Connected to Jude’s Life in Colour here.
It’s difficult to stop when you find so many reds but I think I shall have to stop now. These are the last few towards this month’s red challenge, and we are still in Japan.
Category: Uncategorized
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Life in Colour 24 -Red
Possibly the most photographed place in Japan – the famous Torii gate at Miyajima. -
Life in Colour 24 – Red
Linked to Jude’s Life in Colour here:
As promised yesterday, here are a few more Reds from Japan.
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Gone AWOL
I have been absent from Word Press for a week now and it looks as though it will be another week before my work is finished helping dispose of the contents of the house of my friend who died recently and whose Probate has just been granted enabling the sale of the property. The executors live some 300 miles from here and they have done their best travelling up and down to dispose of what they could, seeing solicitors and hoping, always hoping, for completion of the sale.
Due to Covid ….. (you’ve heard this often enough), charity shops in my catchment area are chock-a-block with furniture, books, linens, etc. and we can only get rid of the very best of the furniture – both nothing in dark wood. Chairs, beds and mattresses can’t go because they have been recovered and don’t have the fire-retardant label attached. After 3 weeks on Free Cycle we only managed to dispose of one bed and headboard. Now what is left has to go to the tip. Seeing lovely old furniture being thrown away like this sits heavily on me but there’s nothing we can do. AND, removal of same is costing in the region of £400!
So, think about what you have lurking in corners that you could maybe find a useful home for and dispose of it NOW if you can. It has certainly shown me that it’s time I got rid of a few more items. The days when you called in a house clearance firm have long gone and unless you live in an area where you can leave stuff on the pavement for anyone to take away, you may be leaving problems for your executors.
Meantime, I am having to ignore/delete all emails as I just cannot make time to read them, but I hope to be back within a week. See you then.
Mari
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Pond or Ponder
This week for one word Sunday, Debbie at Travel with Intent has chosen “Pond or Ponder”. My take on this is below.
I think its one for each girlfriend! 
Pond with reflections Kykr National Park, Croatia 
The six passengers onboard cargo ship The Author, ponder what awaits us in Venezuela as we pass the favelas on our approach to the Port of Caracas. -
Lens Artists Challenge # 155 – On the Water
I’ve been tempted to submit to this challenge after looking at Ann-Christine’s lovely photos, not that I think mine come up to her standard, but it has pushed me to look through my own folio and see what I could come up with. Too many, it turns out, but here are a few of my favourites, mostly here because they remind me of some long gone precious days.
Elephants need water for washing and, if possible, a mahout to do the work with a scrubbing brush, which they love. Here is one I took in northern Thailand at a time when elephants were still used in farming.
He’s just had a good scrub down and now it’s off to the corral for rest. While with the animals here’s one from Cambodia where the water buffaloes were enjoying the water.
Next we move on to canals and to the very first summit level canal built in Great Britain. Built in N. Ireland in 1742, it is the Newry Canal which pre-dated the more famous Bridgewater Canal by nearly thirty years and it was built to link the Tyrone coalfields (via Lough Neagh and the River Bann) to the Irish Sea at Carlingford Lough near Newry.
Newry canal flows through the town past what were once mills and lumber yards And still with canals, my favourite canal trip of all time, the 6-day journey on board a historic ship along the Gota canal, from Gothenburg to Stockholm across one river, eight lakes and two seas. The ships have scarcely been altered since they were first used to take immigrants from Stockholm to the departure port for America and few concessions are made to tourists, i.e. no en-suite rooms, communal showers only and, it must be said, rather cramped quarters (so luggage must be kept to a minimum). Yet what a magical journey that was, across a black lake and a dark sea with stops along the way to visit historic sites. I went in midsummer, almost permanent daylight and that had its own magic, eating cherries and wild strawberries and drinking hot chocolate at 3.00 am on deck as the beautiful Swedish landscape glided by.
The William Tham negotiates a lock. Just a few more watery memories and then I’m done:
Kikr National Park, Croatia 
Passing by my Isle of Wight home returning from France. 
Newtown, Isle of Wight, a wetland area once a thriving town and settled before the Norman Conquest. 
The Elbe, Germany
Dubrovnik
School on the Lake in Cambodia
Aromanches, Normandy 
The Blue Danube, near Vienna
Rivers, Oceans, Lakes and Marshes.
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Life im Colour: White/Silver
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Life in Colour 21
Link to Jude here. Jude has asked for White or Silver this month.
First up, a couple of Spain’s White Villages, whose whiteness demands sunglasses at all times to cut the glare.
Spain’s White Villages. The first one is Grazalema the second, maybe Arcos de la Frontera. Snow on the Italian Alps as I last flew over (1918) 
Isle of Wight Garlic. The IoW farm also grows and sells the rarer black garlic. 
View to the Jungfrau from Rigi in Switzerland with snow in between. -
Sculpture Saturday: The Grape Picker in Beaune
A vineyard in Beaune (forgot to make a note of the name in the fog of the delicious Burgundy we sampled). -
Colour 20 – Purple
Linked to Life in Colour: Purple – by Heyjude from Travel Words.
Nearly the end of May and I can still only find flowers to illustrate the colour purple. Nothing else catches my eye on my walk through the town so here are just a few garden flowers.
First up is the everlasting wallflower (Erysimum Bowles), much too big for its position right by my side gate and creeping over the steps, but the butterflies and the bees love it so here it stays. It’s not really purple, it’s what my generation would call mauve.
Erysimum Bowles or Everlasting Wallflower to give it it’s popular name. Favourite pansies next, one bordering on blue perhaps but edging towards the purplish I think.
And lastly, lavender, without which no garden is complete. This one is a particular favourite and I’ve taken a cutting from a more sprawling version in the garden to have it outside my bedroom door.
