologized for the noise

today, she intercepted me in front of the house and presented me with a bunch of roses and lilies. I thought they arrived for me while I was out but no - that was from her, to compensate for the inconvenience :) I thought it was really sweet, although not necessary, I wasn't all that inconvenienced, after all. But she said it makes her feel better :)

So, now I have photographed the roses, and lilies are still unopened, so I am all set for flowers for the nearest couple of days

the alarm, btw, apparently was triggered by thunderbugs getting inside the system. you know them, they get everywhere. they are especially annoying as wandering commas on your screen, when they get under the glass (or whatever you have). And the next stage, of course, is a stationery comma - when they die there

carnival crown

There was a Carribean topic in Timur's school going for a while (so he kept asking me if we can go to Barbados or Dominica for our hols, hmmm). As the high point they had a carnival parade together with another school. It happened on on school grounds, so it wasn't a public event, unfortunately, because it seems that kids and teachers and helpers produces some very nice artwork for the parade, including some huge animals made of colorful paper on some sort of 3d-carcass. I only saw a giraffe, because it apparently didn't fit into the school hall (which gives an idea of the size), it was very impressive.

Above is the carnival crown the Timur made and decorated for himself. He is fascinated by the sea turtle motif for a goodish while already and here it is on the central "feather" of the crown






and another one, from the headband (oil crayons clearly don't draw very well on metallic paper, but still)



also, octopus motif in the center of headband was one of his favourite drawing subjects for a while, ever since they did a celtic topic

Carnival pics on shutterstock - here 

starry pool

one more from Lanzarote. Usual trick with star-shaped highlights. No reason except it's a summery picture and I am still combing my old folders.

might make a nice userpic though

being cool

it looks like Timur is doing some dance accompanied by finger gestures of some kind. He doesn't really, he just run downhill from the dune behind him and is trying to slow down. why slowing down takes this form is anybody's guess

I am combing through my Lanzarote-Fuerteventura pics from the last visit. sure sign I want to go again

problem solved

Problem (if you can call it that) with Graces farm not doing pick-your-own this year was solved today. via this map http://www.pickyourown.info/map.htm#/?i=2 another farm was located nearby - Sunclose farm on Butt Lane in Milton. they do strawberries, and although not much is left of the current crop, there are lot more lines with plants raised waist-high (should be easy to pick) - and these are still green. Young lady at the shop said that they'll have strawberries till august and expect to start PYO raspberries in a week.

Duxford saturday workshop performance

Today we went to Duxford saturday workshop children theather performance "African Jigsaw". Both Yuri and Timur took part. In Yuri's case you could plainly see that he was rather uncomfortable with being the tallest and oldest boy on stage - there were simply no possibility to hide behind anybody. After the performance he relaxed though and agreed to pose with his "beggar'd cloak" (my old-but-never-used-properly sarong) outside

you can see how much better flash-on images look with a bounced light.

In this case the light was bounced from the ceiling



(although why on earth Timur keeps making this face when posing puzzles me). I love the background with two girls in the sun, happy feel to it.

and here the flash is direct, nowhere to bounce it off



still, nice dynamic picture.

French market in Saffron walden

went today. it's called french. but there is stuff from other places - italian sweets, for example. it wasn't crowded today, tomorrow's probably going to be quite different

there were also a donut peaches, but in less regular pattern,, and I haven't processed the pics yet

ps: and I guess once you've seen La Geria aerial view everything honeycomb-like will remind of it (zooooooom is essential)



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Lanzarote sand

This photo I made on the very first evening of the last visit to Lanzarote. First time I went through the raw files from that trip I didn't touch it because it was too dark. I still think it's too dark and color is quite obviously not great (contre-jour pictures rarely have beautiful colors), but somehow, with shining sand and that couple in the background, it asked to be shown, and here it is.

no strawberries for wimbledon?

I know they are not strawberries, yes. what's more, they were bought in a shop, not picked by me. and I enjoy picking as much as I enjoy eating them, if not more.

sadly, Graces farm between Saffron Walden and Thaxted where we used to go for pick-your-own berries didn't to do raspberries last year and this year they don't have strawberries (sob, sob, sniff). remembering that they always said that they opened pick-your-own strawberries season for Wimbledon, I phoned them to make sure and found out that I have to find other picking grounds this year.

Oh I don't know, something's not right with this universe.

Well, sure, I found some other addresses. But I'd appreciate if somebody can recommend a good pick-your-own around here (south of Cambridge).

and now it's gone

I might have already posted photos from this series. clematis vine definitely stopped flowering a while ago, so that's gone, but now the blue glass is gone too. so it's a memorial sort of post

Timur went to fetch his breakfast things today, and tried to take the top glass from a tallish stack of them. there were, oh, seven maybe glasses altogether. now we have two red ones left, and that's it. whole kitchen was covered in glass shards, some went into our brewing coffee.

Timur was really upset - both by breaking so many things in one go and by my shouting "stay where you are!" (he was barefoot).

On the brighter side of things I now have quite exceptionally clean kitchen and an excuse to go shopping. And according to Russian folklore, crockery breaking is a lucky sign

anthurium

bought an unreasonable amount of flowers on the market today (it happens to me too often). including those anthuriums

of course I photographed them - no flower is left well alone in our house, just standing quietly in a vase is not an option.

While keywording pictures for stock, I found (on wikipedia, where else), that common names from Anthurium are "Flamingo Flower" and "Boy Flower".

I have my doubts about "Flamingo Flower" - although, if the angle is right and you squint a bit, yes, you can see something flamingo-like

"Boy Flower" however causes no questions at all

I love cherries

original image seems to be irretrievably lost together with all the photobucket content, but this one is good too

I bought a small box of cherries today and suddenly went into "In my days we had _real_ cherries, no this flavorless stuff" mode.

Maybe it's just a senior moment, you know. But really.

I remember the huge cherry tree in my aunt's garden and how big and tasty and juicy and soft dark cherries were. and they weren't just sweet, they had the almondy bitterness and strong scent.

So I thought - maybe they are distinct variety, or maybe even different species - well, they could be. In fact, there were two names for two similar types of fruit - "вишня" for real, late summer stuff and "черешня" for early summer fruit, brought from afar.

I went to wikipedia to see if it had the answers. Well, no. I discovered that Russia is in the list of top cherry producing nations, though - to my surprise.

Maybe somebody knows the truth about cherries? If so, do tell

Cherries on shutterstock 

view from the air

I must say that it all looks quite amazingly neat from the air. Shame that I didn't bother to book earlier, when rapeseed filed were flowering, but I didn't and that's that. I know that many people dislike the bright yellow that breaks the "green and pleasant" background, but I think they are unbeatably cheerful, especially when sun is out.

Interestingly, I was an odd one out of about 14 people who were on this flight - the rest of our party were all friends and all booked together. Most of them from Lithuania (I hope I remembered this correctly). I still have about a hundred photos of them to process and somehow pass on.