Skywatch Friday :

Following on from Firefly's photo ... which is far, FAR nicer than mine (!) .. I also spotted 'the extra moon' !!! I captured mine, either the following evening, or two nights after Firefly's shot of the crescent moon ...

...but mine has been 'nibbled' ....

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Skywatch Friday :

It's freezing today but we do have blue sky and sunshine ... but lots of wind .. which makes it colder ! In Gauteng, it's winter so we expect to be cold ... this is a cold front that is sweeping up from the Cape ... brrrr ...

.. we do get days like this too ... grey and cloudy ... and cold of course, and on this day a week or so ago .. the sun peeped through for just a moment highlighting this copper coloured tree in the distance ... I happened to be standing at my kitchen window and grabbed the camera before the sunlight faded and turned the 'copper-coloured-tree' into just an ordinary tree ..

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Skywatch Friday :

With Wimbledon on the go at the moment and having watched some the history making mammoth game between 'David and Goliath' with a game went to an unbelievable 68-70 !!!! .. thought I'd post a 'London sky' from our trip to England and Ireland last year ...

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Skywatch Friday :

Not particularly a 'genuine' skywatch post, but there is a little bit of sky in each photo! - pale wintry ... very cold ... in fact freezing temperatures!!!)



Yesterday I went with Jeanette and the boys on our new express 'Gautrain', in Johannesburg, which was launched a few weeks ago ..

The initial stage is open .. from Sandton to OR Tambo International Airport and as it's school holidays at the moment and Jeanette had taken a few days off work, we decided to take the boys on their first train trip (they had never been on any sort of train before) ..

... they were in awe .. at the speed .. the view from the window ...

... the whole experience !!!!

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Skywatch Friday :

Sunrise - Ballito, Kwa Zulu Natal a few years ago ... my favourite sunrises

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Skywatch Friday :

I feel like ringing that bell ... we have had good news today ... very good news !! Yay !! My hubby had a biopsy on Monday and he has got the 'all clear' !!

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL DAY !!!

Just like it was when I took this photo on our recent trip to the Cape ...

Bell at Dutch Reformed Church built in 1847, Franschoek, Western Cape

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Skywatch Friday :

Not at all spectacular but this is what our garden is looking like right now - 7.00 am (Friday)...


... very very unusual for this area, this part of Johannesburg, to be shrouded in thick mist ...


.. put's a kind-of romantic feel to the garden that I see every single day !!!!

Photo below is taken from the dining room window toward the back garden (for those who have seen my garden photos before - look at the height of the hydrangeas - closest to camera on right .. they are mid-window height!) They never cease to amaze me .. how they grow out of their very old gnarled base into specimens of grandeur! :)


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Skywatch Friday :

Hermanus, Western Cape, South Africa
We live inland - Jo'burg to be precise .. it's time to go to the sea again .. to feel the sand between the toes !!

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Skywatch Friday :

We've had drizzly rain for days but has cleared now - thank goodness - and the sun is shining once again. I think we are in for more rain this weekend - all this rain is going to make our winter rather cold .. !! Highveld winters are bitter! :(

Anyway, the drizzly days were similar to a couple of days we had in Ireland last October .. and this is one of those days .. when we visited Croagh Patrick in County Mayo.



Croagh Patrick is a holy mountain named after St Patrick who is said to have spent 40 days fasting and praying for the Irish at it's peak in AD441. If it hadn't been so wet and slippery we would have climbed a little of the way up - 2 510 ft (772 metres) - the photo above shows the mountain shrouded in cloud and the photo below shows the view from St Patrick's statue overlooking Clew Bay. There is a chapel at the top of Croagh Patrick, built in 1905 at a cost of $100, and took 12 men six months to build with materials drawn up the mountain by donkey or horseback.



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Skywatch Friday :

From our front door ... in the late afternoon, the other day ...



