On Stanage Edge

DSC08717
Originally uploaded by ellarien.

Beloved of rock-climbers, and recently seen on the screen (Pride and Prejudice and, I think, the new BBC Jane Eyre.) The last layer of the horizon is Kinder Scout, with Win Hill in front of that, away across the Hope Valley. It always seems to be windy up here, and cloudy more often than not, even when the valleys are sunny; the path is a succession of rough gritstone boulders interspersed with stretches of the grey moorland sand. On the other side, the moor stretches away in a sea of heather and yellow-green grass. From out of sight below the edge, the climbers' gear chimes like little bells.

Friday Flower Blogging

A waterlily from the Ring Pond at Chatsworth -- the same pond that yielded the icon. Sadly, I haven't seen the red one since I had the better camera.

Waterlily Chatsworth Gardens, August 2007

In other news ...

Not that anyone's listening on a Friday night, but I need to start using my words again sometime.

The students are back. They're young, slender, tanned, loud, brightly dressed; the girls wear sundresses or sleeveless tops and tiny shorts, the boys mostly basketball gear; they travel in gaggles and packs.

The barrel cacti -- particularly the orange-flowered ones -- are going crazy with bloom, and the beavertail on the chaplaincy corner has put out its second flush of hot-pink flowers.

It's ridiculously hot and humid; I'd been successfully avoiding being here at this time of year for so long that I'd almost forgotten. Another few weeks, and the monsoon will segue into bits-of-leftover-hurricane and then into the last phase of summer, the second hot dry season that swings smoothly (but never quite as fast as one would like it to) into the crystalline light and cooler temperatures of autumn.