As you're probably aware by now if you've been reading the blog, I do like taking photos. I like to capture moments in time that I can look back on and say, "Ah yes I remember that" and there are approximately 15,000 of those moments dating from the day we set off from Newcastle Upon Tyne in the UK to live our life on the Greek island of Kefalonia up until the present day.
I don't have, and have never had, a digital SLR camera. My iPhone especially, and my old compact Panasonic Lumix are my best friends. Great for snapping photos, I take my iPhone everywhere with me just in case. You never know when that dolphin might surface in Sami Bay (and it has!) or that rainbow may appear and then disappear (within seconds) out of nowhere! No changing of apertures, shutter speed and focus etc for me. I just get the iPhone out and snap!
It works for me and it's great for the general snap shot. The colours are exactly what I see with the naked eye so I'm quite pleased with the results. There is so much more though to Kefalonia than what you 'see' on a day to day basis. There's another miniature world that I need to get up close and personal to. Having spent most of my life looking down a microscope, it doesn't surprise me that I am inherently pre-disposed to wanting to know the smaller picture but my iPhone is no microscope. Can I capture this miniature world? You're about to find out. See what you think.
What will this miniature Kefalonia reveal?
Just recently, I'd collected some driftwood from the local beach and put it on the garden wall to dry out in the sun until I knew what to do with it.
Perfect hexagons
The Queen Paper wasp making her nest.
The open hexagonal combs are for rearing their young. I have since found out that Paper Wasps are social wasps (not that I want to invite them for tea you understand) and aren't very aggressive when compared to their cousins the 'Yellowjackets' (I love that name Yellowjacket - it almost sounds like an SAS wasp). I'm not hanging around to do some research on that though. Don't get me wrong they can still sting if they, or their nest, are threatened. They are considered beneficial to gardeners as they prey on garden pests such as flies and caterpillars and secrete a chemical which repels ants. Fine by me. So I left the nest where it was but after some heavy rain, I noticed that it had almost disappeared. I almost felt sorry for the wasp in that he'd spent so much time designing a nest for it to be washed away. That's nature for you.
We grow sunflowers every year as the villa is called Sunflower Villa.........
so it's unthinkable NOT to have them, but have you ever looked really closely at the flowers? The one in the photo below had its head overhanging our garden wall onto the track beside the villa. It must have been about eight feet high and as I was walking by I took a closer look at it. It had an amazing, almost hypnotic spiral pattern to the seed head. The pattern of the seeds follows the mathematical Fibonacci sequence which is: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144... in other words each number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers. This sequence occurs often throughout nature.
If you notice - starting in the centre of the close up photo, there are two series of spirals winding in opposite directions. If you were to count the clockwise and counterclockwise spirals that reach the outer edge, you would find a pair of numbers from the Fibonacci sequence: i.e. 34 and 55, or 55 and 89.
Each seed sits at a certain angle from the neighbouring seeds to create the spiral. It's all to do with optimising seed storage. Very clever!
Sunflower in our garden
34 and 55 are next to each other on the Fibonacci sequence.
Enough of science - back to microscopic Kefalonia!
Another impressive plant is the Callistemon (Bottle Brush Plant). This is my favourite. It gives masses of red bottle brush flowers every spring and autumn. We are fortunate to have two of these 'trees' in the garden. When it begins to flower it always reminds me of red liquorice boot laces. You'll see what I mean in the photos below.
Flower head just starting to open
Red liquorice bootlace stamens emerging!
The sea is beginning to warm up now that it's near the end of June; May has been a strange month weather wise. Lots of cloudy days, very warm at times but with the odd thunderstorm and very windy but now eventually with some lovely blue sky days, so we've been swimming at our local coves and collecting shells - in particular hermit crab shells (unoccupied obviously). We use these shells to fill our our Tiki torch bottles (mentioned in my last post).
Our friends gave us an unusual 200mL Crystal Head Pirate Vodka bottle to add to our collection and we needed some more shells to half fill it.
The hermit crab shells are quite small, between 0.5cm and 1cm in length so we needed rather a lot! When we were collecting them on our local beaches, we noticed how they they were all so very different. There was an amazing variety of patterns and colours. In fact, when I looked closely they all looked like they were hand painted ceramics!
Another day at the beach and we found ants on a large rock carrying a whole fish - admittedly it was a small fish but none the less some feat for them. Don't the ants look alien like and you can't really make any features out.
Update on my gourds - if you've read my previous post, you will know I planted some gourd seeds in the hope that I can grow my own bottle gourds so that I will eventually be able to make a birdhouse out of one of them for next year's swifts.
Well they did germinate (you can see the seedlings below) but I think I put them into the ground too early from their pots and they were eaten by some darn insects. Before I transplanted them though I noticed a young grasshopper having an evening meal on them!
I decided to plant some more seeds in early June, and they have survived and look much better in bigger pots, (not in the ground) ready to grow up the pergola. No evidence yet of any bottle gourds but I suppose I have to be patient. Here's hoping!
Goodbye for now Snorky! See you in September.
I don't have, and have never had, a digital SLR camera. My iPhone especially, and my old compact Panasonic Lumix are my best friends. Great for snapping photos, I take my iPhone everywhere with me just in case. You never know when that dolphin might surface in Sami Bay (and it has!) or that rainbow may appear and then disappear (within seconds) out of nowhere! No changing of apertures, shutter speed and focus etc for me. I just get the iPhone out and snap!
