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While walking in the park, I felt some water splashing all over me.
I looked around and thought "what the...?" because the place was empty.
I started walking and, once again, more water.
I looked down instead of looking around and I saw this cute bird staring at me like "what? d'ya have a problem with that?". He was just refreshing a little and having some fun in a warm and sunny brazilian spring day.
"Ovals and balls,
Bright green and thumpable
Laced over with stripes
Of turtle-dark green."
~ Sylvia Plath, 1932-1963 ~
From "Fiesta Melons"
"Two melons on the kitchen counter are reading yesterday’s newspaper. One of them would like to turn the page but the other is a slow reader, mouthing inimitable and acerbic as if they were frozen spoonfuls. The smallest melon doesn’t want to get an ice cream headache. What she wants is the companionship of ginger ale. What the larger one wants is good lighting on a paid vacation. Who can blame each for this one dream? I once knew a girl who loved a melon. For two years her parents refused to claim her as theirs. This is not our daughter, our daughter is gone, they’d say, naming a country she was lost in. One time, Yemen; the next, Nepal. To them, the daughter was better suited to yogurt. They were sure the melon had spoiled her, but who’s to say? I’m told she eventually eloped, that the noticeable change in her — some called it a ripening — was a matter of time and temperature, a tender story, a happenstance of seed."
~ Susan Meyers ~
My first attempt to water splash photography ;) I think its a decent first try
www.facebook.com/pages/Wendy-Longo-Photography/2034569296...
~In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed~Kahlil Gibran
I spent three days in Phoenix, attending a lovely wedding and spending an afternoon poolside, looking to shoot something interesting or beautiful.
my megahurtz are distracting me from the really important things. again. damn. i think i should %$&$+%$$%NO CARRIER
Taken for '52 in 2020 Challenge' group. 10/52. Theme 'Refreshing'.
This is a glass of fizzy water with some ice cubes.
A short flight up from the streets of Grosvenor Square sits a modern, contemporary spacious surrounding that constitutes the welcoming room of maze. Designed by David Rockwell, its well light L-shaped interior is suitable for all forms of meetings that requires making a good impression, or for others to find great comfort lounging in. Sit near the attractive and nicely stocked bar, at the sofas across from it, or at the dining room lying just beyond the front stretch. The atmosphere is airy, bright, friendly, informal but not completely casual.
The staff are affably trained but still require a bit more practice in suaveness to achieve what is required for a second Michelin star, and to match the level of the excellent fare, that, dare I say it?, was more innovative (read: made me giddy) than that from the kitchens of Restaurant Gordon Ramsey! maze's menu offers ambitious and appealing tapas-style courses; where 4-6 dishes compose a complete meal. The meticulous details on each plate impressed as they appeared to require much effort from a well orchestrated kitchen staff for their proper execution. It's rare to find an establishment where such care is equally given and successfully achieved on every component, but somehow maze accomplishes this without all the pomp and circumstance of finer dining. Of note: the play in flavours and textures of the crab salad starter, the properly executed meats, a simple but complex dessert oxymoron that impressed me in all aspects, and the incredible impression that a flavoursome aubergine paste "dollop" left that still lingers on my tongue. The only aspect that requires attention is the bread selection at the top of the service, however that is quickly forgotten with the flood of courses coming from the kitchen. maze is a definite jewel and worthwhile stop to include on any fooding roster with a menu that's a sort of culinary choose-your-own-adventure, where each diner will easily find their happy and delicious ending.
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Soft chocolate dipped almond nougat and rosewater gelée
Due to my allergies to cocoa, I was only able to try the dainty fresh gelée. The texture of the confection was semi-set- almost jiggly! – and embodied a light moistness, mild rose fragrance, all sheltered in sweet sugar crystals.
model: Suyen Lim Sinnadurai
Jinbara Chalet, Kemensah Village, Ulu Klang, Selangor, Malaysia.
Further in through the country road by the Zoo Negara in Hulu Klang, a 5km drive along an extremely tight, single-lane winding country road will lead you to an ideallic camping site at Hulu Kemensah.
Especially on the weekends, many city dwellers cars may be seen escaping with their family to enjoy some quality family outing, bathing in the cool clear stream, or camping at the many small chalets operated by the locals there. The stream flows by the square attap-roofed wooden chalets while shady forest trees and a small hill add a cooling effect to the natural surroundings. All along the Sungai Kemensah, there are many interesting picnic or safe camping areas frequented by groups of school or college students.
Daily Shoot - It's summer in the Northern Hemisphere. Make a photo of a cool, refreshing drink. Go for something creative.
Nothing refreshes like ice water! I took my glass outside to take advantage of the morning light and immediately both the glass and my lens fogged up. I liked the mood, so quickly set up for the shot before my lens could clear.
St Peter, Empingham, Rutland
Another bike ride in England's smallest county yesterday. Sixteen churches altogether, which sounds a lot, but churches in Rutland are refreshingly close together, and generally open, although I did find two yesterday that said they were open and weren't, and one that said it wasn't, but was.
Part two.
From Tickencote I headed westwards now towards Rutland Water, catching my first glimpse of it after about three miles from a hill top looking down into Empingham, where the tall stone church spire spiked up through boilings of trees and rustic chimney pots as if going for first prize in a 'Typical images of Rutland' competition. I hurtled down the hill into the long main street of the village, and as usually happens the church now disappeared, hidden by other buildings. Hazarding that the older part of the village might be below the top road (hazarding is always my last resort before bothering to get out my map) I coasted down, the buildings got older, and there was the church.
