Oh Mein Papa...

I may have mentioned this before because these days my memory is about as reliable as a Donald J. Trump promise, but, my father was full of pearls of wisdom, which he would often share with me. Possibly the most celebrated of these would be his, "If you see two crows, it's a rook". 

Another that he would trot out when the occasion warranted it, would be, "Never go back". He was always insistent that you should never revisit the past, but keep moving forward: "It just never works" he would say. However, just as I often did when he was alive, I am going to ignore his advice and do exactly that in this update.

My own thoughts on this subject are that the past is a wonderful place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Before we get all misty-eyed about the past: there is some breaking news I need to share. At least, at the time of writing it is breaking news, it may well be less so by the time this gets published. A clue? Certainly; here you are... 

And here is the news as reported on November 24th 2018

'A wallaby has been spotted hopping across a country road tonight. The animal was seen by a man, driving home from the Tenterden Christmas market.' 

Yes! A wallaby seen in the wild at a spot that can be no more than a few miles from my own house. Although quite how the man could tell the wallaby was on its way home from the market, I have no idea! I mean, do they even get the concept of Christmas? And how did it learn to drive a car? 😏  Here is the actual photo taken by the motorist...

How unusual is that?

Apparently not as unusual as you might think. Here is another reported sighting from last year...

As these two sightings are very close to each other, speculation grows that there is a whole family of them living in my area. One theory is the animal, or animals, have come from the Capralama Farm in Bethersden, but are now living in the wild. Note: You may have seen reports in the national news about this farm, which is also known as the Reindeer Centre. The news reports state that handlers have been filmed mistreating the animals.

Excitement over! Let's do this;

Shall we start by revisiting my birthday in 2009...

Yep, something a little different to begin; December 28th 2009 was when I photographed this lump of ice. It was a Monday and my diary tells me that I wrote the following entry: Although the forecast is for more snow by Thursday, today was reasonable after a very cold start. I even took some pictures in the garden.

Four years earlier, and in March, Kent was covered in a blanket of thick snow...

Thankfully, pretty as it is, it didn't last too long. The photos above were taken on March 15th and by 28th, the wood anemones were already flowering...

Moving on to July 29 of 2011, I photographed a butterfly eye in close-up...

This is a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly that had recently emerged from some pupae I had. I seem to recall that I was trying out a huge, round flash diffuser at the time...

Diffuser test shot from August 2011

This was taken in September of the same year, by which time I had ditched the round diffuser in favour of a rectangular one...

I then went on to fiddle about with this set up, 'cos I wasn't happy with the reflections in this picture, I remember.

I know what I was wanting to share with you: whilst (not while) I have been away from my blog, I have been busy in making (amongst other things) a set of bug-related mosaic panels...

Note: Both while and whilst are ancient, though while is older. There's no difference in meaning between them. For reasons that aren't clear, whilst has survived in British English but has died out in the US. However, in Britain it is considered to be a more formal and literary word than its counterpart.

Here is the first one in progress...

The completed panel

Then a smaller one based loosely on a shieldbug...

And another...

I also have a Western Conifer Shieldbug on the go...

At this point I am not sure where this will eventually take me regarding future additions, but do hope to be adding more shieldbugs, ladybirds, caterpillars maybe, butterflies, dragonflies/damselflies and...who knows what else!

Now was there anything else I was going to share from my inexhaustible supply of bug photos etc? Nope! Don't think so....unless....em, maybe one last compilation of photographs; these were all taken 8 years ago...

That's about it for now...

I shall leave the final words to the great Spike Milligan: "My father had a great influence on me...he was a lunatic."