Tales of Home

This was my home town on Tuesday just gone. Every now & then we get a flimsy little mist that rolls in & gets thicker & thicker until its a fog that would please John Carpenter. It covers the whole town & area. The next morning, completely vanished-----

The second one looks like a drone job - did you take the third one? If you took the last one I'm glad the mist disappeared before they got you.

I really want a drone.... I will so get told off though because I have lots of crap that is big and takes up space everywhere!

We had a load of mist a couple of days back too. Dampens sound so can make somewhere very familiar feel very different.

wow the second one is amazeballs!

Yep, they are all drone snaps but they were taken on the day by locals. My daughter & me were out in it & it was so creepy how quick the mist turned to fog & then, you honestly could not see further than a couple of feet ahead. you couldnt even see a car until the headlights hit you. And as Lance says, theres very little noise, its eerie.

Ahhhh... Spring time.



aaand repeat.

Stretch the tarp back over the frame, you'll soon be back outdoors!

{{ Rather nice spring in Scotland so far, well was snowing last week but since then. }}

nice pics

You know, it doesn't make sense that you get spring before us.   Supposedly the Gulf Stream is what warms you up despite being about 10 degrees more northerly in Latitude, but the same damn stream comes up OUR coast!  Why don't WE get as much benefit?  We've still got leaves the size of peanuts on our trees.

But then again, you said you had snow yesterday.   It seems your plants respond differently.  Perhaps it's because your days are already longer than ours?

We've still got leaves the size of peanuts on our trees.= Halfy

{{If you look in the background of the 5th picture youll notice the trees there dont have many leaves yet, they are still covered in buds but most of the leaves arent out yet. It depends on tree type and location it seems.
Dunno about the Gulf Stream but the palm trees are doing well (just to annoy Amarie ) }}

Considering New York is on the same lattitude as Madrid and further South than London, you should be growing bananas and palm trees.

Actually it has a lot to do with west coast versus east coast and the way winds circulate around a continent: you get the California effect.  It usually means cold waters and warm winds, but since Britain is right in the path of The Stream it gets both warmer waters and warmer winds in the winter.

So glad the palm trees are doing well, they are my (imagined) trump card in cold weather debates/bickering/boasting after all.  

Halfie, when it snows it's too cold to just hang around outside and when the sun is out you want the direct sun and no shade. Also, wind is an issue, which is why the tent that went with the frame went bye-bye years ago.

I'd think you'd want to put a good solid tarp up over a quarter of it for the summer: sometimes you just want shade.

There's this cemetary on a hill about a mile north of me, and I keep wandering by it thinking "I'd really like to get in there, but how?"  It's basically elevated soil behind a cement wall, with a big church at one corner.  Too high to easily scramble over.

Then I was on a bus ride from another borough, and didn't realize that the express bus wouldn't stop where I wanted it to.  It carried me right past that cemetary, and I saw an open gate on the back side!   Turns out it's open every day , I just never noticed because it's around the back where I never have cause to walk.

So when the bus finally released me I scooted back and in, and discovered there's a little hillock inside that you can't see from the street. Up I go for the view.



In case you can't make it out, that billboard looking thing is actually a mural on the side on an apartment building.



And there's nice views all around.



I actually tried to buy an apartment overlooking this cemetery - in the photo below it's the building on the right.  It would have been a 5 floor walk up, 2/3 my current space, and it was in such bad shape it would have cost me $10K to fix it up.  But the view!  Next is the church I'd be gazing at across the cemetery.  You don't get views like that in manhattan without paying through the nose.  (Plus it would have saved me about $8K in rent each year, assuming I could sell it for what I put in to it.).




But somebody offered the asking price, which I wasn't about to do given the peeling paint and lack of kitchen space.  Oh well.

It's a very satisfying plot to plant people in.  And very old.  In that shot of the church there's hardly a stone where a single letter or number can be read: all washed away by the rains of time.

People wouldn't believe these shots are from Manhattan, but the northern part of the island is off the tourist maps, and to me is by far the more satisfying quadrant to set your sights on.  Likely not so interesting to folks from older countries with history piled fathoms deep; but for us in this young country to see headstones worn smooth in a city which more than any other symbolizes the endless pursuit of the future, the juxtoposition is oddly stirring.

its a bit spooky but a very nice grassy knoll. Hidden corners and unexpected things are always nice finds.

talking of spooky, my horrible next door neighbour the loud-mouthed Cuban is leaving, they have sold their house and are finally going where she can shout and scream all day long. I hope my new neighbours are peaceful and quiet.

hurrah!

That sounds like a relief. I rather imagined you were enough out in the country to be isolated from your neighbors.

yes that's what's so annoying, its a tiny hamlet in the middle of a mountain but we got to live next to the loudest most aggressive woman I have ever met. We are surrounded by silence, the sounds of birds and Nature which is rudely shattered by some idiot screaming at her poor kids 24/7. but she hated it here, didn't fit in, and was an eyesore in every sense. She alienated everyone and did some horrible things like threatening a woman living alone and insulting a deaf woman who doesn't speak very well, she also told lies, and the police were here every 5 minutes when she was drunk and violent. it is such a relief to get shot of the repulsive creature.

Poor kids.

I know. They are nice little things, really polite and happy. But their dad is the same so they take after him thank goodness. The social services here have them on their books and come to check up on them every so often. Maybe when she is in her element surrounded by women of her ilk in a town she will calm down a bit. She once had a 'prostitute' party in the main square. She was a prozzie in Cuba by all accounts, and she knows all the prozzies here, on her birthday they all came up here with ghetto blasters blazing, pimped up cars, twerking, shouting, and showing off, and then threw their empty beer bottles over the walls. Nice.

All good fun until they trash the place.

yeah, it was embarrassing and everyone closed their shutters in disgust until the prozzies got bored with having no audience.