Poor little thing has obviously become breakfast for someone else... sometimes Nature can seem rather cruel.

Look at the grass crying...

While awaiting the results of last night's Bloscar Awards I posted a teaser by way of light relief...

I asked you to identify this:

Only two people joined in with my bit of fun, which was a bit disappointing but hey ho...

All of those lines of light were generated from this piece of tree trunk:

Thanks to both Jack & Munzly for taking part - feel free to select a prize from the Virtual Prize Draw or if you'd prefer an Usky Desktop just let me know and I'll arrange it.

I think I may have overdone it at last night's Bloscar Awards ceremony... way too much celebrating for a week-night... still it was lots of fun seeing the happy smiling faces of so many friends and raising many a toast... I ended the night on Pinkers...

Anyway... here's my morning image...

Netted Nuts

A bottle of good Plymouth gin, a wipe of Angostura Bitters... nothing else needed... except a willing sipper... ...that's Pinkers... in case you didn't know.

I'm tempted to say....

whoopsie!

Some poor sailor lost his mast...

I can only speculate on the fate of the rest of the craft...

...and of course the crew...

Just a brief word of congratulation to all this year's Bloscar winners, but also to Landers and the team who made it such a great night... excellent work, all of you... and a humungous round of applause.

...and for a bit of light relief...

Can anyone tell me what this is?

Prize for the best answer...

I sometimes wonder about humanity and the apparently aimless way we appear to blunder from crisis to crisis... for all our modern technology... we're little more than pebbles on a beach, randomly rolling from place to place...

When I was a kid I always wanted to live in a castle tower... not such an unusual fantasy for a young child I suppose... but I always had an urge to live somewhere high up.

Later on, when I was in my teens, architects started building tower blocks and my parents, who knew my childhood wish to live high up, suggested I might want to live in one of these, but no. Oh I'd have been high up, but I really didn't want to live in that sort of tower... with all those other people.

No, my fantasy was still to live in a tower... but I was already a solitary soul and the sort of tower I fancied was one of these...

I can still imagine living in something like a lighthouse tower... or a tall windmill... or a custom made tower... and that kind of worries me a little...

During my recent mental turmoil I've had to do a fair amount of self analysis... and I'm starting to wonder if my obsession with such erections means... I've got a fixation... with that particularly male organ... the penis.

These are the Nash Point lighthouses and fog-horn. The old light tower, far left, hasn't had a light for some time and these days the lighthouse keeper's cottages are available as holiday lets. Of course you may find the over-sized belisha beacon a bit off-putting at night and when the fog rolls in...

...you'll probably need a set of ear defenders when these big boys let off!!!

Here's a crest some of you might recognise... but I'd be interested to find out just how many of you know what this is?

Feel free to illuminate me...

Sometimes photography can be a bit of a lottery... you don't always get the results you expect. Occasionally things go completely pear-shaped and you end up with an abomination, but at other times you end up with the most amazing image.

There's a technique in photography known as contra-jour (from the French, 'against the day'), which breaks all the rules because you point the camera at the sun allowing sunlight directly into the lens. Generally speaking this is a no-go area for photographers, but it can be useful for generating dramatic silhouettes or as in this case, capturing reflections off water.

This was one of those very lucky occasions when the sunlight combined with the conditions to produce a dramatic effect...

Sadly I doubt I'll ever be able to recreate these colours with artificial filters... in the lottery of photography, it just happened o be me!

I thought I'd post another of my tree reflections photos... this one's not quite as nice as the image I posted in the Photography Group earlier, but it's not too bad if I say so myself.

There are times when a man just has to forgo being big, gruff, ugly and guy-like, and get in touch with his more sensitive, touchy-feely feminine side...

Isn't she lovely?

Here's a tree I'd like to share with you... it's another of those trees that has a special place in my heart... because it has a rather special shape...

So here are both sides of this misshapen monstrosity.

Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

The world, we were told by Bony M, is just a great big onion...

Or maybe you have an alternative view?

We're told we should eat five portions of fruit and veg a day... so following on from yesterday's pea pod(?) I thought I'd offer you a sweet pepper... or an apple... or maybe two rows of beans in a pod... or something...

Yet another nondescript piece of modern art - anyone fancy trying to identify this one?

