Let's kick off with some random photos

All the best blogs have wonderful photos of some of the most overlooked but everyday sights around the blogger's home town. Random items or places spied when on a day trip. Amusing or rude signs. Flags or chimneys or horses or buckets. Birds and lights and teapots and squirrels. I am fascinated by how fascinated I am. I love startling colourful photos of flowers. I think we all love those sky photos. In fact, since moving to Alberta I have become just a little obsessed with my sky.

It sounds a little pathetic to state that I never realised how big it is - like "good grief woman, where have you been" pathetic. But it is phenominal to me now only because I can see so much of it. Let me explain - afterall, the sky has been there all the time.

Where I grew up in Surrey which is a lush and green county, albeit commuter land, I completely took for granted all the centuries-old oak trees, the massive (and somewhat weed-like) proliferation of huge sycamores, my old road was lined with beech trees, the large overgrown yew hedges and the short blast of magenta on the rhododendrons. But what I never realised was just how much of the sky all that greenery obscured. On a return visit to the last summer, I felt claustrophobic at the height and coverage of those canopies of leaves. I felt the need to duck down in all the tunnels, or to breathe in along the country lanes. Where was the sky?

So I would like to soon join in the with the skywatch entries in the blogosphere and hope I can do justice with my camera to some of the outstanding and inspirational skies that nature offers me in this chunk of the world.

And in the meantime, here's my starter for ten - some extremely random selection of photos from my album.

Dog Number One - say hi to Smudge

Dog Number Two - and here's Honey - my Lion King

A ground squirrel-type fella, cooling off in the shade ....

A Grey Jay

Allium