It looked vaguely familiar, a huge church, its big tower and spire hard against the road, the church beyond opening out into transepts and a tall chancel as it climbed the slope. Overwhelmingly a Perpendicular church which you enter up urban steps through the west door, and the feeling is thus that of a French church (was this the reason for the sense of the familiar?). Inside, the wide open interior is at first sight entirely modern, but a homely restoration, no Victorian pomp and grandeur here. All the harsh Victorian pews have thankfully been replaced with modern chairs. There are earlier survivals, including a few fragments of that rare thing in Rutland, medieval glass, in the north transept, and beautiful decorative wallpainting and a Saint in the splay of the window in the south transept behind the organ - I wonder how many people notice that? (I congratulate myself here as compensation for missing the wallpainting of a Saint at Lyddington two weeks ago).
I headed down the hill to the main road ahead of me, which was the A606 between Stamford and Nottingham - aha! This was the road I used to take regularly when going to visit friends in Castle Donington, and turning back I saw again the familiar view of that great tower and spire from the corner, a landmark on the busy road. The traffic rushed though, as I had once, and I remembered thinking to myself that I would visit this church one day. Well, now I had, without realising it.
I headed onto the A606 for a while, then turned off southwards to the road which runs parallel to the eastern end of Rutland Water. This was a busy, climbing road, not particularly pleasant. However, a couple of times there were gateways in the hedges (hedges rather than stone walls in this part of Rutland) which gave spectacular views out over the water. Between the road and the water was the cycleway which circumnavigates Rutland Water, and I looked down on dozens of cyclists in hard hats and fluorescent jackets, glumly pumping away and weaving between the walkers, many of whom were also wearing fluorescent jackets (why?) and I was very glad to be up on the busy road.
Eventually I came down onto the Normanton edge of the Water, with its car parks, cafés, gift shops, and the like. I shouldn't be snobbish, and most of these people were on their well-deserved annual holidays camping or B&Bing locally, or on enjoyable day trips from Leicester and Peterborough, all contributing to the local economy. But crowds like these are not why I go on bike rides. I joined the weaving cyclists, many of whom seemed to have merely the slightest acquaintance with the Highway Code ('we pass on the left in this country, mate') for half a mile to reach what remains of Normanton church.
The sight of the church is so familiar from photographs, stuck out on its peninsula in the water and buried half in the gravel, but is nonetheless dramatic for that. The work of Thomas Cundy pére et fils in the 1820s, an entirely urban Georgian church, an adaptation of their design for St John Smith Square in London. It is as if that church has come on holiday and is going for a paddle.
When they flooded the valley in the 1970s, tiny Normanton was one of two villages lost (the other was Nether Hambleton) but its church survived - just. It actually sits atop the dam, but even so its lower half is below water level and has been filled in with concrete, the windows of the clerestory now forming the windows of the church. A causeway goes out to it. All the burials were removed from the graveyard and cremated with due ceremony. For a while the church was a visitor centre, with a display about the making of Rutland Water, but this obviously didn't bring in enough cash because the displays have been removed and the structure is hired out as a venue to those who can afford it. It certainly looks classy, if you turn your back on the ice cream hut. You can still go inside if nothing is on, but today they were preparing for a wedding, so the causeway was as close as I could get.
It was barely a mile to my next port of call, the pretty village of Edith Weston. Generally in Rutland, the further west you go the prettier the villages get, as if escaping the influence of puritan East Anglia and submerging themselves in the opulent lushness of the Wolds which are making their journey from south-west to north-east England. And here was St Mary's church, a delightful church, not over-large but with a tall tower and a short, slender spire, set in a pretty graveyard and looking idiosyncratic - the main view from the south features three crossed gables in a row, the porch, the south transept and a 19th Century chancel chapel.
You step inside to light and late Norman splendour in the arcades and chancel arch. The chancel beyond is late Victorian, but still splendid and idiosyncratic, cross-vaulted in an obvious imitation of the chancel at Tickencote. The icing on the cake is a lovely range of 20th Century glass, from Hugh Arnold through Paul Woodroffe to that finest of 21st Century stained glass artists, Pippa Blackall. The cherry is the splendid and absurd memorial to Sir Gilbert Heathcote which explodes at the west end of the north aisle. Further east in the same aisle is a memorial plaque to the bodies removed from Normanton graveyard. All in all, church of the day so far.
And now I headed west again along the northern perimeter of RAF North Luffenham, in the general direction of Lyndon.
To be continued.
Imagine: Outside temperature is 28 degrees !
I think i should change the temperature to 32 degree celsius
Won't you want to drink something cooling ? = )
Its really nice and healthy too !
I intended on this being the subject for this week's post for Macro Mondays, but the shots I took of just the label weren't doing it for me. This is my new favorite soda. Boy, is it tasty and so refreshing on a mid-90 degree day in Eastern Kansas. Only 4 natural ingredients and 70 calories. And the bottle design is super cool to boot. For this shot, I placed the cold bottle on the windowsill over my kitchen sink with the sinking sun from the west providing the backlighting. They have several others flavors that I want to try such as Juniper Berry, Ginger, Cucumber and Blood Orange. If you have tried any of these other flavors, let me know what you think and I'll let you know how they taste after I try them. Thanks.