A Friday Photo and Stone Circles

Today's Friday photo is another one from the archives. I took this picture in April 2013. As you can see, the trees hadn't started sprouting out with their new leaves yet, but they were on their way. I love the little stream there along the path. This is out near Avebury, in one of the many fields there. If you're ever in Wiltshire, England you should definitely visit Avebury and the surrounding area. It has its own stones like Stonehenge, but in Avebury they are more spread out. There's one section of the stones that to me looks like a landing strip of some kind. Hmm.

Here's another tidbit, Wiltshire has had its share of crop circles over the years, so....I'm just sayin' (cue the Twilight Zone music)  ;-)  Seriously though, it's a very interesting area in Wiltshire and I highly recommend it if you're ever visiting. It's a fantastic place. By the way, the location of this photo isn't where the stones are, but it's very close by.

I love being out in nature, so whenever I get the chance to walk around this area or in some of the beautiful forests, it always feels like home :-) I mean that figuratively and truthfully. I come from a lovely place back in Georgia, so when I'm out in nature I feel connected to the natural world all over our planet.

I hope that you enjoyed looking at my photo. Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend! :-)

Until next time...

Some Wiltshire Scenery

Hello all! I hope that everyone had a good weekend. Mine was good. It was more of a quiet weekend than the one before, which is good sometimes. Today I wanted to share some of the photos that I promised to share from our previous weekend. These are photos from May 12th that I took when we went for our outing in the woods that Saturday. I thought that I'd start out with some photos of the drive down there. I love taking pictures of clouds and that day the weather was beautiful and we had these fluffy clouds just gliding by. Also I thought it would be fun to share what it looks like on the drive further south in Wiltshire. I'll share the photos of the very pretty woods in another post. 

The first two photos are just a bit of what it looks like as you drive further out into the countryside. I love driving down there and away from all the hustle and bustle of town life. 

These next two were taken on the edge of Avebury...home of an arrangement of stones, similar to Stonehenge. The first one is the view driving into Avebury and the second one is on the other side as you're driving out of the village. The yellow field that is visible in the distance in the second photo is a field of rapeseed. 

And this last photo really needs no description...it's a field of sheep. They graze around Avebury and they are a tranquil sight to see :-) I'll be back with more photos from that fun day out and I hope that you all have a great day!

Photos and More Photos

So here I go with my photo post that I promised in a previous post. I had mentioned that it’s been a long time since I did a kind of photo snapshot post with a few words about each. I figure that this will be a good way to get me back on my blogging game a bit more since I’ve been away for chunks of time lately due to school and life in general :-)

When I looked back over the photos that I’ve taken these past few weeks, it was like experiencing those moments all over again. Most of the photos here are of nice things, but there’s one that I’m adding that isn’t. I feel the need to include it because life is a balance and everything isn’t all fabulous all the time, you know. Plus, a mini photo vent is good ;-) Nothing else sums up the frustration of my week more than this photo.

Here is my annoying photo:



This is our stupid electric shower...GRRRR! It has broken down again for the umpteenth time and we have truly lost count now. We have been struggling back and forth with our landlord and his middleman to get our shower fixed. For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while, you know that Brit Boy and I have had this problem before. Here’s the thing, it’s already bad enough that it’s malfunctioning again, but the real reason that we’re ticked off is that the landlord doesn’t want to pay to fix it. It’s not our fault...it’s simply a cheap shower. To call him cheap would be a gross understatement. It has been total Crazyville around here. So I’ve spent the week calling back and forth to the management office. Finally things got going today, so hopefully this photo and the situation will fade into the past and stay there ;-)

Anyway, that’s my annoying photo just to shake things up a bit. The rest are calm and nice...a gentle respite from the chaos :-) So on with the calming section of our show!

Below are my beautiful flowers that Brit Boy brought home to me one day. Aren’t they pretty? It was on the Friday right before he had his vacation time a couple of weeks ago. He surprised me and these put a big smile on my face.



This next photo is truly the last of the pink roses out back. I posted some color pictures of this bush before here, and I thought that that was the last of them but alas, these are. I took this picture after a rain shower and I thought that the black and white represented how it looked outside very well. I LOVE black and white photos!




These next pictures were taken when we were further out in the countryside. Whenever we are further out like that, the rural beauty of it all reminds me of back home. The beauty of the family land where I grew up is echoed in my heart when I see the natural beauty here. I am definitely a nature girl. Maybe it’s God’s way of connecting me with home when those thoughts come into my head. Natural beauty...there’s nothing like it...

All of these were taken from the passenger seat as Wiltshire passed by our window, so some are blurry but you can get the idea of how it looked that day I think.




Above: Wiltshire scenes


Above: This one is kinda trippy...Everything blurred as we swept along...


Above: I like that the traffic signal is set off by the flowers...


Above: The clouds marching along the field...


Above: A shady and bright spot...


Above: A blurry shot of sunlight raining down on Stonehenge...

Well, this post is very long, so I will post some more photos in my next post. These will be of our trip to the beach one day and I'll throw in a few lake shots too. And don't worry, these upcoming ones were taken while I was standing on my feet so no blurry trippy stuff ;-) Until next time...

Another Trip Through No Man's Land

I just wanted to share a few photos so you can see what I saw today :-) I went along with Brit Boy to see a client and I snapped these photos as we drove by.

We were down around The New Forest and I caught sight of these beautiful horses that were grazing along the edge.





In The New Forest they are allowed to roam free like this and they are so beautiful and tranquil looking. I love going through there. We were going to a place called Nomansland. It's a real place and I think it's cool that I can say I've been to "no man's land" :-) I wrote about going through there before in a previous post here. Nomansland is within the boundaries of The New Forest. It's a lovely place.

