Watery Wednesday: More Droplets

Another bunch of dewy snowdrops, and a close-up of a droplet on a yew needle:

Please pay a visit to the home of this meme: Watery Wednesday

Today's Flowers: The Promise of Spring

I was so pleased to find lots of waking flowers at the Botanic Gardens:

*
*

"For Winter has brought you the worst it can bring,

And now it will give you

The promise of Spring!"

*
*

Please pay a visit to the home of this meme - Today's Flowers

Monochrome Theme: The Meadows

The Meadows are a park close to where I live in Edinburgh. Straight, tree-lined paths cross from the sandstone houses of Marchmont to the University's central campus (the Main Library is seen on the right in the picture below).

A lot of the University sports societies use the Meadows to practise in; the path that I chose to take me back to the University (below) lay between two ball games and I had to scurry quickly along it.

In all, my walk through the Meadows was rather damp and (when I left the path to look closely at some lovely foliose lichens - see below) muddy.

Please pay a visit to the home of this meme - Monochrome Weekend

Watery Wednesday: Three Swans on Strangford Lough

Two adult swans and one juvenile drift in Strangford Lough, on a frosty winter's evening. And some of Yeats' poetry.

But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?

*

~ from The Wild Swans at Coole by WB Yeats

*

*

For more watery shots, please visit the home of this meme - Watery Wednesday.

I'm also posting a link to Protect Chagos: an online petition to the UK government to protect the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean.

Today's Flowers: Calluna vulgaris

A close-up of some heather flowers beneath a heavy frost:

Photographed at Murlough Bay, Winter 2009

For more flowers, please visit the home of this meme - Today's Flowers

Monochrome Weekend: The Broch of Gurness

The circular dry-stoned building are the remains of a broch - a type of Iron Age roundhouse (found only in northern Scotland) with galleried walls and multiple levels. This particular broch at Gurness on the Orkney Mainland, was slightly unusual as it has a settlement of stone houses beside it, whereas brochs usually just stood by themselves:

*

*

It had only one doorway, and beautiful sea views:

Monochrome Weekend