Another Flower.

The much maligned Nikkor 43-86 AI zoom on a Nikon Df.

A Flower.

Another image sitting in my files, that I was playing with before leaving Oman.

Fruit stall – Salalah Dhofar.

These stalls are on the side of the coastal road out of Salalah and have traded in one form or another for many years. It may look a little rough & ready, but no one seems to mind as their fruit is always fresh and inexpensive. For anyone who may not recognise the bamboo like poles, it’s Sugarcane: cut and sold as a sweet chewing stick.

Petrified wood.

Just for interest: this is around 200 million years old.

Jebel Shams en route Jebel Misht.

A panorama taken one misty day from Jebel Shams en route Jebel Misht.

Last rays of sun in 2017.

Portents of a cold winter.

Trees.

One of these has a crow as sentinel.

Spring at last !

Spring at last – it may only be a single Daffodil, but others are beginning to bloom in the garden and this one is perfectly formed. 🙂

Winter walk.

Another walk in the snow – mafi muk (no brain) 😉

Winters day – Castle Howard.

Another cold winter day walk.

White petals.

I slumbered this spring morning, and missed the dawn,
From everywhere I heard the cry of birds.
That night the sound of wind and rain had come,
Who knows how many petals then had fallen?

Spring Dawn, by Meng Haoran (689 -740)

Ferns.

Ferns in colour for a change. 😎

Anouar Brahem à Coutances.

This is a good version of ‘Astounding Eyes of Rita’ with a lot of improvisation.
I remember going to a party quite a few years ago (excuse for drinking some beers with good people) at Khasab Oman; they had a local Oud player as guest of honour who when improvising was amazing. This reminds me of that evening, although I think we all got a little less compos mentis than we should have been. 😎

Checking stored backup files.

Checking all my backup files after the external drives had been in storage for about five months and the long sea voyage.
I did bring one drive home in hand baggage which was fine, two others packed separately from my computer (PC) along with two 1TB hard drives which hold a complete ghost image of everything on both my laptop & PC. not taking any chances with lost boxes.
A lot easier with my negatives; a good thing because I have rather a lot and all filed (not very logically 😉 ) in ring binders & archival storage sheets.

Riverhead mill – Great Driffield.

Riverhead mill built in the mid 19th century of brown brick with a pantiled roof.
It was used as part of Great Driffield’s corn-trading centre & is now a grade II listed building.

A little snow.

Dark, cold & wet.
We have snow again – where is global warming when you want it ? although I remember some years back that there was a scare (sorry serious in-depth report) that we could go into a mini ice age again. Skating on the River Thames and Ebenezer Scrooge or stepping out of the wardrobe and seeing a gas light.

Tree trunk with Ivy.

Garden gate.

Old garden gate with flowers.

Dying flowers.

Dying garden flowers.

Distant birds.

Distant birds – if you can find them.

More from this mornings walk.

Another two from this mornings impromptu walk along the top end of Driffield canal.

Driffield canal.

A quick early morning walk along the canal – I had hoped it would be foggy but alas no, just a light mist. It was very cold though.
(yes I know it’s all relative, 1 or 2C. is not 25 to 35C. so I have an excuse)

Construction authorised in 1767, it was fully open for traffic in 1770. Although the railway arrived at Driffield in 1846, the canal prospered until the 1870s, when there became a gradual decline. The last commercial traffic was in 1951, it now being just a lovely walk.