And on the way home, we had to drive by Stonehenge. I know I've shared photos of it before, but one of my favorite games I play is trying to get a photo of it as we drive by at the speed limit. I'm easily amused. LOL. Here's my latest effort.

When Your Heart Isn't In It

Hello there :-) I’m a couple of days late with this post. Brit Boy and I went to Stonehenge for the Summer Solstice celebration, this past Saturday night, into Sunday morning. Brit Boy and I had both been interested in going one day and so we decided to make this past weekend the time. So we went. I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about the whole thing over the past few days and I just came to realize that I wasn’t inspired really to write anything about it. To be truthful, it turned out a bit disappointing. There were moments when it was okay because we were together, but a lot of it was just a letdown.

My favorite parts of the whole experience were the drive down there and the drive back home. It was in stark contrast to the bit in the middle. So I hope that you don’t think I’m copping out, but I am just of the mind that maybe it will be better whenever we go again. We shall see.(smile) As they say, you win some…you lose some.

I don’t want to leave you all hanging though, so please go over to Brit Boy’s blog to read all about our experience. His thoughts are ditto to mine and sound better coming from him (smile). He posted the photos of our outing along with his commentary. I just want to preface his post by saying, Brit Boy and I are not teetotalers by any stretch of the imagination. We have a drink from time to time and rather like it. (smile) So his comments on what went on are not from the view of someone who abstains. It’s just the facts of what we experienced. We both know that with a crowd of 35,000 people, you can only see a tiny slice right where you are and a great many people I’m sure were cool about things. However, we can only speak for our space that we inhabited and it came across as a free for all at some points. I nearly got crushed by this guy who cared nothing about the fact that he was pushing to get past me and I had nowhere to go except into the thousands of other bodies molded to my body. I was really worried about this one little girl until her dad hoisted her up on his shoulders. Still, both Brit Boy and I got a chance to touch one of the stones, so that was nice.

So in the end, this post has turned out longer than I had intended. (smile) I don’t want to come across all grim and everything, because there were some light moments. And we figure that we’ll go again in the future and be wiser to what might lie ahead. As I said earlier though, please go by Brit Boy’s blog to see his account and to see our photos. In the end, it was good to hang out with my best road buddy…Brit Boy :-) So please forgive me for not really posting about it myself. My heart just isn't in it.

Snow in the Countryside

I wanted to share some photos that I took on Thursday on the way to Salisbury. Brit Boy and I were heading down there for a meeting. As I wrote about on Wednesday, we have been having some very frosty mornings. So when we headed out on Thursday morning, it was icy again. As we drove further out into the countryside towards Salisbury, we saw that it had snowed a tiny bit. We had heard on the radio that some areas got snow, but we didn’t. So it was a wonderful sight to see the dusting of snow across the fields. I just love being out where I can see the land and enjoy the beauty of nature.

All of these photos were taken from the car, so they have a cool blurry quality. I like to see how they will come out, so I just snap away as Brit Boy drives along. I love having a chance to share some of them with you all.

The first one is of a lone black bird sitting in the middle of the snowy field. I love the contrast :-)




This next one is the view across a field. On either side of the road, there’s a wonderful panoramic view.



I love this spot. You drive down the hill and off to the left there’s a drop off into a valley.




Here’s a view of Salisbury Cathedral’s spire in the distance as we drove into Salisbury. This spire is the tallest one in the United Kingdom. It is a beautiful building and is a beautiful sanctuary.



On our way back from Salisbury, I took a couple of more photos of the surroundings. By then, the thin layer of snow had melted. We came back through Avebury. Here is a line of some of the huge stones. It is reminiscent of Stonehenge, but these at Avebury are more spread out.



This last photo is of one of the larger stones that is placed very close to the road. It almost looks as if we are headed right for it, but we weren’t. It just came out weird like that. I saw the stone coming and I turned around in my seat a bit and just kind of snapped it as we passed by. I didn't know if I would get it or not.




It was a fun ride! :-)

The Beginning of Fall

So today is the autumn equinox or the ushering in of fall. :-) There is a chill in the air this morning, but then we didn’t have such a warm summer this year here anyway. It’s a funny thing though, yesterday as we said goodbye to summer, it was one of the warmer, sunny days that we have had in a long time. Saturday was sunny too. As Brit Boy said, at least we got summer at the very end. :-) It was a beautiful weekend. And we got a bonus today too because it is sunny and beautiful outside right now.

I was doing a little research about the autumn equinox and I found that apparently on this day, at every point on Earth, there are twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of daylight. And in the South Pole and North Pole, there will be changes. Those cute penguins in the South Pole will be celebrating the first appearance of the sun in six months. While in the North Pole, polar bears will be readying themselves for six months of darkness that is coming. So there is a lot of transition going on in nature on this day and we are all carried along for the ride.

Here in Wiltshire, down at Stonehenge, on both equinoxes and both of the solstices, the Druids and others go to the site and are allowed to go close to the stones and welcome the new season with their ceremonies. I have never witnessed it myself, but it sounds very interesting. Here’s a video that I found of part of their procession in the past. You can hear the wind in this video a lot. It has always been very windy down at Stonehenge, every time I have visited the site in the past.



On the days leading up to the ceremonies, Brit Boy and I have gone down on the way to Salisbury, past Avebury, which is another site with stones, and they are usually getting themselves ready for visitors too. So it’s always a busy time around this part of Wiltshire.

Happy Autumn, Happy Fall, Happy days to all!