Taexalia

wild.life

Night Vision

I am finally willing to believe that there is snow in the UK. I have been seing reports of chaos and pictures of snowmen, and even a picture of a macaque monkey making a snowball... but here in Edinburgh there has been no snow. OK there was a day of snowfall but it all melted. OK there has been a dusting of snow on Arthur's Seat for the last couple of days - but slidy pavements and snowmen? Not a chance. Tonight however not only is the weather forecast accurate and the snow is actually ... read more

Portobello Sunrise

I've been having a week of what I call losing my rhythm, where the healthy and creative routines I've been developing just sort of fell off without warning. I've allowed myself a bit of negative self-talk over this and a bit of blah blah blah about my lack of consistency. Then this morning I was writing my Morning Pages this morning, the first evidence of climbing back on the horsie, and thinking about the cycles I seem to go through and that linear routine is not really my style. Perhaps ... read more

Zoo Day

I think a day at the zoo fits nicely into Leah's totally optional theme for January... Play.

It has to be said that I have mixed feelings about zoos - the idealist in me feels that animals are best seen in their natural habitat. Unfortunately we humans seem to be destroying natural habitats at a rate of knots :evil: and zoos are now serving as vital links to saving/trying to save species after ... read more

Dig Our Fox

[kaltura-widget wid="vohid1a5gg" width="410" height="364" addpermission="3" editpermission="3" /] Mister Fox was very intent on digging around under Skeleton Tree and I'm not sure what he was doing - finding food? making a den? or just exploring...? They seemed to be having fun ... read more

Blooming Colour

The sunshine was hot and the colours are everywhere. Each year this tree just explodes with blossoms and I love the colour, especially the way it contrasts against today's blue sky. I wonder if I can find yarn in those shades...In Holyrood Park there was much colour to be found and we walked up to Dunsapie Loch, around Dunsapie Crag and then meandered our way down through the woods...My eye was caught by the colour and texture of these larch leaves. It's good to see the larch trees going green ... read more

When you feel down, go up

I awoke this morning feeling depressed and harbouring a sense of dread that today will resemble yesterday. The only positive thing about my waking was that I awoke by myself without any outside influences. I lay there dreading the idea of trying to write, or think, or paint, or do anything creative and being repeatedly disturbed by unpredictable, unwelcome interruptions.It is not good or healthy to wake up feeling like that, it doesn't exactly move the day forward, so just for today I put my ... read more

Windswept and Interesting

Rainbow over the ForthI have the beginnings of a cold coming on and I'm also pre-menstrual, so you might want to take a step back. However, I need to be congratulated because instead of sitting inside feeling miserable, I motivated myself to take advantage of the sunshine and get all breathless in Holyrood Park. Of course by the time I got myself organised and out the door (and forgot my flask of water and things I was going to post), the clouds had begun to congregate. Still, I was thankful ... read more

City Life

[caption id="attachment_446" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Arthur's Seat"][/caption]It never ceases to tickle me that I can look at this standing in the middle of a city :) and this week @ and I have been taking advantage of the unseasonal weather and wandering about in the wilds of Edinburgh....Our wee loch in the park looks great in the low slung sunshine (as long as you can ignore the joyful things that most local residents seem comfortable dumping... shopping trolleys, dog poo, ... read more

Not Hovering

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="400" caption="Grey Heron"][/caption] The best days are sometimes the ones that don't resemble the plan at all... The plan was to lend our support to the two week trial of a new Forth crossing - taking the hovercraft from Portobello to Kirkcaldy and back again. Fortunately demand was so high that our only option was to stand in a queue for 2-3 hours. I say fortunately because this is only a two week trial to see if the venture is viable, and I ... read more