Friday, 24 September 2021

Astrid's Photo Scavenger Hunt for week ending 24/09/2021

 

This week's word is Ball.  Once again I have trolled through my archives to see what I could find.  The beauty of this exercise each week is finding long forgotten photographs and even events. So thank you Astrid for stirring up lovely old memories each week.



My first picture was taken through Betty's Tea Room window in Harrogate.  Kate and her two boys and I spent a lovely afternoon walking around the town.  We found ourselves at Betty's but the queue to get in was outside the door onto the pavement so we found another delightful tea room tucked away down a little alley.  But looking at this picture I decided those biscuits in the front could pass as a ball, not sure what they are. 





Then there are Christmas baubles .......................


and Balls of wool ................



and even this beautiful double petunia .............



and of course, genuine footballs..............


But my favourites have to be of our grand dogs..............


This one of Moss is taken using a photo crystal ball. Kate has taken some lovely pictures using it and this one I think sort of fits the ball word even if it is not the most flattering of Moss.

.

   

and how about these taken on holiday in Northumberland of Jess, our son and daughter-in-laws' dog stealing a ball from a complete stranger!!  What manners!!








This last picture is of Roxy taken on Christmas Day here in the UK when we were dog sitting as our son and his wife were away in Capetown for Christmas.  She had only just resigned herself to the fact that she had been deserted, neglected, was unloved and was stuck with us, in spite of the fact that she spent a lot of time with us normally, when they Skyped us to wish us a Happy Christmas and poor Roxy was all confused again as the spoke 'out of the computer' and they were were not with her.   She is managing to look most miserable here. 






Now that's my lot for this week.  I actually have one more to put on but just can't find it. That is the reason I am late this week.  Who can resist an invitation to a ball?  It is not where I thought it was.  If I can find it I will add it.

Take care and see you next week....oh dear it will be next month.  Where is this year going to? x

Thursday, 16 September 2021

Astrid's Photo SAcavenger Hunt for the week ending - 17/09/2021




The word chosen this week is 'Fall' which to us here in the UK means fall over but as this has been set by Astrid in the USA,  I presume it means Autumn. 

Autumn  makes me think of my late mother who always used to quote John Keats poem To Autumn, well at least the first line of it - I don't know if she knew more.  I have only recently read the poem in its entirety.  She would call it a 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'. A very apt description.  


So far this year here in Lancashire there is not much sign of Autumn yet, a slight yellowing of some of the leaves and the green fields perhaps a little less green.  Maybe it is a sign of the times, or just that we have had a late Indian Summer - well a few odd days here and there.  So my pictures have to come out of my archives but as luck would have it, that whole file is empty, part of the mishap of moving to a new computer and losing most of my pictures back as far as 2005.   I have managed to retrieve 3 from another file so here are my autumn/fall pictures.  They were taken in 2007 in Bolton Abbey which is breathtakingly beautiful at this time of the year as the leaves turn to their autumnal colours.



Taken from the higher path overlooking the River Wharf. 



 Both these pictures are taken a little further down, towards The Strid. 




I have had rather a spectacular fall myself recently but fortunately nobody had the usual iphone out taking pictures of me.  Thankfully B was there to help me up.  Long and complicated story.  So my only contribution to Fall is the story below which I used many years ago on Kate's blog, so forgive me for repeating it.  


 I have a very old knitting machine, an Empisal No 2, almost the most basic of all.  I was gifted it nearly 50 years ago when we lived in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).  It is so basic that I would knit the ribbing by hand, hook it on, then to make it work the knitting needed to be pushed back behind the needles, the wool laid across the now open needles then the work pulled forward to close  them.  The saddle is then moved across to knit one row.  Very basic but effective.  I could do simple cable by moving the stitches across each other, or lines in the work by pushing every 5th stitch back and it was terrific for stripes. I made our children's and our own jerseys for years including a cable cricket jersey with the appropriate stripes around the bottom and neck band.   


I had used it more recently for making long strips for  one of Hawthorne's yarn bombing projects.   It was for this that we got it down from the attic.  It has 2 pull out rods at the back, side by side . One slides out to enable me to push back the unwanted needles out of the way or the one behind that which holds in the needles and I could carefully slide out to replace damaged needles.  I don't know what I thought I was doing but I pulled out the rear rod which released all the needles which came crashing out.  As always, when I do something stupid like that I call for help from poor patient B who not only carefully replaced the fallen needles but first cleaned out years and years of dirt lodging underneath.  It really was a disastrous fall. 
 
















Sorry, not very imaginative this week, will try and do better with Ball.   Now off to see what others have done with their word.  Thanks again Astrid for hosting this.


Friday, 10 September 2021

Astrid's Photo Scavenger Hunt for the week ending - 10/09/2021

 Pizza, there's a yummy topic for us to post about.  The only trouble is we hardly ever have pizza but quite fortuitously our youngest grandson and his girlfriend asked if they could come round and see us today and so we hurriedly bought a pizza each for them and one to us to share, for a treat.  Relief....I had something I could post about.


                                         There are of course, other brands available.





