Skywatch Friday

Still very unreliable weather here. It may seem hard to believe from the photos below, but today it's been raining most of the day, with dark clouds and torrential rain showers swiftly coming and going. 

I managed to sneak out for a while during a break between showers, though.

I walked past these buildings (about 10 min from home) which are currently being renovated: New insulation added, and new facade cladding on top. I'm pleased to see that they have restored the finished buildings to pretty much the same colour as before - I was worried for a while that they were changing them to yellow... (That turned out just to be the colour of the insulation, though - soon hidden again)

 

This is the last building they're working on now.

I went round the back of the finished ones today and noted that they've got new balconies as well, looking all neat and clean. Must have been very tiresome to live there while it was all going on... but hopefully the result feels worth it once it's all over with.

Down by the river, nearby - other apartment buildings of similar colour on the other side.

Linking to Skywatch Friday

Blue and Yellow

 

Yesterday, after a rainy day when I also had the laundry room booked for the afternon, I did not get out until rather late (or early evening). But on my walk around the old cemetery I had another of those "magic light" moments (cf previous post), as the sun fell on this plant with the huge leaves and the tall blue flowers - whose name I could not remember, so I had to look it up again now. (Google Image Search makes that a rather easy job nowadays, though...) Hosta, or plantain lily in English. In Swedish funkia.

They grow of many of the old graves in this cemetery, and sometimes in combination with these yellow ones below (which I had to look up as well). Lysimachia punctata, or yellow loosestrife in English, praktlysing in Swedish.

The leaves of the hostas are also beautiful in/after rain, as they tend to collect and show off the raindrops... The photo below is from back in May, before the plants were in bloom.

 

* * *

 

The national flag of Sweden consists of
a yellow or gold 'Nordic cross'.
Blue and yellow have been used as
Swedish colours at least since 1275.
[Wikipedia]

Magic Light, and more Chess

 

Some "leftover" photos from Friday last week. It never ceases to fascinate me how the light falls differently at different times of the day; and sometimes a certain place you pass quite frequently can suddenly be illuminated in a very special light. 

Sitting down on a bench to rest and just looking UP can also suddenly give you a new perspective on familiar surroundings.

 

 

The weather changed again for the weekend - Saturday was cooler, and quite windy; and on Sunday it rained most of the day. From the local newspaper. I knew that there were all sorts of things going in the city centre and park on the Saturday: At noon the annual celebration of the town's birthday (403), including a presentation of a new 'Borås Ambassador' (a new one appointed every year, and this time the Swedish/British pop singer Shirley Clamp, who was born here). And in the afternoon a Pride parade. For my own part, I was feeling tired though, and not inspired for neither long walks nor crowds of people. So I just had a generally lazy weekend at home (with just short walks closer to home).

 ♔♕♖♗♘♙

While resting my body, I explored a new way of exercising my brain. It was the giant chess game recently set up in the square downtown that inspired me. My dad taught me the basics way back in my childhood, but I can't say I ever really took to it (involving too much waiting - and rarely winning! - I found it rather boring). I think I've hardly played all since my teens. Now it occurred to me to check up on what I remembered, though; and I found the website Chess.com, where (among other things) you can play against "chess bots"... Just the thing when you want a partner with endless patience - but who never lets you wait too long for their next move! ;)

(I played on my tablet, resting against cushions on my bed -  but I love this AI created image from Bing, with a chess board replacing the keyboard...)