And finally, here we are back in Beth and Paz’s garden where we found comfortable places to sit in the shade in what was a very warm day. Paz is enjoying a slice of a spectacular Bakewell tart cooked by Fernlea earlier. She is an enthusiastic, ambitious and very accomplished cook.
Walking home from town in early May I passed a field of Dexter cows with their young calves. They are an interesting breed, much smaller than most and usually entirely black in colour; there’s also a ‘Red Dexter’ which is a mid brown colour. These cattle originated in County Kerry in the south-west of Ireland. We see these unusual farm animals every year in fields either side of the Gloucester Road between Stratton and Cirencester.
Family picnic
Later in the month we took the train up to York to visit the family. In the photo we’re about to enjoy a picnic by the river. You can see Heidi (the dog), Debbie, Donna, and Sara working on her laptop; Paz is lying on the grass, reading a book. We were sitting right by the Millenium Bridge and the Professor was blowing bubbles. Not all Profs do this, but really they all should in my opinion. No exceptions! Mero’s birthday came round in due course too, twenty now!
Wildlife garden
The next image is of Debbie’s wildflower meadow garden a little south of York. She maintains this space to encourage not just wild flowers, but also bumble bees, butterflies and other wildlife which in recent years has been suffering heavy losses due to modern, more efficient farming methods.
Debbie and Paz
And finally, here we are back in Beth and Paz’s garden where we found comfortable places to sit in the shade in what was a very warm day. Paz is enjoying a slice of a spectacular Bakewell tart cooked by Fernlea earlier. She is an enthusiastic, ambitious and very accomplished cook.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
There are exceptions to every rule, and sometimes exceptions to the exceptions. Conifers are an exception here, they stay green all year round. The exceptions to the exceptions include larch which shows autumn colour and loses its needles, swamp cypress, and the dawn redwood from China, three conifers with autumn colour.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.
Click thumbnails to enlarge
One of our favourite places to visit, at any season of the year, is Westonbirt Arboretum. My Dad used to call it ‘the tree zoo’. It’s only a 30 minute drive along the route of the old Roman road from Cirencester towards Bath. This time of year the autumn colours are fabulous. The photo focuses on some Japanese maples, Acer palmatum. Acer palmatum is one one of the finest species with cultivars in a rich variety of reds, oranges and yellows. Westonbirt has glades of mature specimens and an area of newer planting. Both were looking glorious when we visited.
Why do the leaves become so brightly coloured?
I was hoping you would ask. During the long months of summer the mature leaves on trees produce the green pigment, chlorophyll, that reflects green light and absorbs the rest. That absorbed light contains energy that the leaves use to break apart carbon dioxide from the air, attaching the carbon atoms to hydrogen from water and expelling the oxygen. In a set of chemical steps, the carbon and hydrogen are converted to sugars used as building blocks to build starch as a storage product, and cellulose as a structural material to make wood. That’s a grossly simplified version of the story, but fundamentally it is correct. In biochemistry and in botany the process is called photosynthsis.
The starch in wheat, potatoes, rice and other plants can be used by herbivores and omnivores (for example humans) as food. We combine the starch with oxygen to recreate water and carbon dioxide, releasing the energy we need to walk, breath, pump blood, and think. Human brains consume a lot of energy. This process, the reverse of photosynthesis is call respiration.
So taking plants and animals together there’s a closed loop involving water, carbon dioxide and energy. In addition to the starch we use for energy, the cellulose in wood can also be combined with oxygen to provide energy. That is called ‘fire’, it also releases water and carbon dioxide. So when you relax in January in front of a wood burning stove you’re using the sun’s heat and light trapped by trees perhaps a hundred years earlier! If you burn coal it was trapped millions of years earlier.
So that’s why plants have green leaves.
Autumn
As the days grow shorter and the weather grows colder, trapping energy by means of chlorophyll becomes less and less efficient. The leaves on trees become a liability, being battered by the wind and worth little to a tree until the weather warms again in the spring. But the leaves contain useful materials that can be recovered before the leaves are discarded. There are other coloured substances in leaves, mostly coloured yellow, and as the leaves stop producing green chlorophyll, these are unmasked and the leaves change appearance from greens to yellows.
