Monday, July 25, 2005

Fruit trees and other stuff

Another day and more photos - i think i am becoming obsessed with fruit though, since i have to follow this medical diet that currently doesn't allow fruit. Anyway, I discvovered another fruit tree in some waste ground - this time its a fig tree. You can just see some small immature figs and i will probbaly take some more photos as the summer progresses to monitor the ripening.





















Of course the fruit ban isn't helped by living next to a garden full of vines. All summer the vines reach out and tangle round our stairs and fence and washing line and so there are always grapes close at hand. You can see some of the grapes beside this decorative urn - it brought to mind images of cornucopias. The grapes will turn dark red in a few weeks and then the garden will be filled with birds gorging themselves for winter and the sticky wine scent of fermenting grapes as they lie in heaps on the path.















On the way home from Juan Les Pins I saw this edible snail [escargot de bourgogne] on a metal fence. They have really beautiful shells and apparently have a lifespan of up to 6 years - provided they havent been cooked in garlic butter, that is.
Its a pity the snail was hiding from the sun since this type if snail has a realy lovely pattern to its skin.

































I'm not sure what the insect above is - i saw it on our wall this morning and thought it looked strange. I went through some reference books and tried a google search but had no luck in identifying it.

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5 comments:

Frank said...

Hi Alison,
I believe your insect is some kind of "Walking Stick", there are quite a variety of these bugs, and it just may be one. Try Googling Stick Bug to see what comes up. By the way I love your illustrations, good job.

Frank

Anonymous said...

Doesn't that absolutely confound you? We live near the woods, so there's always some kind of freaky looking insect within sight, and I'm thinking, "Dude... what is -that-?!"

Anonymous said...

Lovely photos

Emperor Joseph said...

Great pictures.

Storm said...

I saw a bug like that on Animal Planet once.... Although I believe that particular insect was from a rain forest. So that doesn't help much, does it?

Anyway, frank's probably right, so this whole post was pointless. :)