It works for me and it's great for the general snap shot. The colours are exactly what I see with the naked eye so I'm quite pleased with the results. There is so much more though to Kefalonia than what you 'see' on a day to day basis. There's another miniature world that I need to get up close and personal to. Having spent most of my life looking down a microscope, it doesn't surprise me that I am inherently pre-disposed to wanting to know the smaller picture but my iPhone is no microscope. Can I capture this miniature world? You're about to find out. See what you think.
What will this miniature Kefalonia reveal?
Just recently, I'd collected some driftwood from the local beach and put it on the garden wall to dry out in the sun until I knew what to do with it.
Driftwood on the garden wall
Well someone else had decided to use it! A Paper Wasp - so called because they make their nests from chewing wood into pulp. I'm probably like most people on Kefalonia, and elsewhere for that matter, in that I dislike wasps! I was about to go into termination mode but was taken aback by the honeycomb structure of perfect hexagons that this wasp had manufactured so I decided to get the camera out and take a few photos. Easier said than done! Every time I got close, the wasp stopped what he was doing and gave me the evil eye, so I retreated respectfully, waited and tried again.....and again.....and again.
The evil eye (In other words - just don't come any closer!)
Perfect hexagons
The Queen Paper wasp making her nest.
The open hexagonal combs are for rearing their young. I have since found out that Paper Wasps are social wasps (not that I want to invite them for tea you understand) and aren't very aggressive when compared to their cousins the 'Yellowjackets' (I love that name Yellowjacket - it almost sounds like an SAS wasp). I'm not hanging around to do some research on that though. Don't get me wrong they can still sting if they, or their nest, are threatened. They are considered beneficial to gardeners as they prey on garden pests such as flies and caterpillars and secrete a chemical which repels ants. Fine by me. So I left the nest where it was but after some heavy rain, I noticed that it had almost disappeared. I almost felt sorry for the wasp in that he'd spent so much time designing a nest for it to be washed away. That's nature for you.
We grow sunflowers every year as the villa is called Sunflower Villa.........
Sunflower villa with inquisitive Mediterranean Gecko
so it's unthinkable NOT to have them, but have you ever looked really closely at the flowers? The one in the photo below had its head overhanging our garden wall onto the track beside the villa. It must have been about eight feet high and as I was walking by I took a closer look at it. It had an amazing, almost hypnotic spiral pattern to the seed head. The pattern of the seeds follows the mathematical Fibonacci sequence which is: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144... in other words each number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers. This sequence occurs often throughout nature.
If you notice - starting in the centre of the close up photo, there are two series of spirals winding in opposite directions. If you were to count the clockwise and counterclockwise spirals that reach the outer edge, you would find a pair of numbers from the Fibonacci sequence: i.e. 34 and 55, or 55 and 89.
Each seed sits at a certain angle from the neighbouring seeds to create the spiral. It's all to do with optimising seed storage. Very clever!
Sunflower in our garden
Close up of the sunflower seed head showing the spirals
As an example - 34 spirals anticlockwise
55 spirals clockwise
Enough of science - back to microscopic Kefalonia!
Another impressive plant is the Callistemon (Bottle Brush Plant). This is my favourite. It gives masses of red bottle brush flowers every spring and autumn. We are fortunate to have two of these 'trees' in the garden. When it begins to flower it always reminds me of red liquorice boot laces. You'll see what I mean in the photos below.
One of our two Callistemons in May this year
Flower head just starting to open
Red liquorice bootlace stamens emerging!
Red stamen filaments with gold coloured pollen at the tips
Masses of bottle brush flower heads
The sea is beginning to warm up now that it's near the end of June; May has been a strange month weather wise. Lots of cloudy days, very warm at times but with the odd thunderstorm and very windy but now eventually with some lovely blue sky days, so we've been swimming at our local coves and collecting shells - in particular hermit crab shells (unoccupied obviously). We use these shells to fill our our Tiki torch bottles (mentioned in my last post).
Mark looking for shells at one of our local coves
Mark looking for shells at another cove - 'Two People Only' cove
The cove above (on the left), from a distance
Crystal Head (Pirate) Tiki torch with shells inside
The hermit crab shells are quite small, between 0.5cm and 1cm in length so we needed rather a lot! When we were collecting them on our local beaches, we noticed how they they were all so very different. There was an amazing variety of patterns and colours. In fact, when I looked closely they all looked like they were hand painted ceramics!
A selection of the hermit crab shells that we collected recently (approx.1cm)
Enlarged photos
Dinner time!
The following day on the same beach we saw one ant carrying the wing of a small butterfly. It really looked like it was surf boarding. Typical I didn't have my iPhone on me though. Would have been a great photo.
Update on my gourds - if you've read my previous post, you will know I planted some gourd seeds in the hope that I can grow my own bottle gourds so that I will eventually be able to make a birdhouse out of one of them for next year's swifts.
Well they did germinate (you can see the seedlings below) but I think I put them into the ground too early from their pots and they were eaten by some darn insects. Before I transplanted them though I noticed a young grasshopper having an evening meal on them!
Young grasshopper on gourd seedlings
Cheeky!
New gourd plants
Not quite microscopic, but Snorky the camper van is going on his holidays for two months next Wednesday. A well earned rest after almost three years of constant use. He's going to a lovely shady olive grove where I'm sure he will love the attention that he has missed recently. We're out and about in Norman the car these days so I think he's feeling neglected.
Mark with Snorky the camper van in the grounds of Agrilion Monastery
Goodbye for now Snorky! See you in September.
