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 and 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

Cherry-related stuff 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.

hot air ballooning

Just got back from my first hot air balloon flight. I thought it was great :) There is a story attached, and hopefully more pictures, but I don't think I can write it up now.

One note to people who are going for the first flight ever - mind the advice to have a cotton hat on. The heat from the burners is very much felt in the basket I was sure I am going to go away with only some of my hair left. They probably weren't all that hot, but I couldn't help ducking every time the pilot switched then on

green chrysanthemums

bought a bunch of those green chrysanthemums at Saffron Walden market. With flowers of unusual colors, it's always interesting to find out if they are "real" or if they are colored somehow - bright blue mums are pretty obviously colored, for example.

turns out, those are "real", that is - they grow like this. And I also found a place that sells them (here), and am now considering buying a couple of plants. question is, where to put them.

On almost completely unrelated note - my friend, Lena Rostunova, who does a lot of street photography in London (among other things), a little while ago added a set of pictures from Columbia Road flower market to her blog. I thought I saw the same seller that works at Saffron Walden on Saturdays. I asked him - and yes, they do Columbia road market on Sundays. No surprise really - it's not far, but I tend to find those little connections funny
green mums on shutterstock

Salve nauta

went to Southwold today. We've been there a few times, but it's the first time ever I noticed this funny (and probably not very old) plaque of Sailor's reading room



Well.

Me not go, me like it here, me not say "bye-bye", me say "Hello Sailor!" (Spike Milligan in Muppet show)

Luton Carnival 2010 - second (and the last) set

the day was dark and most of puctures I've taken are blurry or incredibly grainy (or both). fortunately, there are some good ones, too

upwardly mobile

went to Brandon country parktoday. The place is kind of default options when we didn't plan to go anywhere else and kids are bored. Nice weather for it, after two days of darkness.

I thought that this is a "normal" ladybird - with small red dots, and not the harlequin one, with blobs. But now when I do a search it looks like this one is not the normal one either - the most common one in Europe should have seven spots, three on each wing and one shared between wo wings, next to the head. This one seems to have two each side