Nature – Page 4 – Journeys of Heart and Mind

Image of the day – 92

If the Universe did not include time, nothing would change and there would be no patterns, no life, just stasis.

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every two days or so.

Anemones are simple flowers, but beautiful! I have strong childhood memories of the white version of these growing in my grandfather’s garden in Cirencester. They managed to grow in small cracks between the bottom of the house wall and the stone paving. The flowers stood nearly as tall as me so I suppose I might have been between five and seven years old at the time.

The flowers in the photo are at various stages of development:

On the stem just right of the centre you can see a few tiny leaves and a little, pale-green flower bud.
In the centre, near the top, is a much larger bud, about to open.
Right down at the bottom, a flower has opened but the petals are not yet full size and have not developed their final colour.
The flower on the left and just below the centre is fully open. There’s a little insect sitting on its centre.
Below and right of it is a more mature flower, the yellow anthers have shed their pollen and have shrivelled.
A little above and right again is an even older flower, the anthers are in worse condition and some of the petals are damaged around their margins.
The flower in the upper left has lost most of the anthers and the petals look tired and old.
In the upper-right you can see a flower with only two petals remaining.
And just above, the yellow globe is the remains of a flower that has lost all of its petals.

Although they look like pink petals, and I’ve called them that here, botanically speaking these are actually modified sepals. On most flowering plants, the sepals are small and green, normally hidden by the petals.

Patterns of development

The flowers on this Anemone are just one example of the kinds of patterns that come from anything that grows. We’re all familiar with the pattern in humans – fertilised egg, foetus, baby, toddler, pre-teen, young teen, adolescent, young adult, mature adult, early middle age, late middle age, elderly.

And you can trace stages of growth in cities, technology, philosophy, civilisation, language families, culture, stars, wars, galaxies, you name it. Such patterns of development are a fundamental part of the way things are in our universe. Time ticks by relentlessly, and all these patterns are patterns of change, in other words evidence of the passage of time.

If the Universe did not include time, nothing would change and there would be no patterns, no life, just stasis.

Favourites

For convenience, here’s a list of my favourite images:

Anemone, Cloud, Honeybee, Hydrangea, Kiftsgate1, Kiftsgate2, Large White, Mugshot, Nelson, Robin, Rose, Spilhaus, Sunset1, Weston beach

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Image of the day – 91

Only a minority of people have views from their back garden like this one. But we can all enjoy the photo.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every two days or so.

Announcement – I need to reduce the time I’m spending writing JHM posts. To make this possible I plan to post images more often as they are quick to do, and I’ll put the time saved into fewer but hopefully better posts on other topics.

This is the view across the valley from Kiftsgate Court that I mentioned yesterday. You can see it from the swimming pool – what an amazing backdrop for a relaxing dip!

Only a minority of people have views from their back garden like this one. But we can all enjoy the photo, or visit Kiftsgate Court Gardens to admire it first hand.