You can see through the fog that the lower part of our garden is on a slope:
and at the bottom of the garden is a crumbling cliff, made of shale and held in place by tree roots.
And at the bottom of the cliff is the deep, deep lake.
That’s what it looked like today. In July, there would be a queue of children on the steps waiting their turn to jump off the diving board; but there are no splashes and often no ripples at this time of year, the water is flat and I love the reflections. Sometimes I look at them upside down to see if they’re better:
and sometimes I look at their bilateral symmetry. They’re like Rorschach ink blots, but with varied tones:
I’ve found that the higher you’re standing above the waterline greater the asymmetry between the image and its reflection. It must be because you aren’t perpendicular to the image and its foreshortened reflection. I don’t mind it. It’s actually the asymmetries in the inkblot that I really enjoy, for some reason; the older I get the more interesting I find imperfections, when I was younger I just thought they were a mistake.
It’s about -5〫C. today, or 23F. You can see here that the lake is starting to freeze over:
It takes a couple of weeks, usually. That will be the end of the reflections.
A Bad Guide 
Your garden is enviable (not the current temperature, though)
Your Rorschach pictures are great!
Thanks!
Some people like the cold. I’m not one of them.
You’re becoming an old foggy.
These are lovely. I’m experiencing winter envy (though I don’t like the cold either).
I wish we had snow. I like to go with the flow with these things — to try to appreciate the weather in all of its capricious majesty, but the reality is that now that the wind has blown most of the leaves off the trees I’m just about ready for the next big thing, which really ought to be a nice snowfall. I’m just saying, if it was up to me.
Artur,
Your local forecasters may have failed you, but keep in mind I warned you last week about all this snow.
Beautiful shots. My favourite is the long vertical Rorshach, which Rorshachs, for me, the image of the ossified skull of a fantastic prehistoric bird.
Nothing to pass the winter hours like a bit of Rorshach’d ornithology.
Here it’s cold, rain coming, but nothing so dramatic as that.
Two very perceptive women have now informed me of one thing, by the way: that you and I appear to have entered a paranormal tandem theme-zone.
I.e., there appears to be a common preoccupation with
Mirroring.
(Must be a coincidence. There are, I have heard, now 600 gazillion blogs in the blogosphere. One might safely wager that at this moment, what, 10,000 are featuring photos of water reflections?)
Oh, no! Not the paranormal tandem theme-zone! I love your Piero reflections, though.
I liked the asymmetrical curve in the ossified bird.
Prince, don’t be envious! I’m just trying to make the best of winter — what Christmas should be doing in the north, when it comes.
Ø.
They say here, some of them, that the snow is a big relief, because the white makes everything bright again. There’s some truth to it, especially with the sun & a blue sky.
Dearie, I love Foggy Bottom being the location of the US State Dept. I sometimes have a foggy bottom myself, especially in winter, and I think it’s a perfect description of most countries’ foreign policies.
I’m sorry, I don’t want to be annoying, but have you saw the video I sent you (by FB)?
Perhaps you already knew it… but I like it so much that I wanted to share it.
Don’t be envious, but in Buenos Aires is all green & violet (because of the jacarandas) :-)
You couldn’t be annoying if you tried. I haven’t looked at facebook. That’s a great project. It sounds like it was a lot of work. I liked the idea, and I liked the spider best.
Green and violet? Jacarandas? Envious? Yes.
Oh, come on, why envy that? It’s like New Guinea where you live.
I’m annoying even if I try not to.
No creas… Sometimes I try too hard to be annoying (and you can’t imagine how great is my success!)
The spider part is wonderful, I love it too.
Two weeks ago it was all pink or purple at some streets because of the “lapachos colorados”. I blame myself for not carrying a camera with me all the time (my phone’s camera isn’t good enough)
I like to think I’m a happy medium, annoying when I try to be, annoying when I don’t.
My family think I’m annoying, but they’re wrong.
My dad regards everything as annoying, but within that scheme, I occupy a special place, my role being ‘Chief Moaner’ or some such. And it’s a fair point, I’ve moaned an awful lot. The thing is, this has always been attributed to my character, but this year I was finally diagnosed with a long-standing condition of the stomach, along with ‘an overproductive bile duct’. Since I had treatment, my whole demeanour has been changed, but I now I have to shrug off my ingrained tendency to whinge and complain and see doom in everything. Part of the therapy for that is to read AJ’s blog and comments.
