No not another new plant — I don’t think I have room for more! — but another photo of one my existing plants.
This is the orchid my mother gave me last year after it had flowered, and which I’ve managed to get back into flower. It is absolutely amazing. There are 13 flowers on this one stem with a couple of bids still to open — and it’s been in flower now for about 8 weeks.
Another in my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient.
Click the image for larger views
These two properties are in London’s Piccadilly, on the edge of Mayfair and right opposite Green Park. The mansion on the left is the former premises of the Naval & Military Club (nicknamed the In & Out); it is apparently owned by an Arab but appears unoccupied and very neglected. I don’t know the history of the commercial premises on the right although it appears to have been the premises of a Middle Eastern bank. But both properties have been in this state for some years and are gradually falling into dereliction. Such a shame and a waste.
This is a composite of two shots take from the car while sitting in traffic.
Experiment, week 26. Continuing the experiment here are this week’s five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful.
I’ve been in central London this morning taking photographs for one of my projects. While there we took the opportunity to visit the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner. The arch has recently re-opened to the public. There’s a couple of small exhibition spaces and you can go out onto the balcony and get some super views of London. Amongst the small exhibition about Stonehenge there was this sign:
I can’t decide whether the juxtaposition of the press and druids is highly incongruous or immensely prescient.
Visiting the Wellington Arch is well worth the small admission charge if only to get the unusual views of London. It was reviewed recently by IanVisits, to whom my thanks as otherwise I would never have known it was open!
During the morning I also spotted this sign in Golden Square:
Surely only in England!?
One Green Bottle
The other nine ran off and are now seeking asylum.
Yes, here are some more orchid pictures. I cannot get over how fantastic these flowers are. First a new one I bought this morning …
I bought this rather nice greeny-cream with pink blush (almost a Hellebore colour; it’s much creamier than the photo suggests) orchid in our local Waitrose. It had been sitting there looking forlorn, very dry & tired and with a couple of wilted flowers for the last 3 weeks. I’ve looked at it every week and rejected it. Today when I looked at it the second time, I thought I’d ask if they’d sell it to me at half price. To my surprise and delight they agreed.
Having brought it home, taken off the wilted flowers and given it a good water it already looks 100% happier. OK, so it has only these three flowers and a couple of buds to come. But it is rather pretty and who knows I may be able to nurse it back into flowering properly next year.
I also bought this one at Waitrose this morning …
It is a very pretty blushed pink — much prettier than my photo shows. It is profuse with flowers and with at least another 8 buds to come, so well worth paying full price for it.
And finally another shot of one of the orchids I’ve had for some weeks and which is still flowering well.
In fact all my orchids are still flowering well, the first has now been in flower for something like 10 weeks!
They look magnificent, especially when you put them all together in a nice sunny window.
As I say I can’t get over how fantastic these flowers are. OK so mine are all Phalaenopsis hybrids, perhaps the easiest of the orchids — but then that’s why they’re easily available and so cheap.
I really don’t mind, they just look stunning!
I spotted this in a Daily Telegraph online news item yesterday …
“the survey of 1000 women found that two in five female British women admitted to have “al fresco sex“.
So how many male British women admitted to it?
Sadly(?) they’ve since updated the page and corrected the grammar.
OK, so here’s one of the more curious of London’s accoutrements …
It is the Buxton Memorial Fountain and you can find it in Victoria Tower Gardens, just south of the Houses of Parliament wedged between Millbank and the river.
Apparently it was originally constructed in Parliament Square but moved in the 1940s and placed in its present position in 1957. It was commissioned by Charles Buxton MP to commemorate the emancipation of slaves in 1834, dedicated to his father Thomas Fowell Buxton, and designed by Gothic architect Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–1873) in 1865.
It surely has to go down as one of London’s more outré and colourful adornments. Not only does it have that “spire” of coloured encaustic(?) tiles, but it is carved with various animals including some very dragon-like iguanas/lizards.
Not the best of photos as it was taken on a horridly grey and, as can be seen by the puddles, rather wet Sunday morning.
Polyploid
Having more than two homologous sets of chromosomes in each cell nucleus.
Animals with sex chromosomes — such as humans — are diploidic; they have two sets of chromosomes, one from each parent. Organisms with more than two sets are polyploidic. Wheat has 42 sets of chromosomes; coffee can have 88 sets.
[A Rose Is a Rose, Until It Isn’t: 5 Reasons Plant DNA Is Totally Crazy]
I just can’t help feeling we’re living in interesting times. And this last weekend could go down as a tipping point.
France and Germany have stitched up a deal on the Euro financial crisis created by countries living beyond their means. The deal involved banks lending countries even more money to pay for the debts they already couldn’t afford.
Britain and the US have bailed out banks who racked up debts by lending money they didn’t have to people to live beyond their means. Having engendered a debt crisis those same banks are now being berated for not lending people even more money.
But this weekend the French people have said a resounding “Non” and elected an anti-deal, Socialist, President and given the incumbent a bloody nose. The new President basically wants to tear up the deals.
The Greek people, in a parliamentary election, have effectively thrown out the coalition which agreed to their country’s bailout. There will either be a new anti-deal coalition or new elections.
The Irish are tiptoeing towards at least trying to tear up the deals.
And the Italians are expressing discontent with the stitched up deal in their local elections.
Meanwhile …
Britain is again in recession — I personally doubt we were ever out of it — and if you look at the data this is a much longer and deeper (double dip) recession than those of the mid-70s, early-80s or early-90s. (The mid-70s recession felt pretty bad, so heaven knows where this one will end up.)
Shareholders at UK insurance giant Aviva have rejected the boss’s bonuses leading to the resignation of the CEO. Other shareholder revolts look to be on the cards.
The value of the Euro has fallen against the Pound; you can now get at least €1.20 to the Pound.
All the markets are sharply down on the day largely due to the uncertainty in Greece and the rest of Europe. One thing the markets hate is uncertainty.
And of course Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, is behaving like a petulant child and throwing her toys out of her pram to try to blame and bully everyone, because her chickens are coming home to roost and her knicker elastic has perished.
It’s a harsh reality, but all of this could probably have been avoided if (a) the rigid structure of the Euro had been stillborn, (b) the regulations on budget deficits in the European Treaties (and they were there regardless of the Euro regulations) had been adhered to and (c) a few banks had been allowed to fail because of their bad debts.
What of this could not have been foreseen?
Who said we don’t live in interesting times?!