Category Archives: Photography

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Found it!

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been engaged in an occasional search to find my favourite California native plant, the California bay laurel, in the Botanic Gardens near work. As you can see from the link, although the website has a bed location, it does not have a clickable link to the bed map. This made me wonder if the entry were old and outdated. Was the tree still there?

Even if the bed map entry was correct, I wasn’t sure where in the bed the tree would be. That bed happens to include a building as well as a number of plants, so it’s not the easiest place to search. Particularly for a plant I wasn’t sure was there.

But today, I found it.

The proof:

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Taken 12 December 2005

I knew the tree before I saw the label, of course.

The bay laurel grows in all of the places I spent my childhood. It’s an integral part of the species mix up at my parents’ cabin, where it was a traditional headache cure for the native Americans in the area. It grows on the UC Berkeley campus, and indeed I got into occasional trouble for climbing it there. And for many years, one grew just outside my bedroom window in Piedmont.

The fragrance a broken leaf brings me right back to those places and those times. I brought one back to the office (bad of me to take it, I know). Each time I smelled it, I had another tiny flashback to my past, and another microburst of homesickness. The mix of bitterness and memory reflects the nature of the bay laurel itself.

Bay laurel is in the family Lauraceae, the same family as European bay, laurus nobilis, (as well as cinnamon, avocado and sassafrass, but that’s another story). Bay laurel has about a third more resin ducts in its longer, narrower leaves than its European cousin. The fragrance and flavour are slightly different between the species: the California bay is sweeter and sharper, the European slightly more bitter. It can be used in cookery much the way its relative is, but one should use only part of a leaf where the recipe calls for a whole bay leaf. Californian bay is also more of a tree and less of a hedge than its European counterpart, and is useless for topiary.

Soup, anyone?

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Taken 12 December 2005

(Next target: Arbutus menziesii, also known as Pacific Madrone.)

(While downloading pictures from my camera, I also ran across this one from last week.

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Ivy stems.

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Taken 8 December 2005

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Rainy Day Walking

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It was a damp and muddy Monday for a lunchtime ramble. I was going to go to the Botanics to try to track down a California bay laurel (the tree I miss most from California). I stopped on the Rocheid Path to take some pictures and chat to a chance-met colleague, and never made it to the Botanics.

Fallen leaf on mossy wall.

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Taken 5 December 2005

Golden leaves and black stems.

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Taken 5 December 2005

I don’t know what this wee plant is, but it’s cute.

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Taken 5 December 2005

Surprise! We’re in the middle of a city!

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Taken 5 December 2005

I know that not all of these pictures are worthy of Ansel Adams. My camera is extremely limited in what it can do, and even with a good camera I can’t always capture what it is that I find beautiful. I simply hope that the delight I felt in seeing these things comes through in the images.

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Tuesday Walk

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It was a lovely day, cold but bright. The autumn is turning to true winter, with bitter winds, with the last leaves dropping from the trees. But with the bright sunshine, I hardly cared about the cold. I walked along the Rocheid path by the Water of Leith, then through the Royal Botanic Gardens back into Canonmills and back to work.

The last leaves on the oak tree on the Rocheid Path.

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Taken 29 November 2005

Piece of a wrought iron fence, Arboretum Avenue. Sunlight and shade.

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Taken 29 November 2005

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Taken 29 November 2005

Holly leaves, Aboretum Avenue. I love the shapes of these leaves, but I think I need a better background next time..

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Taken 29 November 2005

Red leaves with the green, Royal Botanic Gardens.

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Taken 29 November 2005

With a walk like that, on a day like this, the world is a good place.

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Phone Pix 2

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I changed my phone a few months ago, leaving my old Nokia for a new Sony Ericsson K750i. The ostensible reason was that the Nokia’s keyboard was wearing out, and I could no longer reliably answer calls. The real reason, of course, was that phone camera technology has moved on. Martin got a better camera phone, and all of a sudden I wanted one.

The new phone coincided with a greater emphasis on my lunchtime walks. The past few years, I’ve tried to be rigourous about going out at lunchtimes, since noticing the effect a midday walk has on my Seasonal Affective Disorder. Between the weather and my work patterns, this autumn has been a particularly good one for walks – possibly one of the reasons I have not sunk so deep into myself thus far this year.

I tend to go along the Water of Leith Walkway, through the local park, across the Botanic Gardens or by whatever other approximations of nature I can find in an hour. These times refresh my spirit, and my new phone has been a good tool to make myself see and appreciate the things I pass.

Here are the best of the bunch:

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Taken 19 September 2005

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Taken 19 September 2005

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Taken 29 September 2005

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Taken 17 October 2005

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Taken 18 November 2005

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Window Tax

I work in Edinburgh’s New Town (it’s relatively new, dating only from the late 1700’s. In comparison to the Old Town, which has buildings from the 1400’s, it’s new.). And the beautiful old Georgian buildings have an interesting feature: many of their windows are blocked.

This is because of progressive taxation. The Window Tax, which was introduced in the United Kingdom in 1696, was levied on homeowners in proportion to the number of windows in their houses. A common tax avoidance scheme was to block off a window so that one didn’t have to pay. Some homeowners even painted the blocked-off sections black, with white lines to represent the mullions.

Building with plain blocked-off windows, at the intersection of Dundas Street and Eyre Place. Taken 10 January 2005.

This building’s main windows are blocked off with plain stone, but someone went to the trouble to paint the one over the front door black. Why do one and not the other? I walk by it every day – it’s cattercorner from my office – and I’ve always wondered. Taken 10 January 2005.

Which windows are real and which are fake? The ones with the curtains are genuine windows, of course, but so are many of the others. In fact, only the bottom left window is blocked off and painted. But a casual glance on a sunny day sees no difference. Taken 10 January 2005.

In 1851, the Window Tax was abolished in favor of a flatter taxation system, which allowed the government to extract a greater proportion of its income from the growing middle class. But many of the owners of houses with blocked-up windows must not have wanted to go to the inconvenience and expense of unblocking them. And now, of course, most of the buildings are subject to conservation laws that determine how much they can be changed.

Edinburgh, a love letter, Photography

Phone Pix

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Every workday, I try to walk part of the way home. When the wind is gale-force or the sleet is dripping down my neck, I don’t do so well at it. But the rest of the time, the walk is a good wind-down after work, a chance to adjust to my home life, and an opportunity to immerse myself in a city I love.

Walking through the city has made me want to photograph it. And I have been, with my camera phone. But the pictures have been sitting there, stuck on the phone, until I got it together to get the cable and software together to be able to download them.

So here are a couple from December walks home. If I can get it together, I’ll start a regular column on what I see as I walk, with photos. The picture quality isn’t anything to shout about, but phone shots are better than none at all, which is what I would take if I had to bring a digital camera with me all the time. (I can barely keep track of my keys, some days.)

All of the trees in Edinhurgh’s main park, Princes Street Gardens, are lit up during the holiday season. But instead of going around the trees, the lights go along the trunk and branches. Taken 8 December 2004.

Smily found in chalk on the side of a burnt-out Bank of Scotland building opposite the Museum of Scotland. Connected to the arson attack that destroyed the branch? Probably not. Good use of symbols? Yes. Meaning? Unknown. Taken 8 December 2004.