Nutrients in the leaves are recovered and stored in the main bulk of the tree so that, when the leaves fall, these nutrients can be called upon in the spring when new leaves need to be made. Some of the bright reds and purples in autumn leaves are synthesised as the weeks go by, and they play a protective role enabling the tree to recover greater amounts of the nutrients. (Waste not, want not for trees!) Not all species of tree have this refinement, and in those that don’t the leaves remain yellow. Once the nutrients have been recovered a weak layer develops near the base of each leaf stalk, a point where wind action will cause the leaf to break away cleanly and fall to the ground. You can watch this happen on any windy autumn day, leaves fluttering down with every gust. In natural woodland the fallen leaves decay, acting as a rich mulch and forming compost where seeds can germinate and grow. In parks and gardens they are swept up for tidiness and composted in bins or heaps.
Our eyes can distinguish the changes in leaf colour and we enjoy the spectacle and joy of glorious autumn colour, then we endure winter but look forward to the lovely, fresh greens of spring.
There are exceptions to every rule, and sometimes exceptions to the exceptions. Conifers are an exception here, they stay green all year round. The exceptions to the exceptions include larch (Larix decidua) which shows autumn colour and loses its needles, swamp cypress (Taxodium distichum), and the dawn redwood from China (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), three conifers with autumn colour. Life is indeed a many-varied thing! The image shows a mature dawn redwood in autumn colour.
Closing thoughts
This website covers a range of topics, one of which is faith. I do my best to follow Jesus, not just in his teaching, but in how he lives and thinks and touches people’s hearts and minds. Sometimes people take faith and science as self excluding opposites; you can choose one or the other but you cannot have both.
In fact there are many, many scientists who also have a faith and many followers of Jesus or other teachers of faith (Mohammed, Buddha and more) who accept the process and findings of science. And we all use technology every day, all of it based on scientific foundations and principles. It makes no sense to accept the successful results while rejecting the reasoning behind them. I will throw away neither science nor faith. I need both, and I am far from alone in that. I recommend you explore both. Make a start on my Welcome page, nobody is excluded; all are welcome, all are invited.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
On the way around I visited the single remaining Neolithic barrow that seems untouched and is topped by some trees. The photo shows the barrow and there were some good views of Cirencester to enjoy as well.
Debbie, Sara, and Aidan drove down from Thorganby to visit us. It’s a long journey for them, they arrived in the evening of 5th April, and just as it was getting dark we had a power cut so had to get out battery powered lamps and some candles. Eventually the power returned, but went off again for shorter periods twice more before bedtime. On 6th we walked to the town centre and had lunch in Jacks courtyard garden. Debbie wanted to see the Masonic Hall and flats and Minerva Villa so we took a look at those old family places on 7th, also taking in 10 Tower Street where my grandfather was born. In the afternoon we walked out along the Thames and Severn Canal to the North Wilts Canal junction and the rebuilt bridge. Then in the evening they were heading back north for the long trek home. Lovely to see them, though.
Meredith turns twenty in May, a major landmark with Aidan to follow soon after. Twenty-one was the big birthday when I was their age, but today eighteen is the bigger celebration of becoming an adult so twenty seems a bit betwixt and between.
Edward’s house
In March I discovered where my great-grandfather, Edward Jefferies, had lived. And in April I took this photo of the front door – 10 Tower Street. Here it is, the door has clearly dropped over the decades and been trimmed repeatedly at the bottom to fit. Looking at this view I can imagine Edward knew the door and the pattern of the stonework really well. My grandfather lived here for a while as a child so he’d have recognised it from this photo too. What a strange thought!
Tumulus
I discovered a footpath across the north-eastern side of Tar Barrow Field and as I’d never walked it before I felt it was time to put that right. On the way around I visited the single remaining Neolithic barrow that seems untouched and is topped by some trees. The photo shows the barrow and there were some good views of Cirencester to enjoy as well.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Sunlight makes two internal reflections in a raindrop in mid air and these reflections send the light back at a fixed angle from the sun, but as a ray of sunlight enters a raindrop it is not only bent at an angle, each wavelength (or colour) is bent by a slightly different amount.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.