The photos are the best solution for me to the problem of how to experience the cold without the cold, and for that, I thank you.
My family think the same (about me, of course). We shall introduce each other, so that they can be wrong together. Wrong and happily ever after
Oh, pinhut, that’s my therapy too!
( my work resents this, though)
You shouldn’t accept that from your families. Don’t give them a minute’s rest until they’ve changed their minds.
Actually I’m more annoying the more I try not to.
:-D! Yes, Trond, that’s the spirit!
Trond, it is tough going. With some families, I understand that parents instil the idea that they are the first person you turn to for help, but with my dad, the opposite is the case. Lately, I have been in a financial black hole, until, finally, I had to turn to my dad for help. He duly helped, but he accompanied this help with the most ungracious message imaginable. This left me so sick, that I just could not reply, and two days later my dad issued a follow-up, blasting me for not having sent him a note of thanks for his assistance.
So I replied, quoting his words back to him:
***
“so let me make it clear i will not help anyone in future , i think after a life of work i am entitled to some peace and quiet without the worry you’re all old enough to look after yourselves ,”
You might receive more signs of my gratitude if you were not accompanying your assistance with words like these.
***
Total silence has now ensued. Presumably, back in a small town in England, I am presently being denounced as ‘a swine’.
I wasn’t crazy about my father, Pin. He never gave me any help either. Well, they’re the ones who lose the most by not supporting their children. No enjoyment, miserable old scrooges. Poor them.
I can’t wait to tell my family that I’m providing a service. “…but there are people out there who rely on my photos!”
And there’s nothing wrong with being a swine from a small town in England, take a look at these.
Lovely piggies (they look like me!)
And, well, I must say both my father and mother are great (a bit crazy the last one), so I just have to think that I’m annoying.
And what’s more, she does translations when you ask her.
Actually I’m more annoying the more I try not to.
Trond is trying to get us to tell him to be more annoying. Well it won’t work.
Yes, that’s right!
And they take care of my children (and pets) whenever I ask them.
No, I can’t complain.
:-)
I have to find something else to complain about…
I’ve always wanted a pig like this. Sadly I don’t think they’re born with that pattern. But it should be fairly easy to get paint into the bristles.
I remember someone built a house with all the notes and dimensions from the working drawings reprinted big on the outside walls. Unfortunately it was a long time ago & I’ve forgotten who it was.
It’s always the safest thing to do. My former boss, now retired (at least formally), has a story of a classmate who at final exam first took a dimension line to be a guy-rope (or a tie-rod — a tension member, anyway), and then went on to calculate compression in it.
Julia, in the words of a famous Swiss art collector who, interviewed by the BBC about how he’d done it, hissed back with fantastic aggression: ‘Lisssen! It is nat diffikelt!’
I am from Tamworth, too, so I’m just a two-legged version of those guys.
AJ, this view from my window may put the value of your photos as therapy into some kind of perspective.
What is not difficult, Principal? Finding something to complain about?
No, not at all, I’m the queen of complaints!
So, ” da capo!”, I’m annoying… :-)
Pinhut, later I’ll show some pictures of my kitchen view . You win, though.
He does. I once lived somewhere similar, in New York. If I was feeling competitive, I could show a picture of our garbage that hasn’t been collected for four weeks now (the new picker upper doesn’t believe our house exists).
Principal, I like that. Who was the art collector?
Calculating the compression in tensile dimension lines is a good strategy when you’re in a hurry to get finished with the exam.
Right, very easy to find something to complain about, in my extensive experience.
AJP, I can’t remember, but you might know: he apparently had the world’s finest private collection of 20th-century drawings, Picasso, Matisse…
Haha, I like how I trailed off there, with a sort of flounce. I mean ‘it was heavy on’.
Artur, on this gelid night of steady downpours I was feeling stiff and ancient and half frozen and even for that matter a bit sorry for myself… until, that is, I took a look at your ten day forecast.
Well, mostly clear at least.
But sufficiently chilly to suggest that those brilliant reflections may not last out the week.
