HAPPY CHRISTMAS! - and my best photos

Carmi's Challenge over the Chriastmas period is "My best Photographs".

My best one has got to be the cosmos I photographed in my sister's garden in Surrey back in the Spring. She is a clever gardener, and grew these from seed, but they looked absolutely beautiful, and were a great attraction for bees and other insects. It also reminds me of a lovely holiday I had with them, and I feel warmer just thinking about it!




These crab apples are in the park, and looked so lovely against the blue sky.




The Horse Chestnuts, or conkers I found in the park, and brought back. I love the dark shiny skins, so smooth to feel in your pocket! When I was a child I used to make little chairs with pins stuck in for legs, and wool woven round pins for the back.

Ah, happoy days!

Have a really good Christmas, all of you!

EYES

Eyes are tremendously important, and we can't really afford to play around with them! Unfortunately, mine are still giving trouble, and I am having to bathe them tenderly with various eye drops three times a day.

All will eventually settle down, and then I will have lovely new eyes and can get some lovely new spectacles! I will still need them, as my eyes don't work together very well, and I tend to see double wikthout them. And as my new lenses which the surgeon put in are set for distance, I will still need spectacles for reading, and anything nearer than distance.

In the meantime, I can see very nicely in the distance, but when tired tend to see two of everything. I can't read very well, which is driving me insane, but now have bought a cheap pair of reading glasses, which just magnify really, and they help a lot. But they don't make my eyes work together, so when I'm tired I really can't do much at all!!

Thought I'd just give you an update, in case you thought I'd gone off to a desert island, or something!

FAMILY

Carmi's challenge this week is FAMILY.

My family - my sister and brother-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, two grandsons and one great granddaughter, plus assorted nieces,(two generations) nephews(great) all mean a great deal to me. Plus my husband, of course!

But I am not sure they would like me to display their faces here. So instead I have interpreted "Family" a different way.







Both were taken in the Park, but in different years. The Canada Goose raised the goslings to maturity, despite the intentions of crows and herons, and the young moorhens seem a tough little lot, and the parents have a couple of broods a year. And yes, there are an awful lot of moorhens by the winter!

SNOW WEATHER FOR DUCKS!

Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun! But just to prove I am still around, trudging through the white stuff with the dog, alive and well, though still battling with old glasses and new eyes, I am posting pics of the park in the snow. (Well, that's the only place I've been!)

But thank God for digital photography!












They all look a bit black and white - but that's the way it is! It wasn't a very nice day, so they are not as sparkly as I would like. Maybe tomorrow!

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COLD WEATHER FOR DUCKS!

We haven't, thank goodness, had all the snow here that the eastern half of the British Isles has had. But it is still bitterly cold, everything is frozen solid, and although there is a lot of sun (or there was today!) it is not strong enough to make anything feel warmer.

Late afternoon in the Park looks rather chilly, I thought.



The ducks and gulls on the lake have only a fairly small area which is not frozen. This is where the deepest part of the lake is, and usually, however, cold the winter gets, a bit remains unfrozen.



There seems to be an unusually large number of ducks here, plus the wintering gulls, but the Canada Geese have gone elsewhere. The ducks know that they will be fed with an enormous amount of bread as all the small children come here to feed them. Their little red legs looked so cold on the snow!

It is very early for winter to start here, and I for one am feeling I am too old for all this!!

I know my friends in the US have it much colder, but we are supposed to be a maritime climate, and -9C is not nice. That's 16.2F (I think - maths is not my strong point!)

SEPIA

Carmi's Thematic Challenge this week is SEPIA. I don't like to let him go unchallenged, so here are my two efforts.











I always associate sepia with old photos. I used to print photos in sepia, as did my Father, using daylight paper. Anyone remember that?!

So I have included one of me and my sister, taken in about 1942, and done in sepia. I'm the big bossy one! I loved that tree, which we called the Swing-y Tree. It was quite a walk for small legs, but we thought nothing of it then!






Ah, happy days!

A SHORT POST

I am sure you are tired of looking at boring pictures of the Park, and I am sure tired of taking them!



So I am posting a photo of some strange fungus on the beech tree they cut off 20ft high! There was always a cleft there, in fact, one year a mallard duck nested there! I think this is bracket fungus, but its too high up for me to see properly. This photo was taken with my zoom lens from a bit of a rise in the path, so I was more level with the fungus, but further away! (You have got that, haven't you!)

Still can't see much, and no appointment so far from the Hospital for a follow-up. Can't do anything about new glasses until that happens.

Until then I have to make so with short bursts!