Click thumbnails to enlarge
On 27th October I walked to town for some shopping, coming out of Boots in Cricklade Street I found it had started raining, so went into Bishop’s Walk to find shelter. As the rain eased I moved toward the entrance and looking out saw a bright rainbow so made my way to the Market Place for a better look.
Rainbows are interesting apparitions. Sunlight makes two internal reflections in a raindrop in mid air and these reflections send the light back at a fixed angle from the sun, but as a ray of sunlight enters a raindrop it is not only bent at an angle, each wavelength (or colour) is bent by a slightly different amount. The same happens again as the light leaves the raindrop. So these rays of separated, coloured light now come back at similar but not identical angles from the sun so raindrops in exactly the right place send back a single colour to the viewer eyes. The rainbow is part of a circle, cut off where it meets the ground as there are no raindrops below that point.
Enhanced image
Furthermore, a small amount of the light is reflected three times internally in each raindrop and comes out at a wider angle. If there are enough raindrops in the air, you can then see another rainbow outside the circle of the main bow. This outer rainbow is faint and not always visible though you can just make it out in the photo. The colours in the outer rainbow are reversed because of the additional reflection inside the raindrops. In the second photo (click it to enlarge it), I’ve increased the intensity of the colours for you. You can just see the outer rainbow in both images (look above the chimneys over the yellow shop on the right (Joules). You may notice the colours are reversed in the outer bow, red on the inside and blue outside.
A closer look
Finally, took a look at the final photo where I’ve pushed things to the limit. I’ve enlarged a small part of the photo and enhanced the colours even more. Again, click the image for a closer look. Traditionally a rainbow was said to have seven colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue (a pale blue), indigo (a deeper blue) and violet. In actual fact it’s a steady slide through the range of colours.
Do you notice anything else about this rainbow? If so, leave a comment below.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
Wherever you choose to sit in this cafe’s courtyard she will be looking directly at your face! It doesn’t matter where you sit; her eyes, as they used to say, follow you across the room (or in this case across the courtyard). This happens because, although the picture is on a flat surface, our minds perceive faces to have a three-dimensional shape and we’re very sensitive to eyes that seem to be looking in our direction.
What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.
Click thumbnails to enlarge
Donna and I used to visit this cafe regularly a few years ago when it was called ‘Pretty and Pip’. Today, under new ownership and management it’s called ‘Hugh’s’. It’s a little more expensive these days and we normally visit Jacks, Blend, Coffee#1, Caffe Nero, or on fine days in warm weather, our local roastery, Rave.
I really admire good artists. This piece of wall art is very clever in some of its detail. Look at the eye on the left (the eye on the right is obscured by a little flag in this image. Looking at the detail in that eye you can see a yellowish iris and the depths of a dark pupil. The eyelid is well-defined, and the eye itself is shining brightly and clearly with the moisture of tear drops and blinking. You’re looking at the living face of a young woman with an intelligent mind and some private thoughts. Or are you?
The artist has fooled you, you are looking at a plain wall of concrete blocks. Look again! The iris is an arc of yellowish paint, the pupil is a carefully-placed spot of dark paint, the eye looks shiny and fluid because of a dot of white paint that suggests reflection from a shiny surface.
Another view
But it goes far deeper than that. Wherever you choose to sit in this cafe’s courtyard she will be looking directly at your face! It doesn’t matter where you sit; her eyes, as they used to say, follow you across the room (or in this case across the courtyard). This happens because, although the picture is on a flat surface, our minds perceive faces to have a three-dimensional shape and we’re very sensitive to eyes that seem to be looking in our direction.
And all of this is conveyed by carefully placed and shaped patches of colour on the surface of a rough wall! Very clever and a finely-honed skill.
The food and coffee are great too!
While I’m here. I feel I must add that the coffee at Hugh’s is excellent, and so is the menu and indeed the food. We enjoyed our visit.
If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!
