Thought on a rainy day.

On cold, rainy day in January -- when it's normally 30+° and dangerous UV rays -- I'm busy with things I feel should be done, but I've just remembered this little line from something read in the past (goodness, I am getting idle, can't even think up an original phrase!):

"....the pen is mightier than the sword, otherwise we'd all be taking fencing lessons....."

I did however. take the time to look up the original; with apologies to Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, I trust he wouldn't mind this momentary lapse of good sense.

Mushrooms in Our Garden.

This past week we've had unseasonal cold, damp weather, unusual for midsummer. On Monday 19th quite a number of mushrooms suddenly appeared, in a shady damp spot that doesn't get the sun. I followed the growth of a large white one through the week, it's a remarkable phenomenon:

Monday, it popped out of the ground-cover;

By Wednesday, large and round, about the span of my thumb and forefinger:

Thursday, full-blown, what next?

Friday morning: dissolved into a puddle of goo; returned to the earth from whence it came:

A life-cycle in five days, something I'd never seen before; and right outside the apartment.

There were a few smaller brown ones which followed the same cycle:

Big Trees

These pics of old trees in South Africa are for meggie, from NSW, ( blog, life's free treats), who like old trees, among other things.

This big Yellowwood grew ( and may still be there) in the Knysna forests on the southern coast of SA. The unique old-growth forests have been preserved as a National Park. Until the late 20th century a few remnant elephants were occasinally seen in the forest; originally they were abundant around that part, but the inevitable hunter's rifles nearly wiped them out. A successful breeding population has been established at the Addo Elephant Park near Port Elizabeth. The Big Tree is a Podocarpus Falcatus, common name Outeniqua Yellowwood. The Timber is a highly-prized material for furniture-making, straight-grained and easily worked. The cutting of trees for new timber is now strictly controlled, but collectors scour the secondhand sales-rooms and antique dealers for furniture made of this valuable wood.





I took the photos in ca 1973; one couldn't get far back to take the whole tree, so I took the base & crown separately. The information board at the base reads;

PODOCARPUS FALCATUS.
Outenqua Yellowwod
Common Yellowwood.
Total Height: 150 ft
Crown Spread: 90 ft
Circumference of bole: 22ft
Length of bole: 71 ft
Contents of bole: 1700 cu ft
Esimated age; 600 years.

The second tree is in the Eastern Cape town of Uitenhage; I took it in 2008. It is in the garden of a historic house, but I am not sure of the history of either the house or the tree -- it was just snapped in passing. It could well be a Wild Fig, a tree which has an enormous spread, and small figs growing out from the stems. It is probably very old, as Uitenhage was established in the days of the Dutch Cape Colony, and contains some historic buildings. It's present claim to fame is the manufacture of Volkswagen and Audi cars, and Goodyear tires.

Botanical Gardens in summer.

Recalling my earlier blog of 8th August 2008, this was the photo of the famous avenue of plane trees in our botanical gardens, planted in 1908. This month I went back to try out an old Pentax film camera, and the avenue of venereable tress are in full leaf:


The trees meet overhead, filtering the sunlight to form a shady green tunnel. Next autumn the leaves will dry and fall again, forming a thick thick carpet of rustling leaves, a favourite place for small kids to play, and for photographers and big kids to visit and enjoy. The avenue is a popular place for outdoor weddings -- a temporary altar and archway are set up, and the guests accomodated on chairs. There is a restaurant nearby for the reception, or why not just have a picnic; I'm sure the bride's father would be happy with that.

For all the years I've lived in my home town, this cycle of seasonal growth and leafshedding has gone on, I can't tell you how many uncountable times I've wandered through this garden, the fun and games of childhood, birdwatching in adolescence, and just enjoying and photgraphing it in later life. It's a good place to meet and have coffee or lunch in the shade.


I continued round the gardens looking for suitable subjects, some close-ups to try the depth of field and focus. The agapanthus look a little pale, but it was an overcast day, and perhaps I should have inreased the saturation on the scans. using this old camera takes me back at least forty years, when I acquired a Zeiss and did very similar tests.


The old monkey-puzzle tree is a little fuzzy, I've had to reduce the resolution for web display. As the day was very overcast, I took the exposure reading from the base of the tree, and tilted the camera up again.

Highland Line

Scotland, in the spring of 1969: touring the land of my paternal forebears before settling down to a job in London, I visited a number of hitherto unknown relatives, and set out to see the Highlands. Before I'd left school I'd read most of Buchan's and Maurice Walsh's scottish stories, and acquainted myself with Sir Walter Scott. One had a romantic vision of the highlands and islands, and the lovely Border country of Buchan and Scott .