I added some sliced tomato and a little extra cheese.  As they were already Four Cheese Pizza I suppose they were now Five Cheese Pizza. (Picture a bit out of focus, but as we have eaten the pizza I can't retake!!)






Cooked and ready to take out of the oven.





Ready for eating








The proof of the pudding is in the eating, except in this case it was a pizza!!

Four clean plates.



Before we  had these pizza pictures my only entry was a picture I took of a recipe in a magazine in the optometrists last August.  I have tried the recipe and it was very nice and easy.





I see it uses mozzarella cheese, I wonder if it was Buffalo mozzarella cheese, which is I understand, the best kind there is.  Now as I always try and include an African picture for my Lovely Lady friend,  here is one just for her.  

A herd of buffalo at Rosie's Pan in the South African game park keeping cool and refreshing themselves.






Now off to see how others have used the prompt this week.  Thanks Astrid for keeping us on our toes each week.




Friday, 3 September 2021

Astrid's Photo Scavenger Hunt for the week ending - 02/09/2021

 This week's choice of topics by Astrid is school.  I had no idea which way to go with this.  I do  have the usual annual class photographs but wanted to rather try and think outside the box.  So although I have included some 'school' pictures I have tried to find some different ways of looking at the word. 


My first picture is of Katie's first day at school.  Children did not start school till after their 5th birthday in Rhodesia and South Africa. 



I had forgotten what a large garden we had, there is nearly as much behind me as there is behind Katie and it went up the side on the left as a huge rockery garden.


Then there is a 'dancing school'.  This picture is of Katie and her best friend as Ice Skaters with two reindeer. Every time I hear the opening bars of 'Winter Wonderland'  I see the little dancers 'skating' on to the stage!! 

                             



How about a 'school of dolphins'.  We lived in Amanzimtoti, just near Durban on the South Coast.  We were lucky enough to see dolphins quite regularly, surfing on the waves.  



Then when the annual 'sardine run' came by the number of dolphins increased as they were after the fish.  It was quite a site to see.  I'll never forget the first time we saw it, ladies were taking off their tights, wading into the sea and scooping up the fish, just in knee depth water.  They were not all caught for eating, mostly they were for bait and these people would fill their freezers with the fish.  Swimming was banned as they had to lift the shark nets to allow all the various fish that were following the sardines along the coast.


I did not have  the appropriate photographs so have taken these off the net. The first one is of dolphins surfing at Amanzimtoti or Toti as we all called it.


Animals too have some sort of 'school' for their youngsters where they teach them the way of survival in the harsh conditions they have been born into; where to find water,  food and safety.

Here are elephants teaching their young by example.  The little ones are learning how to manage their trunks.  Did you know that elephants have almost 4000 muscles in their trunks?  We have a few more than 600 muscles in our entire body. Young elephants have to learn to use their very wobbly trunks to help them suck up water for drinking, pick up or touch objects, trumpet warnings and greet one another.




Here they are learning where the water holes are. This is only a small family group but when a herd come to this one to drink you can see how much hierarchy exists in their life.  Matriarch goes first, then the more senior females and eventually it goes down the pecking order.  The lower rank elephants stand back and await their turn.  It is less obvious at a larger dam where there is room for many to drink at once. 






Lions too are taught by their mother.  Here in this photograph is a family group of lions we have watched since the cubs were cute and playful.  You can see Mama lion as we call her, she is wearing a tracking collar and has many scars.  We have seen her with horrendous wounds after she has fought off male lions to protect her cubs.

There are two males - or the boys as we call them - and one female.  They seem to have branched off on their own these days.  Often Mama comes to Tembe waterhole at night and calls.  Eventually they turn up. Usually the female first then the boys.   Sometimes they are all together sleeping off a large meal.  A couple of weeks ago they bought their kill to Tembe and we could see them feeding there.  As is normal with lions the females do the work and the males just enjoy the meal!! 




My last animal picture shows the dedication one mother has to her young - well not all her young as ostriches are as bad as  cuckoos are here in Europe.  The main female lays up to 11 eggs which are positioned in the centre of the communal nest where they are the safest and the other hens lay between two and six eggs in the nest as well.  The alpha male and dominant female then look after the nest which is on open ground, taking it in turns to incubate the eggs.

I did know of this but have taken the exact details off the internet.


That is quite a brood to take care of and teach the ways of ostrich life.  It is a complete school in itself.  I counted about 20. 

I have, as usual, taken this and many of the pictures with my camera off my computer screen from the Africam.com site. 



Now just to revert to regular school - here is a picture of our school hockey team. I wanted to prove I did actually go to school.  




I have become a punctuation and grammar nerd and get all irritated to see all those apostrophes where they should not be.  I wish I was bold enough to carry a marker pen and correct them.  Tomatoe's for sale just gets me and potatoe's is another.  They don't belong there!!!  

How about this picture - 



But just for fun to end with is a picture I have held in my 'possible photo hunt pictures' waiting for a chance to use it.   My maiden name broke the 'i before e' rule and I used to love telling my teachers that when this rule was quoted to us.!!   Though there were obviously many other words that broke the rule too! 



 That's my lot for this week.  Now off to see what others have done.  Have a good week and see you all for Pizza next Friday.  xx