Sunday Pic Spam...

[curiouswombat]

Before I get to the pictures, was I the only person to be not at all surprised to hear airline representatives basically saying the following on the news?

"We agreed it was unsafe to fly through volcanic ash, because we know that it can stop all the engines working. But now that there have been no flights for four days, and we are losing money, we think it is really not that dangerous after all and want to know why we can't start flying again straight away."

I almost expected one of them to say "After all, no-one's crashed at all in the past four days, so it's obviously safe..."

Anyway - the pictures for Sunday this week have flowers, the under-gardener, pole dancing, dead people and a bit of Archibald Knox.

If you are curious, click

Firstly a few grave stones - well they fascinate me! These are from my trip to Patrick on Friday.

There are always signs that someone is getting bored down there -



As you can see, as well, the grass is not really growing very much yet.

You never have to look very far in any of our graveyards to find someone who was lost at sea -



Caesar as a christian name was quite common here for many years.



But Jabez was a little rarer!

And there are the usual high number of stones for those who died too young. I think this must be an aunt, who died age 13, and her two nieces who each reached 19 -



Patrick churchyard has a family headstone the like of which I have seen nowhere else on the island. This is the front -



Slate slabs set into - well into what? The headstone is covered totally in crystalline stones - possibly gathered on the beach, or possibly gathered from the fields. They must have spent a long time collecting, as they covered the whole stone -



Okay - enough gravestones... for now! I have a few more with fascinating stories to them that I'll post during the week - you have been warned!

Flowers - here are flowers!





Those are cherry trees - on the edge of the church yard.

But this is the picture that I currently have as my desktop -



Don't they just make you want to smile? There are crowds of celandines in hedgerows all over the island -
here are those ones in context, so to speak -



And here I got up close and personal with what i think is a little bee - although it might be a wasp, I'm not good at these things!



Here is something designed by the famous Archibald Knox - most famous for his work for Liberty, but he designed our war memorial -



I took that when I was in the village yesterday morning. As you can see the elm tree is just starting to uncurl leaves.

Also yesterday I spent some time in the back yard. Here are some of the wallflowers - they've got a second rush of blooming again -



Yes - that is a wee lady wearing glasses and a dragon hatchling. I do kitch in my garden sometimes...

I was trying to pot stuff out on the table in the yard - except that the under-gardener insisted on helping -



The table is such a nice warm place to lie, especially if there is someone there to make a fuss of you.

Then he decided to lie on the paving stones -



Except that I wanted to brush there, and put the clothes pole away. He really wasn't terribly impressed with me -



And the pole dancing? I looked at that picture of him lying on the ground and thought that if I was to invert it he would look...



Weirdly like a pole-dancer! And he does.



I did manage to replant some of the garden tubs - with any luck they'll be worth sharing in a few weeks.