It's A Mystery

We called in at a couple of Garden Centres today and at one of them there were several large objects around the site and this is one of them.

It looks like a huge terracotta pot but it would take one heck of an amount of compost to fill it and watering could be a problem. Whether they are there just as a talking point or whether they serve a useful purpose I'm not sure but the only way we could get one in our garden - not that I want one - would be to lower it from a helicopter or drop it from a great height. Maybe that's why they are made with pointed bottoms - to stick in the earth like a dart or a spear!

Street Art

Several of the empty shops on Bath Street had their windows boarded up and were given a facelift by the addition of enlargements of old scenes of Ilkeston. It was not the most unexpected thing in this world when some of them became the target of vandals but now in the last day or two, the remaining old photos have been complemented by some colourful street art.

This picture above shows just two of the new additions alongside one of the original old scenes but all of them are labelled Class .... and one also has the initials K J S which leads me to suspect that they have been prepared by children from Kensington Junior School. I just hope that the vandals can keep their hands off or better still some business entrepreneur could open up the shops again and revitalise the lower end of Bath Street.

Swan Lake, Swan Lake

With the cold wind dropping, today was positively springlike and we were tempted to take a short walk around Swan Lake (Straw's Bridge Nature Reserve) without coats! We were not the only ones taking advantage of the weather either as an artist was busy capturing the scene in oils.


He was making a really good job of it too but broke off to spend a few minutes chatting to us before kindly agreed to let me take this photo. He had obviously spent quite some time on his work but for me I captured two images in one with just a click of a button. I often envy though the talent of people who can create such works of art but it wouldn't do for us all to be the same and at least I can admire the results of their labours.