In which I take a photo every day that I'm 50, and post it here on this blog, with a bit of related blurb.
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| more sick |
The big old sycamore tree in next door's garden is in a sorry state at the moment.
Of course, every Autumn it sheds its leaves...and luckily, having fairly large leaves, they tend to fall straight down - into next door's garden, not ours!
However, this year, the leaves all started to die very early, probably back in August...but not all of the leaves died at the same time...it's almost like the tree is moulting, gradually losing all its cover evenly over several weeks or a couple of months.
A popular theory locally is that the infamous drainage contractors dug through some significant roots and have thus damaged the tree.
You can see in this photo the new fence panel covering the gap in the hedge, where they dug through...also of course, where they dug through the incoming electricity supply...
Idiots!
The line of their digging goes within a few feet of the trunk, and a few feet below ground, so it's certain that they would have encountered the root system as they passed...and we know that their standard approach was simply to cut through anything that got in the way...
So it's a feasible theory...
The flaw, I guess, is that you would expect those parts of the tree directly fed by the damaged root system to be showing symptoms - the leaf loss would be patchy, not evenly spread, wouldn't it?
To be honest, I'm not knowledgeable enough on the intricacies of tree biology to know whether that's true or not...
In any case, the tree does seem very poorly, which is a shame as it's one of only two good sized trees directly around our house (both are in next door's garden).
I'll keep my eye on it, and keep you posted.
In other news, whilst wandering around the garden looking for photo-ops, more gulls passed overhead.
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| this way |
I'm curious as to what sort of gull they are, and where they are going...seeing another similar group, flying in a V, and heading in the same direction, strongly implies migration.
Yet they're all heading north-east...aren't they supposed to fly south for the winter (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least)?!
In fact, if anyone can explain tree biology as it pertains to root damage, and the migratory patterns of gulls across middle England, then please do leave a comment!
ta...
:-)
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| too much?! |
I nearly forgot to blog today, amidst a load of other distracting head stuff, so we went for a stroll down the lane looking for photo-ops in the deepening gloom of dusk.
I managed to catch a surprising variety of interesting (albeit only vaguely) shots...but mainly I learned that it's not that easy to get good shots in low light...or maybe it's just not that easy when you don't know what you're doing?!
Another thing I learned is that you really do need to tweak the photo's afterwards...and this in itself is something of a gamble...sometimes it produces great images, other times it just looks over-processed and a bit rubbish.
The one above is a crop from a much larger photo, but otherwise doesn't have much processing other than a bit of (admittedly aggressive) contrast...I can't decide whether it's too processed (yeah it probably is...), but I quite like the depth.
This one was taken 10 or 15 minutes later, and the evening had clearly settled in a bit more...
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| cotton candy sky |
This one isn't cropped - I decided to stick with the original framing...now I'm looking at it thinking I should have cropped it...doh!
I have tweaked it a little for contrast and colour...although I don't really know how to do that, so it's a general colour tweak to try to bring out the pink, which was quite vibrant in reality.
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| no eye deer |
This one isn't cropped either, but was the naturally nicest of around ten photo's I took of these autumnal colours on a 5m strip of set-aside (or whatever) down the edge of this field...there was a deer of some type hiding in there, possibly a muntjac, but I didn't manage to get a shot of him.
In any case, the image is still tweaked a little for contrast and colour...and the light is so much better than the previous shot...if only I understood why that is!
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| new-ish moon |
As we turned for home, the waxing crescent moon presented a rare opportunity...invariably when I notice an interesting or even simply a clear view of the moon, the camera is nowhere to be conveniently grabbed...but tonight, it was right there in my hands!
I've tweaked this a smidge to try to bring out some of the detail on the surface, and cropped it down too. I think the out of focus foliage gives the shot some context...especially as the moon wasn't super bright and detailed.
Finally, a flock of seagulls flew overhead...
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| flying v |
...and not the 80's New Wave band, much to my great relief...nobody needs that.
I think conditions were all wrong for a wildlife shot like this, but I took my chances anyway to see what would happen.
I've cropped this, adjusted the contrast, and sharpened the image a little too.
Still not a great photo, I grant.
But, it's a new species for the ongoing Bird Species of South Warwickshire Series, which threads its way back through this blog.
Nice...
B-)
