Saturday 28 January 2012: Inverted cloud

Isn't this cool? I had a few blips in the camera today and then, at around sunset, Immy came into the kitchen and said "Wow, the sea looks purple!" drawing my attention immediately to the sunset beyond the windows. I grabbed the camera and dashed out onto the deck. The Arthur Range across Tasman Bay was looking very dark and ominous, with big clouds being driven in from the south-west by the strong wind. We've had a sunny day over this side so the sky immediately overhead was still blue, but the clouds were being tinged with pink, orange and smoky grey. I took a number of shots that had to include the power pole and cables - but in silhouette, so it looked OK. Then I pointed the camera straight up at the sky and shot this cloud.

After I downloaded it, I wondered what it would look like upside down, so I've rotated it 180 degrees. That's the only thing I've done to it - haven't altered anything else. To me, it rather resembles an impressionistic image of a bird of prey coming in to land.

As I mentioned, we have had strong, gusty winds here today (the Met Service says gusts of 31kmh in the past ten minutes, but I think it may have been stronger than that earlier in the evening). Another stem of the yellow roses had blown over so I had to rescue the blooms (mostly just-opened buds, so I'm glad to say they've recovered in water). I spotted the bamboo canes in the roof of the car-port, stored there in September when our neighbour asked us if we would mind cutting out the bamboo as it was encroaching on his garden. I tried valiantly to drive a stake into the ground with a mallet, but it just wouldn't go!! At that point I found myself wondering how, in the space of less than two weeks, I have gone from being someone who, if spotted attempting to pick up a rake, would have people dashing at her shouting "OK, OK Madam, I will do it, I will do it!" to someone who heaves bags of compost around and struggles with staking up roses in a brisk south-westerly....

Eventually I managed to sort of make the stake go in, but had a jolly good laugh at myself half an hour later when I noticed the rose waving about in the wind, supporting the stake which had managed to tear itself free!

Earlier in the day, I had taken Immy for a hair trim and then she and I went to the garden centre at Mitre 10 to buy some plants for the empty pots outside the front door. We chose a very bright selection of geraniums and pelargoniums, which we duly potted in, and then Immy planted the hanging basket that we had bought for outside the front door with a selection of Impatiens and Lobelia. One of the gardening shots would probably have been the blip, had not I captured the sunset. We have quite a few pots around the place that need filling up.... I think it will have to be a week-by-week project.

• Canon EOS 60D:
• f/4:
• 1/100":
• 55.0mm

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