In those days the buses and ferries of Macbrayne's were an institution in Scotland, in their distinctive red and green livery. They carried residents to market, tourists by the thousand, and carried the Royal Mails to outlying areas. I took a Macbraynes coach from Oban to Inverness, through the Great Glen, passing the massive bulk of Ben Nevis and had my first glimpse of Loch Ness. The conductress sat knitting and talking to people going up shopping, hopping out now and then to collect or deliver post to rural homes and post-boxes. At Fort Augustus the bus stopped to deliver mails, so I stepped down to stretch my legs and took the photo above. It seems to epitomize my first experience of Scotland. An Edinburgh relative told me of a little ditty popular in the Highlands:

The earth belongs to the Lord,
And all that it contains;
except the Western Highlands
For that belongs to Macbraynes.

Sunset view of the Sound of Jura from near Tarbert.

Landscapes.

This excellent book, dated 1955, has given me considerable food for thought. Having in the past travelled, if not the length and breadth, some substantial bits of the British Isles, W G Hoskins' scholarship and research have made many things clearer. Going back to pre-Anglo-Saxon times, he demonstrates how the extensive forests that covered Britain (and much of Eurpope), were gradually cleared for agriculture and pastureland. I quote from p 58:

"The axe, fire and animals combined to reduce the dense and continuous woodlands of Anglo-Saxon England."

The oak, ash and beech forests all fell before the advance. Thousands of oaks were cut for housing, firewood and later shipbuilding. I think it's true that Nelson's navy was alrgely built of English oak, which you can still see in dry-dock at the Old Ships museum in Portsmouth harbour. Hence the phrase "hearts of Oak"?

While reading this book, I was reminded of the deforestation of New Zealand. On a visit to the Te Papa museum in Wellington last year (2008), I was surprised to learn that a thousand years ago New Zealand was also covered in dense broadleaved forest. I assume the islands had been uninhabited (but still need to confirm that) until the Polynesian, or Maori, colonisation around the 15th century. There being no edible mammals on the islands, the Maori caught fish and practised a slash-and-burn agriculture. Researchers have found ancient sites of burnt trees that seem to confirm this. Apparently only 25% of new Zealand's old-growth forests remain today. What the first colonists started was accelerated by the arrival of European settlers. Having escaped from the smoky cities of the industrial revolution, the settlers desperately needed pasture and arable land to produce food and revenue.

It seems that the process that took place in Engalnd over centuries, came about in a hundred years or so in the colony. And not only New Zealand: the Australian colonists, too, cleared large tracts of eucalypt forest to put down pasture and crops. In Western Australia, there is a clearly demarcated line between the wheatland and the native bush.

That being said, I must say that I have no wish to criticise historic practises in Australasia; my acquaintences and relatives there have been extremely hospitable and nice, and I love both countries. I'm not going to comment publicly, if at all, until I've read and researched a lot more!

Incidentally, my reference for the New Zealand information was Herbert Guthrie-Smith, a settler and successful New Zealand farmer: I want read his book The Sorrows and Joys of a New Zealand Naturalist, and visit his old farm, Tutira -- if ever I can return to those far-off islands!

This photo illustrates some of the dense forests of New Zealand, with some giant tree-ferns. It was taken in Queen Charlotte Sound in October 2008.

Reference: remarks about Herbert Guthrie-Smith;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Guthrie-Smith

Enough, the Engineer retreats to the study!!

Photography: Digital and Film Compared.

I experimented with interiors under natural light, using a Nikon D40 digital camera and an old, but reconditioned, Pentax Spotmatic F film camera. The latter I recently acquired for a song, it turns out to be in excellent condition, and I wanted to check its performance against the modern digital format. The upper photo was taken with the Nikon, the second with the Pentax. The film was exposed at various shutter speeds from 1" to about 8", timing it roughly with my wristwatch. The photos are only slightly retouched; I think they could be edited to nearly identical colour and brightness, with suitable photo software.

The Nikon picture was taken with a zoom lens at a wide angle, the Pentax with a standard 55mm f/1.8 lens, hence the narrower field of view.

In days gone by, I used a Zeiss film camera for many years, and I've picked this up again as a sideline. The snag is that you can't get film other than colour negative ISO-200 here, and one depends very much on the skill of the processor -- with the advent of digital format, film processing is not done much by the photo shops. Digitizing the negatives with a scanner introduces a further margin for error.

The Old Faithful, still going strong after 40+ years! These cameras were one of the top brands in their day, the first to introduce through-the-lens (TTL) metering.