House Viewing, Boas and Vistas

Today at last the discarded corpses of hundreds of Christmas trees were removed from the streets.

At the top of the hill, the sun wasn't shining but the clouds were doing their best to provide some visual interest after yesterday's gloom.

While I was out with Bella we had someone to view the house - she was gone by the time we got back.  She must have liked it because she is coming back tomorrow for another look. We expect some more viewings over the next few days, so may not be able to get off on as many jaunts as usual.  On the way home, I had a long discussion with a neighbour about the vagaries of the local buses.  We are served here by the Number 6 and the Number 7. Both of these have different but overlapping routes, which both double back on themselves at least once.  Figuring out times and which part of the route they are on can be tricky.  Maybe I'll use some of my time to draw the route on Google Earth...

Decided to treat ourselves to a late breakfast/brunch out.  Tried one place but it was a bit cold, so zoomed off to Prior Park Garden Centre. I bet that this device doesn't keep determined squirrels out (certainly not the Carling Black Label one!).

Saw this strongly sweet smelling Daphne bholua 'Jaquieline Postill' (according to the label!).  These are the flowers I can smell in Victoria Park in the morning in the middle of winter.

Handy having an in-house team of gardeners when you need to do some serious hedge trimming! He was smiling for the camera :-)

I managed to festoon Su in a range of feather boas, which were discounted in their post-Christmas sale.

Later on, I just happened to glance up out of the window and saw this rainbow - managed to photograph it just before it faded.

The rest of the afternoon brightened up, although it was pretty cold. The clear skies gave me the opportunity to make some more panoramic compositions.

I like this image for the curvy wires!

This scene actually looked like this.

The odd light here is purely an artefact of the stitching process - I like the glow it has added to the middle of the frame. 

 As the sun descended, the light brought out the colours of the clouds and hillside

I then spent a bit of time catching up with Apple's new release of Book authoring software, and what it might mean for self-publishing. Downloading and installing software and wrestling with computers for a while before kippers for tea!