... I went to the front garden but can never get a whole rainbow in the picture because of the trees and house ...



... is this Noah's dove looking for dry ground ?.. I think we're in for a wet weekend !


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Skywatch Friday :

Following on Jenty's blog yesterday about the possibility of the Cape Town City Ballet Company closing down due to lack of funds (absolutely tragic) and their drive to raise the necessary funding ... I remembered I had taken a photo of the beautiful and graceful ballerina catching the sunlight on a grey, cloudy day in London last year when we were on holiday ... she stands, on point, on top of the dome of the Victoria Palace Theatre ...

... and then I thought I would show you what our sky looked like this morning at 6.20 am ... a crisp Autumn morning on the Highveld in South Africa ...

... all photos taken from my back courtyard ... there is a dove - sitting on the edge of the roof ..

.. and then looking to the East ... there is a dot above the grey puff near the centre of photo ... the dot is a plane ... but it's difficult to see (very faint .. it was a small plane!!) I didn't take the photo for the plane - I took for the sky !!!

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Skywatch Friday :

Blue sky ... a fountain ... and a drake facing the morning sun ...



.. "excuse me ... this is my better side !"

Erinvale Country Estate and Spa, Somerset West, Western Cape

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Skywatch Friday :

Hubby and I returned yesterday from a couple of days in the Cape ... this was the evening sky last Saturday in Kalk Bay - a small town along the False Bay coastline, Cape Town - the sea was flat and calm with soft watercolour shades ...

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Skywatch Friday :

While waiting for our hired car on our last visit to Cape Town about a month ago this is what the clouds looked like ...



... and travelling from Cape Town International Airport to the City Centre, this was the cloud cover over Table Mountain (side view) ...

I notice the street lights are on in this photo above .. there is so much reconstruction of highways and byways in all our city centres ... I suppose 'they' forgot to turn them off !! or maybe the lights were being tested ?!

Hubby and I are off to the Cape tomorrow (Sat) ... again .. until Thursday next week .. sooo

.... bye for now

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Skywatch Friday :

After my ordeal yesterday with the 'sky falling down on me' .. I spotted this silver lining in the late afternoon sky ....

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Skywatch Friday :

I love this photo which my hubby took at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland on our holiday last year. The sun was shining ... a wishy-washy sunshine ... and the sky and sea rippled in the same way ..

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Skywatch Friday :

Blue sky ... puff of cloud ... Pincushion proteas ... (one of the many proteas found here - protea being South Africa's national flower)

Somerset West, Western Cape (my brother's garden to be exact!)

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Skywatch Friday :

Boo !!

First impressions of the dark shadowy 'ghost' faded fast .. when I got out the camera to take his photo, his arm on the left of pic, was quickly disappearing ... I suppose that's what ghosts do .. they come and then 'poof' ... they go !!

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Skywatch Friday :

Sitting on the patio of the Bistro and Tapas Bar at the Asara Wine Estate has this amazing view ..

... I have featured it on Skywatch before but it's just so beautiful, just had to do it again!!!

Last week, on our trip to Cape Town, hubby and I met up with family for tapas on the patio. We were not there long before the wind came up and clouds covered the Stellenbosch Mountains .... notice where the group of white birds moved to .. they were on the bank (above) and then moved to the sheltered bank (you can just see them to the left of the photo below).

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Skywatch Friday :

Yesterday .... a hot, cloudless and hazy day in Cape Town .... from the top of Signal Hill ...

.... looking down across Table Bay to Robben Island ... seemed appropriate for yesterday as it was the 20th anniversary of the 'walk to freedom' of Nelson Mandela who had been imprisoned on Robben Island for many years ....

The foreground puts it into perspective with the new Greenpoint Soccer Stadium built for the 2010 world soccer which is taking place in all the major cities in South Africa ...

.... and looking back from where I was standing to take the photo above .... how could I not include Table Mountain embracing the part of the City of Cape Town ...

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