Annalia S.'s photos with the keyword: tree

Light shines through graffiti sprayed onto the translucent sound barrier and the old fence by the railroad tracks, while a wet platanus bark contributes its more somber colors and more natural designs. HFF, everyone, and have a colourful weekend!

This is for any "garden variety" detectives out there. Who/what left this curl on one of the trees in my garden? Other clues; The only people who come into the garden are me and my husband (and neither of us is in the habit of scratching the bark off the trees). This is a tall tree with hardly any branching off except at the very top and it's very flexible. At the top of the tree a pair of wood pigeons are nesting. Right next to them hangs a home made bird feeder that is popular with sparrows. This is a macro, so the curl is actually quite small. Will publish the identity of the culprit tonight. Meanwhile ... does anyone care to have a guess? PIP ADDED and ... Congratulations, Karl and Stephan! You pretty much guessed it! We do not have woodpeckers or other birds that feed on bark parasites and no squirrels, so Suspect N. 1 is .... Mina! I have added a pip to introduce her to you. She is not ours but likes to visit and is possibly the fiercest hunter of her kind I have met, daring to mess even with creatures that are nearly as big as she is. She grew up with dogs so she has a number of dog like behaviours that are quite funny, such as laying on her back and showing her belly when she wants to play. A pleasant visitor but ... a terror for the poor birds!

I was about 5 years old when my art teacher father got me my first serious painting kit. He wanted to get me oil based paints, but my mother put her foot down, so we went for more washable tempera paints. The art supply store, with its profusion of colors, its smells and mind boggling variety of brushes, spatulas, easels and palettes, was like a rutilant wonderland to me, better than any stores, even better than the toy store! What part of this phantasmagoria would be mine to take home, I wondered, excitedly. My dad took a long time selecting brushes, checking what hairs they were made of and picking different shapes and sizes. He explained his choices to me, but all I remember now is the wonder of the different textures: boar hairs were coarse and rigid, others as smooth as silk, and others even more incredibly light and almost feathery and would tickle the palm of your hand if you ran them across it. The paint tubes themselves, however, did not take long: a large tube of white, an equally large tube of black and four smaller tubes: yellow, blue and two kinds of red. Considering the endless variety of colors offered by the store, some of them - flowery pinks, aqua greens, light and dark turquoises - just irresistible to a young girl, this was a bit disappointing. “What about the other colors, Dad?” I asked. He smiled and said “You’ll see”. As we headed home he elaborated a bit on that rather unsatisfying answer: “You can make any color you saw in the store from the ones we got”. That sounded more hopeful, but I still couldn’t see how red, blue or yellow could be turned to aqua green or turquoise, or shocking pink. It sounded like some magic trick would be required. At 5 years of age, kids tend to believe their parents are all powerful. But still, magic tricks didn’t seem like his cup of tea. And yet, magic it was, of course. A wonderful magic that makes yellow and blue turn into a whole palette of greens depending on how much of each gets mixed in. And red and yellow into orange, blue and red into purple, but … wait! Red was a bit different; to get the right results, red had to come in two different versions: scarlet and vermillion. You needed scarlet red to make purple and vermillion red to make a proper orange. Switch them around and the magic would not work right. Vermillion red and blue made brown, not purple. And scarlet and yellow made a sort of salmon pink instead of orange. I understood the principle and could see some difference in those two colors, but still, red is red, isn’t it? Vermillion just seemed a little lighter and perhaps more brilliant than scarlet, but still it was just red to me. I did not really “get” vermillion, not until - that is - I saw my first pomegranate tree, or rather, the absolutely flamboyant flowers of the pomegranate tree. If you have ever seen them in real life, I think you’ll agree that “red” just does not do justice to them, doesn’t even begin to describe their happy, sunny, light-filled color that stands out so strikingly against the brilliant green of the leaves. The main photo and PIPs are all from two beautiful pomegranate trees in Piazza Savonarola's little city park which, this time of year, are in full bloom. I swear I must have spent nearly an hour there, shooting this way and that, into the trees and under the trees, sticking my camera through the branches to get close to the busy bees that were visiting their beautiful vermillion flowers. I hope you enjoy … well, I can’t say the fruit of my labour. It’s not really labour when you are having that much fun, is it? :) This is especially dedicated to Andy and Maurice (HappySnapper) who are going through tough times. Errata corrige: Upon rereading I realize I used the wrong red for the one that gives purple if mixed with blue: it's carmine, not scarlet! Sorry. Should re-read my stuff before I publish! :))

