Season’s Greetings

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Rachael

Focused Moments is on hiatus while I am travelling Down Under. In the meantime, I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Nature’s baubles

The delicate art of dumping your camera on the ground

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Rachael

I haven’t been around much in the last week as I have had my first ever bout of flu! Needless to say, I haven’t been taking photographs, so here are a couple of shots from last year, revealing how unkind I can be to my camera. It doesn’t seem to mind being dumped onto wet grass, thanks perhaps to its weather seals. I love the unpredictability of this sort of shooting.

Bush cricket again

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Rachael

It’s been a while since I posted a picture of the speckled bush crickets in my garden. They seem to have disappeared now – this shot was taken in July. I think it is an adult, although I am prepared to be corrected on that. Here it is taking a well-earned rest from the tiring task of peppering my mallow flowers with holes.

Hopeful green

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Rachael

‘A child said What is the grass? fetching it to one with full hands,
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of the hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark,
and say Whose?…
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.’

Walt Whitman, ‘Song of Myself’ (1855), 6

April has been a month of rain for us here in England. As I travelled in a taxi through Hyde Park this morning I noticed how gloriously green everything was, drenched in refreshing spring showers. So today’s post is simply a celebration of green.
The top image was taken in the churchyard of St. James’s, Weybridge.