Here's a bit of modern sculpture... I quite like it... I enjoy the shapes... but I've absolutely no idea what it is!

Any ideas what the piece represents?

Before anyone gets too excited, I'm not about to announce another free Stones in the Park concert... unfortunately. Ah, the 1960s... I digress...

There are stones in Cardiff's Bute Park though and this is how they look... not exactly Stonehenge or Avebury, but quite attractive in their own way.

With Cardiff Castle as the backdrop and surrounded by trees, it is easy to see why the 3rd Marquess of Bute enjoyed his private garden so much.

These are the gorsedd stones - in Welsh, gorsedd means throne. The throne is the large flat stone to the left of the image.

Bute Park was landscaped in the late eighteenth century by Capability Brown although alterations were made in the late nineteenth century by the 3rd Marquess of Bute.

In 1947, the 3rd Marquess of Bute presented the park to the Council; the park is still owned and managed by Cardiff Council and is freely open to all.

The time has come
The Walrus said
To bugger off to bed
For it's that certain time of night
When thoughts are in my head...

Thoughts of sleep
Of tiredness
Of slumber so serene
So off I trot to read my book
And slip myself between...

The crisp clean sheets
Ironed fresh
By mine own fair hand
To take me to that far off place
At Morpheus's hand...

G'night all

I photographed this in Bute Park last week... I think it's a camellia, but not being a gardening type I'm not really sure...

It's rather lovely though isn't it?

Delicate...

Pink...

Lovely to touch...

Oh dear...

I don't think these will be at their best for another couple of weeks or so... but mean time here's a single bud.

Regular visitors here will know I look for beauty in many shapes and forms... natural world... man-made... combinations...

I included some images here recently featuring parts of the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. This morning I want to look at a specific part of the stadium that I find both interesting and oddly beautiful; the roof supports.

The designer of the Millennium Stadium included four roof supports, one at each 'corner' of the building.

You can see from the structure these supports are obviously incredibly strong, but have also been designed with a eye to both shape and beauty.

If I stand underneath one of the supports and look up...

...this is what I see.

What do you see?

We all seem to have been banging on about the change of seasons recently, warmer/cooler days, etc.

Many, including myself, have posted images of flowers, spring lambs and the like. There's no denying, in the UK this is a wonderful time of year with everything springing into life again.

Here's another reminder of spring... cherry blossom.

Cherry blossom has a special place in both Chinese and Japanese culture and for me it's a special reminder of a particular time in my life.

As a child I suffered poliomyelitis; for those who don't know, poliomyelitis has caused paralysis and death for much of human history. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio would paralyse or kill over half a million people worldwide every year.

Obviously, I survived...

One of the things I will always remember is the sight of cherry blossom on the trees that lined the hospital grounds...

The badge of The Prince of Wales comprises three silver (or white) feathers rising through a gold coronet of alternate crosses and fleur-de-lys. The motto "Ich Dien" (I serve) is on a dark blue ribbon beneath the coronet.

This royal heraldic symbol dates back to the 14th century and the time of Edward Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince.

How apt this symbol should be marked as a floral tribute beside Cardiff Castle.

Come out come out wherever you are....

Just a bit more of Cardiff Castle...

Munzly suggested the pointy bit was Wales' first inter-galactic space craft, but those of us from down by yer know it really belongs to Morgan the Moon.

Old moch, the mechanic, I remember him well,
He once built a rocket, or so they will tell,
From an old winding engine, he found on the dole,
Built in the Rhondda, and powered by coal.

Sing fal deraldal deralday.
(words by Max Boyce)

A while ago I posted an image of a castle tower just begging for a Rapunzel figure... well here's another one, but in a rather different location.

This is a bit of Cardiff Castle photographed from Bute Park; I rather like it so I thought I'd share it with you here.

I've no idea what these were part of... some kind of drainage thing I suppose... but I'm drawn by the shapes.

Is it just me, or has there been a universal shift in the number of people commenting on blog posts since the various blog-groups were created?

Just idle curiosity on my part, but stooging about as I am it occurred to me not many people had commented here in the past few days despite the blog-stats indicating an average (for me) number of visitors. I guess I'm wondering whether the new groups are channelling activity... I really need to get out more!