In the main image, gardens in bloom along the left bank of the Arno River. In the Pip, light at play among the plants in my garden.

In the summer of 2014 a freak weather phenomenon, called a downdraft, took down countless trees in our section of town and snapped in two our Lebanon Cedars. We kept a section of the trunk (now used as a support for plant pots) where you can see the concentric circles marking the many years of growth. With the radiating cracks and the warm colors of the Cedar wood, it made me think of an abstract representation of the sun.

One of the restored buildings of the former insane asylum in San Salvi Park. HFF everyone!

Along the Arno River, downstream from the city, on a misty winter morning. I liked how the mist softened colors and made for a perfect background for the tree silhouette. In the Pip: people (and a dog) take morning walks along the river despite the humid weather; in the distance, almost hidden by the mist, the newly refurbished pedestrian bridge that connects the Isolotto area to the Cascine Park.

A garden fence shadow stands out against the textures of a majestic Lebanon cedar and a bed of succulents at its feet. HFF!

Well, now two blackbird chicks showed up in the garden along with the parents. Mama Blackbird’s first priority seems to be feeding those two hungry mouths. There’s no diverting her from that task! Papa Blackbird’s job description instead focuses on the other imperative: Protect the family! Most days he has it pretty easy: his efforts mostly include flying in in front of me when I happen to walk too close to where the chicks are sheltered or keeping a sharp eye on the area from up in the trees. But yesterday was a whole different day: a black and white stray cat must have found the hole in the neighbour’s fence and all of a sudden I heard a big commotion of chirping and flying around. So I went down to the garden, where Papa was launching mock attacks on the kitty and keeping up a storm of frantic alarm calls. Fortunately, my mere presence was enough to scare the stray cat off. Still, it took quite a while for poor Papa Blackbird to calm down and I haven’t seen the chicks since. Tough job being blackbird parents!

A wood pigeon surveys the neighbourhood from the top of a tree that was ravaged by a freak tornado a few years ago. I don't know if they already have eggs, but normally they do this when they are worried about marauding magpies.

A couple of days of gusting winds knocked off the inflorescences from a neighbour's tree and they ended up getting caught in all sorts of places around the garden. I was fascinated by their colors and shape and took a few photos (see also pips). If anyone knows what this tree is called, I would very much appreciate the info!

Looking up at my neighbour's tree beginning to fill out its canopy with new leaves and blossom clusters tall enough to reach up into the evening sunlight.

These days the majestic magnolia bovolata tree in Piazza Beccaria has dozens of people circling it every morning, with their phones up in the air trying to capture a bit of spring on their way to work. PIP

Behind a rusty fence, the last light of the day gives a bare tree a crown of gold. HFF everyone! Please see large.

The low winter sun selectively lighting up the branches of a bare tree in my garden seemed to make an interesting abstract.

This is the bark of a platanus tree, but the designs make me think of ghostly animal shapes running through smoke and fire. Over one billion animals lost (not counting the smaller ones, like frogs and insects) is a tragedy beyond imagination. We need to call things by their name: what is happening in Australia is not an unusual bushfire season, it is an environmental disaster of staggering proportions, one for which we are collectively, globally responsible.

I was attracted by a beautifully yellow tree at the Cascine park. Under it, besides this medley of yellow leaves, I noticed large dark drupes that clearly contained a walnut-like nut. Took a bit of research online to figure out it's an ornamental black walnut.