trees in the puddle

I live near a floodplain - so whenever it has rained I'll get to see some rather good reflections in the enormous puddle which is otherwise known as 'the meadow':




There are more weekend reflections at James' blog.
Or if you have some time to spare and love the Andes or the rainforest please visit my picture book about my fieldwork in the Peruvian cloud forest:
http://www.blurb.com/photo-book-contest/view_book/914061
I've entered the blurb competition, and if you feel generous please vote for me.

Summer sights

When I go for a quick stroll on a sunny day in June I will inevitably get to see this:



I haven't tired of the sight yet, though.

Visit Robin's Summer Stock Sunday and Scenic Sunday for lovely summery sights.

heracleum in the sky

Cow parsnip is ubiquitous at the moment. I like its looks - but it is irritating to the skin (and looks very similar to the much more poisonous hemlock). Here it teamed up with a cloud for a sight that pleased my eye:




click back to Skywatch Friday for more skies.

Plastic

Plastic, I don't really like the stuff much, but what would we do without it -

It's ubiquitous in my work. I don't know how we would conduct the experiment we currently run if there was no plastic - e.g. here is my colleague in his plastic waders, cutting the plastic tubing that delivers the solutions to be dripped into the plastic flumes in the river. Each day I come with my plastic bottles to collect water samples from the flumes to investigate the microbes. The DNA which I extract is of course stored in plastic tubes.





TNchicks PhotoHunt has a great collection of different plastic photos.

foul weather

The weather has been terrible...and I've had plenty numb toes the last couple of days from standing around in the river, collecting samples and generally making sure all was working.

The sheep up on the hill above the river have their own way of warming each other up:



but I really quite need the sun to come out once in a while. Early yesterday evening, it did just that, and everything felt much better:



This morning all was back to evil showers, though.

Love Thursday

For the last 3 years I've worked on how our bad habits affect water. At the bottom of my garden is a little stream which frequently helps me think about my work. It is clean (for England) and it is very beautiful - and I'm quite in love with it. I often just look into the water for ages trying to understand the world beyond it's gleaming surface. I took this photo some time ago just because watching the sun reflected in the water makes me happy. It was more like a reminder in the scrapbook rather than a proper photo. When you click on the photo to enlarge it, though, there is a little stone heart up in the left hand corner - I secretly hope that this is a loving note from the stream to me...



If I wait long enough the serenity of flickering sunlight on stones is generally interrupted by one of these chaps:



Happy Love Thursday!