On the second Thursday in August it is Battle of Flowers day here in Jersey. There are lots of gorgeous floats and traffic chaos. I didn't go to the Battle yesterday but thought that I would drive into town then heading back west (about the only way of getting to the floats), stop and take some photos. Ah, the plans of mice and men - this year for some reason instead of the floats all being in some playing fields opposite some lay-bys (areas you can park) they were all parked in the lay-bys so I couldn't park. It would have been a lengthy walk to get to them - so sorry, unless I can get one outside a parish hall before it is stripped you won't see any.

I drove down to Corbiere and bought an icecream instead, and took yet more photos of the lighthouse. This one is at high tide. Actually the sky is very blue, it just doesn't look it.

Oh it's hot again here, we had a thunderstorm last night and it was a doozy. The wind was up to 100 km's an hour with hail and rain. Nothing damaged so we are thankful.

Here is a shot from our trip to Australia when we visited the War Museum in Canberra. It was a very well done museum.

I'm not sure what type of plane this is, perhaps someone out there would know.

I'm not sure what this creation represents but being a historic military area (Victorian era), I rather think it would be canon wheels. I reckon it's a nice object whatever it is:



Link to a larger photo

Here is Rosie , taking full advantage of the fan when she feels hot.

If anyone wants an idea of a traditional British cottage and garden I think this has to be one of the best examples despite being close to Central London. Willifield Way, Hampstead Garden Suburb.



Kap, that view is quite artistic as well as informative, it's quite a well laid out installation and had one of our British artists done it would be worth thousands. I wish you luck with the inspection and sure that lot kept you pretty busy for a while. Hope you had a good book!

Thanks bhs63 and Kapuskasing for the compliments--glad you're enjoying them! Maybe next year, since you aren't that far away Kapuskasing, we can work out a trade--some honey for some of those tantalizing peaches! A neighbor (and I use that term loosely since she lives 25 minutes away) gave me a peach tree sapling, but since it's only knee-high to a grasshopper and neither one of my thumbs are even a pale shade of green I anticipate it being quite awhile before I'm plucking any fuzzy beauties off it.

Nice photo, Sue. That would make a nice desktop wallpaper too with just a pinch of tweaking on the saturation I think.

Tellywellies, that is indeed pretty darn nifty. It looks like one whole wheel and two halves. Quite ingenious and artsy even.

Another bit of old farm machinery ... a plough.

Love the plough!

Today's my sister's birthday. This is what we had for dinner.

Some pretty leaves in my garden


Coleus

Yesterday was my dad's day to do the cooking, and the mise en place looked very cute.



Larger photo here.

Bhs and Picqero, you both have beautiful back yards, wish I had one like that!

This is the hairdresser/beauty shop where I go. Remind you of anyone? This house is over 100 years old and is in the historic section of town. My hairdresser retired and sold the business recently. It used to look quite quaint but the new owner is a young girl who is busy modernising the place and taking away all its character - but it's still the best place in town to get a haircut!

Langton Hall in High Street, Battle, was begun in the sixteenth century, though it's been altered a few times. Nowadays the ground floor is given over to shops, while the upper floor rooms can be hired for anything from wedding receptions to amateur dramatics.

Oh Whoopee!(not) The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation are there, ruining the view as ever. What a gorgeous place, TT

Here's a photo of Rainbow Falls in Whiteshell Provincial Park. This is another falls that swimmers like to go over when the water's not too high, this year it is too high, but there's one fellow who waded in to check it out.




Larger photo: here

Great photo of the Coleus, bhs63.

Well, our 'swarm saga' ended on a less-than-ideal and somewhat unhappy note today. The bees had clustered about 25-30 feet off the ground in a tree just past the end of our property. Even if we had had a ladder tall enough, they weren't in the most easily accessible spot. So for the past two days, I traipsed through 'the jungle' (as I call it) and fended off the beasts thereof--namely flies, biting ants and mosquitoes--to keep an eye on the bees for most of the daylight hours.

We happened to have on hand an old Langstroth Hive a neighbor had insisted upon giving us which we put out, complete with some honey and comb from their old hive, in an attempt to attract them into it while my husband rushed to build a new hive in the meantime. But it wasn't meant to be. At approximately 11:15 this morning they suddenly dispersed from the cluster and flew off into the eastern sky and were out of sight within minutes, never to be seen again. Hopefully, they'll survive the winter but I suspect the odds aren't in their favor.

So today, in place of a honeybee photo, I offer a relative...

Bumblebee on Salvia

Oh, so sorry for the unhappy ending with the bees Au_naturel. I've some friends that have been having an unsucccessful year with their bees also. Thank you for all the photos and information on your hives.

Thanks ClaraSue. Mostly the unhappy ending is for the bees that swarmed; we think the bees that remained from that hive will be okay (i.e., not too weakened by the split) and since we're not in beekeeping for financial gain it wasn't a loss of that nature. Actually, it doesn't bother me that much that they've gone feral; the bum part is that they may not make it. But such is life in the natural world.

We've been down at the docks in San Diego, California again today. The writing on the side of this ship read: US Naval Ship SEAY.

There is a heron in our river, so it would seem to be unpolluted , which is good news.

Here are some tomatoes growing in my brother-in-law's garden. They're tasty, too!

-- That is too bad Au_Naturel about the bees; if only they knew how good they had it, they'd have surely stayed!

-- Leau, is that a bowl of tofu in that meal set-up? The whole array looks sooo good.

-- Satguru, if that picture I took of the Lax-a-Goop could be called money making art in England, then I'm taking my camera and heading for the airport soon.
Well... uhhh... maybe not so soon... I sort of flunked the test and will have to get some stuff chopped out. Moral of this story: Even if you fit into zero risk factors, but have weird symptoms, don't chalk 'em up to stress, get it scoped out.

If you're wondering where one phone box went, it's in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, in front of a Holiday Inn.
There's an Elephant & Castle restaurant/pub inside the hotel. It's been a long time since I was in a British pub, but it seemed that E&C might be about as genuinely British as the "stonework" is real on the columns in the photo. Even the red brick-ish pavement is imitation -- it's just patterned, dyed concrete. The food was okay, and the waitress was very good, but it looked like a work crew could change the decor scheme in a half-day to make the restaurant into any of the other popular "fun-food eatery" chains like Bennigans or Houlihans or TGIF. Or, maybe I was just cranky and over-critical the day we were there last weekend.

A little lizard sitting on my pineapple plant

Not really much to say about this one

Aww go on , Jill, give the poor thing a name at least! He looks like... an Anthony.