(The large sleeping Siamese in the chair beside me does not appreciate unheated houses and would probably leap at the chance to join your goats in their pleasant heated hostel, however.)
What a way to trail a trailing flounce. A gentleman ought to do better.
Why unheated, o Tom?
Principal, I tried to find the Swiss guy heavy on Picasso & Matisse, but the trail was dead. Never mind, your story told us all we need to know.
The houses don’t have adequate heating in California — it’s like Italy in that respect. Tom, I don’t pay much mind to the weather forecast. It’s mostly wrong, but not with a regularity that I can count on. I’m very sorry you’re cat’s cold, isn’t there a down quilt it could have? Our dogs get way too hot by the wood stove and have to go outside to cool off. Meanwhile, Principal and Pinhut and Sig and pretty soon Julia are sweltering in tropical or summer heat.
In fact, I am wrapped up and making use of a scarf when I venture out. It’s pretty cold here now, as the transition between each season is rapid.
End of Taipei weather report.
I really don’t understand what’s going on in Taiwan weatherwise. It seems to be a miserable climate and I had thought it must be hot & sunny, but mostly hot.
It’s the complete opposite of Guatemala City, really, where the climate was marvellous.
Four seasons here and between them there is not that much decent weather. But I didn’t come here for that. It is just a tiny bit better than Dublin, though it has typhoons and earthquakes… And, of course, as we have Ireland’s Potato, the best of the Emerald Isle is here anyway!
On a side note, I went and tried on clothes in Prada today. Why would somebody pay 400 pounds for a jumper?
South of Taiwan is generally pretty damn hot, AJ. The variation in weather for a small island is considerable.
Why would somebody pay 400 pounds for a jumper? Because it’s so bloody cold? Actually, I don’t know. I hate buying clothes. I’d pay £400 not to go shopping, but then I’m a grumpy old man.
Artur,
As the thunder and lightning rumble and flash and roar and the unceasing traffic splashes past in the endless freezing rain, I am able to agree wholeheartedly with your aversion to shopping — which in this yawning abyss of what is known as the “festive season” is anyway a noisome ordeal, here. In fact, without a car, in these parts, in such conditions, the mere thought of venturing out of one’s jar is almost more than can be borne.
About the unheatedness (as Principal has thoughtfully enquired), the furnace is 86 years old and has a gaping rent in its “draught diverter,” through which issue toxic fumes. But as the thing is larger than the Titanic, removing and replacing it poses a considerable task. In fact we have just lately somehow managed to have the upper tier of this Gothic manse deconstructed and rebuilt, which was, in short, a great ordeal. So now at least the ongoing torrents from the sky roll off rather than through the roof that happily now exists above our heads.
Down quilts, ah, of those we do have a few, as well as multiple blankets, scarves, mittens, etc. The cats however prefer the more direct thermal access obtained by parking themselves upon our inert frozen bodies, and refusing to budge. Evidently the wisdom lies with them.
When you reach “that age,” and subsist in a depressed economy on a microscopic “fixed income,” the decisions about what to attempt to repair and what to leave to be dealt with by putative future occupants involve a sort of grim triage. Surviving until evening, and then again until morning, become the immediate imperatives.
Oh dear, you conjure images of almost Grey Gardens squalor. Even in this country people die of exposure every winter when the temperature drops below 10 degrees Celsius for a night, yet in Norway that’s apparently considered a scorcher.
woops, meant to say somewhere.
haha: ”
nope, can’t be done.
Grey Gardens, yes, close. Though at least that wasn’t underwater. (We’re in “severe flood advisory/weather alert” mode tonight, and preparing to pull up the downstairs floor coverings.)
Oh, Tom, I’m sorry to hear (or read) that. My cousins in Colombia (Medellín) also have a flood watch. Take care!
I’d never heard of that film, Grey Gardens. It looks like a must-see. Something to be filed next to probably my favourite book, Heathcote Williams’ The Speakers.
How strange. I just flipped from reading this sentence, “The mentally disturbed do not employ the principle of Scientific Parsimony: the most simple theory to explain a given set of facts. They shoot for the baroque” to reading, on a whim, Tom’s latest blog post, which almost begins with, “Make abundant use of the principle of parsimony.” From Philip K Dick to Beckett.