campus avenue

Somehow, I've never really noticed this avenue of trees on campus before - as an avenue.  Obviously I've seen the trees themselves plenty of times - especially when it's more summery, and people are strung between them on hammocks, or at the very least sitting underneath them as shade.  But today, this could have been an European allée, with the shafts of sunlight coming through and hitting the yellowing leaves ...

 

longevity plate

Slowly, slowly, I move things that came from Wimbledon out of the garage, and into new homes.  Among a handful of ornaments and pictures that I took into the office today was this tin plate, which my father acquired in Hong Kong at the end of the war, and was always on display somewhere.  Until packing things up in London, I don't think that I'd ever realized that it was tin, not china.  And until yesterday, I'd never noticed that he'd stuck a label on the back, saying "This means Longevity."  I think it does - if any Chinese speaker is reading this, please confirm (or not) - it doesn't, when I check on line, look quite like the standard longevity symbol - but it doesn't look that far removed from it.  If this is its meaning, it certainly worked, so I should definitely keep it close by ...

 

more winter sunshine in the front yard

The morning sunlight that comes into the front yard is low, but intense for half an hour or so, creating some dramatic shadows.

And why, yes, we do indeed put some flowers in vases on the table in front of the kitchen window, so that we can fully enjoy them, without having the toxicity of lilies, say, inside the house and endangering the cats.  LucyFur was a determined chewer of plants, which made us rigorous in this respect - and now we'd never want to take the risk.  To be sure, those white tulips were perfectly harmless to felines, but they were disconcertingly droopy, and therefore banished ...