Some images from Mexico City

From top to bottom:

Sunday afternoon in the Zocalo (people of all ages and backgrounds watch or take part in a peaceful protest against the government's violent repression of demonstrations in Oaxaca);

A woman walks her pet duck down the street; one of many colourful juice bars;

licuados (smoothies made with water and fresh fruit juice) of guanabana and fresa (guanabana and strawberry respectively), and by the way, in Mexico, potatoes are called Papas (rather than patatas) so that's chips that's on sale there, not Dads, it was a little perplexing at first, I can tell you;

a pointsettia tree (they grow everywhere in Mexico!);

a poinsettia bloom and maroon truck on a Coyoacan suburb street corner; skeletons on sale outside the Frida Kahlo museum (not real ones I should add), and I've never seen so many old-style VW Beetles in any other country as I did in Mexico, there are even cute green ones that are Taxis in Mexico City;

a street in the suburb of San Angel.

Caesar, grief and life

A week ago today, we lost our Caesar to kidney failure. It's been an emotional week, and continues to be emotional. Grief does strange and unexpected things to you.

Yesterday, Ellen left a comment on my other blog, sending her sympathy. She also said that Caesar was "probably lining up another kitty to send your way!"

A few hours later, I received an email via a friend of a friend of a friend who has two cats that need rehoming. A black and white female and a ginger tom. When I opened the photo of the black and white female (Lotty), I felt as if I'd been shocked with a cotton ball of lightning, it felt soft yet hard at the same time and I felt it in my entire body. Just take a look at the photos below. The top one is Caesar, the bottom one is Lotty. It felt like something momentous was happening, and the whole day I went around with a huge lump in my chest. When I talked to Paul though, he gently told me that he thought it would be too soon to take on two new cats, especially one that looked so much like Caesar. And he's probably right. But we're going to leave it to fate. If they still haven't found homes after we come back from our holiday in February, then we might just be meant to be in each other's lives after all.

Happy New Year

A day in Southend with Vicky

our xmas lights

art in the landscape (St Ives, Cornwall)

Blue, not blue (from our trip to St Ives)

Harbour lines, St Ives

Tall trees round Alexandra Palace

Golden leaves, golden light (more from Ally Pally)

More again from Alexandra Palace

The empty deer enclosure














There's nothing like an avenue of trees

A walk in Epping Forest

perspective

the flower head and the pattern
Originally uploaded by tammy too.

The pattern within the sunflower head.
So this was the warm sunny day last week where I finally harvested the sunflower seeds from our giant sunflowers. I had some fun too!

Unfortunately, Blogger failed to upload these pictures every single time I tried over the last week, so I had to blog them separately via flickr.

If you want to see what else I did with my sunflower patterns, go here and here.

seed face close up

seed face close up
Originally uploaded by tammy too.

I just love the patterns on the seed face.

Picking the sunflower seeds

Caesar helps me pick the sunflower seeds
Originally uploaded by tammy too.

Caesar helps me pick sunflower seeds.

autumn walk on hampstead heath