Some generally random photos I also took recently.

Trying to eke out the honeymoon pics a little bit, still have San Diego, Las Vegas to do and possibly some other transit pics - for another time!

This evening I was playing with some photos I took on a walk with friends in Monaghan - a Coillte property I think. We were on the Dartrey estate, and there seems to be plenty of scope for a return visit! The weather wasn't great so we just did an out and back walk, but I got a couple of interesting shots. Lovely bluebells too, but not as nice as in my local woods in Monasterevin of course!!

Kind of a grey day...


I loved this detail from a tree by the lake.


And the Rhododendrons were in bloom also, quite a few of them.






So that's a short post to round out the bank holiday weekend - a pretty busy one, with bloom on Saturday, entertaining family Sunday and doing some hardcore lazing today (though we did tidy up a little, honest) with the help of a Hitchcock movie as well as the movie Touching the Void.

This weekend has been finished off with some very tasty Dungarvan Black Rock Stout, very well put together. Tasting notes on the side (vanilla, aniseed) very helpful and seemed accurate to me. That'll go on the perennial list then too!

Oh, and busy Tuesday too - the talented students of the DIT photography school are opening their final year exhibition in Temple Bar, at the Gallery of Photography and the National Photography Archive - looking forward to seeing these! It's on now, and open for a couple of weeks - drop in and see and enjoy.

More info here! http://www.ditgraduatephotography.com/

Yosemite National Park, California, Post 2...

I hadn't uploaded all my pics when last I posted about Yosemite.

Half Dome:


This was our view during our picnic lunch:



And we saw more of the valley walls on the way back.




We went in on a second day, conditions on the (main) roads had improved and there'd been no snow overnight. Our plan was to hike (on-road) to the Mariposa grove of giant sequoias, then we'd see how it went.

Parked up just inside the entrance, and started the 3km or so hike up the windy mountain road to the grove. Nice views on the way, but we just wanted to get up there! When we got there, this was one of the first views we got.



As the caption says, those are not benches - they are the tops of mapboards!

The ponderosa pines are very elegant and tall throughout the park, and they are very tall compared to what trees I've seen, so I found myself wondering what the sequoias would be like..... once we got up close they felt big, definitely! And with their red bark, they really do stand out.


And the same trees, with people at their base for scale.....


But these were by no means the largest. The individual trees are well spread out in the grove, it's not an area exclusively populated by sequoias, the forest in between is the local mix of pine etc.

Then we met the Grizzly Giant:


After that we went to Wawona, a little settlement in the park, for a quick look around and a takeaway coffee.

More uploads recently from Santa Barbara and around, once I get those sorted you can have a look!

Ent seriously injured during battle with wind

I was passing through Naas this afternoon en-route to a meeting and I had to stop and take a picture of this tree. It had obviously been quite rotten and couldn't stand up to last night's barrage by the wind. Luckily, as far as I know, nobody was hurt except the Ent himself.

It's easy to look at an old tree and think how beautiful it is, and respect what must have happened in the time it's been alive (or treeing, or whatever it is you say a tree does), but at the back of it all, when this happens it's serious. This was a huge tree, which must have carried substantial weight...

*Ent: A fantastical inhabitant of middle-earth, best described as someone whose (thanks pete, it's late) bark was well, their skin. A tree-man, basically.

I like U2, but.....

So, they've started to use U2 music to get people back to church! The U2charist no less, hah. Anyone going to the US can see it here. Clever names aside, this could be the start of a trend. Though I doubt if they play Lemon, Numb, Who's gonna ride your wild horses, Bullet the Blue Sky, or I threw a brick through a window.. That said, a lot of U2's songs are spiritual, if not directly religios. Not sure what it'll do for credibility. (for either party)

Anyone interested in U2 go here.

We got a tree on the verge outside our house in the last couple of days! Isn't that fantastic? Cross your fingers it lasts for a while. Must be off, ironing to do....