Tag Archives: trees

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Phoneography Challenge: My Neighbourhood

I went out this morning to take these photos for the Phoneography Challenge. After a lovely, sunny weekend last week, the weather has turned cold and grey again, so my neighbourhood isn’t really looking at its best. The filters/effects I’ve used probably haven’t really help it look any better, but I think I was inspired by the grey day!

I’m in two minds about photo editing. Sometimes its worth doing, particularly if you need to correct something, but sometimes I feel like I do it for the sake of it, just because I like messing about with pictures and trying out all the effects. It’s fun, but I could probably spend my time more productively.

The park is lovely – I love living near so much green and being able to look out across the river. The town we live in has a bit of a bad reputation; but where we live is pleasant, near to the shops and the station, and we have great neighbours. There’s a nice community feel to our road, because people actually know one-another’s names (not everyone, admittedly), and stop and chat, and we all follow the adventures of the neighbourhood cats, of which there are a few. People help each other out by mowing their neighbours’ front lawns, gritting their paths in winter and lending them things…the neighbourhood is definitely friendlier than it looks in these photos!

The war memorial.
Such violent-looking carving, despite the words. It just makes me think of anger – hence the framing.
In the park. I love living near so much green space.
Avenue of trees.
Looking over the river. It was very misty and rather grey this morning.
The (slight) hill, looking from the park.

The pictures were taken on an HTC Desire C, and edited using Pixlr Express.

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Around Rochester

Earlier in the week,  I went for a wander around Rochester. After I’d posted some letters, I went to have a look at Charles Dickens’ Swiss Chalet.

Charles Dickens’ Swiss Chalet

This is the place where Charles Dickens wrote his last, and famously unfinished, novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which is set in a town alarmingly similar to Rochester. The house has been transplanted from its original location in Higham, to a courtyard off Rochester High Street, near the public library (perhaps appropriately enough). In the courtyard there are some ponds and lots of lavender…and a dragonfly:

Dragonfly on lavender

Down the high street there were already quite a lot of Diamond Jubilee -related decorations…

Bunting in Rochester High Street

…and some delicious-looking items in the sweet shop window.

I ended up at the cathedral, and found a lovely tree.

This tree stands in the gardens behind the cathedral. It is very tall, and quite wide of trunk, and, therefore I assume it’s probably very old. I spent quite a long time looking at it. I like trees, and this one is a particularly beautiful one. It’s on a bank, and you can see its roots going down into the ground and all the other plants growing around and on it. It reminded me of Lothlorien in The Lord of the Rings!

I also found some windows in the sky, which are actually part of the ruins of the 12th-century cathedral chapter house, later briefly part of a royal palace for King Henry the Eighth, according to the sign.

Finally, some peonies. I’d like to have a peony plant in my garden one day.

Peonies in the cathedral garden

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Autumnal

I like the word ‘autumnal’. I like autumn, apart from the coldness and potential wetness. I like bright, crisp autumn days, and I like seeing all the different colours of the leaves and the different kind of light you get as the year draws to its close. I went out on Saturday to try and capture some autumnal scenes. I ended up taking quite a lot of pictures of trees. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned, but I doubt that everyone shares my fascination with different types of tree bark, so I haven’t posted too many photos.


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Stuff I’ve been doing recently

In no particular order:

  • Reading. I’ve read two books this week, which is quite good going for me, although they are both quite short. The first was The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ and the second was The Boy with the Cuckoo Clock Heart. I will try and write more about of them another day.
  • Cataloguing.  My lovely cataloguing supervisor has, of today, left to start a new job, so for the last couple of weeks he’s been teaching me things I needed to know before he left. I have now learned about cataloguing recorded and printed music, which is a bit complicated and time-consuming if you do it properly, but quite interesting at the same time. I’ve also been learning how to catalogue strange items we have  in the collection of items for trainee teachers to take out to use in school. These range from things like rulers and other mathematical equipment, to a larger than life-size set of teeth (with toothbrush) to use when teaching children about dental hygiene. These are also quite challenging but interesting.
  • Watching the 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice. I know lots of people don’t like this film, espeically when they compare it to the 1995 BBC serial adaptation (which was great), but I like it a lot,
  • Making tea for my mum and dad. They came to visit for day on Saturday and they drank lots of tea (and coffee). It was nice to see them. We didn’t do much, just sat and talked and drank caffinated drinks, and my dad and Mr C went to the model shop.
  • Hoping the heating doesn’t break down again.
  • Attempting to sing. As well as the aforementioned carol service, I also did some attempted singing at Other Choir practice. We are doing Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle this term and we started practising it on Wednesday. It’s really hard! (Or at least the small part we’ve done so far is). Having said that, the sopranos seemed to be getting on OK, but we (the altos) were really struggling – even the music students. It was only the first attempt though.
  • Taking photographs of trees. It was a nice sunny day on Sunday, so I took some photos in the park. I like trees.