Cellpic Sunday: Behold the flowering tomatillo
Posted on November 2, 2025
You may be wondering what a tomatillo is. Well, it’s a staple of Mexican cuisine and our son-in-law is Mexican – and a very fine cook to boot.
They are not exactly easy to find in the middle of rural France, but we planted some seeds that we were given to us by said beau-fils. He lives in the UK and hasn’t had much success in growing his own: the climate is simply not conducive. Put bluntly, Yorkshire is too cold.
However, it’s warmer down here and although only a couple of our planted seeds have survived, this one seems to be thriving in our serre (greenhouse).
Last on the card: Golden leaves
Posted on November 1, 2025
Autumn colours are everywhere at the moment, but this tree in a shop’s car park was a particularly fine specimen, especially in the sunshine.
Monochrome madness: Farm Animals
Posted on October 30, 2025
And where am I supposed to find any farm animals to photograph here in the depths of rural France? Oh, wait…
Shetland ponies may not be everyone’s first idea of a farm animal, but one of our neighbours breeds horses (and a few cattle, but that’s almost compulsory in these parts) for a living. For a while, he also owned this small group of Shetland ponies, which were kept in a field less than a quarter of a mile from our house (aka Brokedown Palace).
One day they just disappeared and he’s never replaced them, but at least I was able to capture them tucking into a large bale of winter feed in that – at the time, very muddy field.
Lens-Artists Challenge: Street details
Posted on October 27, 2025
Benches are a common enough street detail of course, but I’d never encountered one like this before: seen in the Welsh town of Pembroke and appearing to have been a repurposing of some old church pews (restored in 2020, according to the small sign on the left hand side).
Lens-Artists Challenge: Ancient
Posted on October 21, 2025
This towering bastion – all the more imposing for surmounting a rocky outcrop – is to be found in the mightily impressive medieval city of Chauvigny, near Poitiers in the Vienne département of France.
Monochrome madness: Ceramics
Posted on October 16, 2025
Until recently (Covid did for it, as so many other things), a local Association put on an annual Expo of local peoples’ collections, interests and hobbies. One year there was an exhibition of ceramics by a keen local collector.
This featured a number of hand-painted ceramic tiles and this is one which, I believe, benefits from being rendered in monochrome (the real thing has a very wishy-washy green background)
Lens-Artists Challenge: Dreamy
Posted on October 14, 2025
It occurred to me that this would be a suitable image for this week’s Lens-Artists challenge of ‘Dreamy’, largely because I have just referred to a post on my other website: theonlydeadheadinthehameau.wordpress.com.
This is not deliberately out of focus, but it was taken – in the medieval French town of Sarlat – through a window containing some extremely old glass. Very obviously the early glaziers hadn’t quite yet mastered the techniques for making clear glass. Still, it let the light in and kept the weather out, so it marked real progress back then.
Cellpic Sunday: It’s that time of year…
Posted on October 12, 2025
When the sun comes out again after a few days of rain, you can be sure the mushrooms won’t be far behind…
Lens-Artists Challenge: Autumn Colours
Posted on October 6, 2025
Well, it’s definitely that time of year again, and apart from the chillier mornings perhaps the most immediately noticeable sign that autumn is upon us is nature’s changing colour palette as the predominant greens steadily turn to reds and browns.
Monochrome Madness: Ruins
Posted on October 2, 2025
As the topic for Monochrome Madness this time out is ‘Ruins’, eschewing the easy option of just posting an early morning selfie, I decided to stay with the subject of my Lens-Artists contribution earlier this week: the fabled ruins of the city of Petra.
For an idea of scale in this vast edifice, just take note of the human figures at bottom left.
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