Annalia S.'s photos

This ornate fence really stood out against the smooth, newly repainted wall of the carriage way. A couple more detail shots in the PIPs. HFF, everyone, and have an outstanding weekend!

Sant'Ambrogio square is on my route home from work and a coveted spot for street musicians (see www.ipernity.com/doc/2518356/50885646) . This time it was the turn of a trio singing/playing the typical Florentine "stornelli" - folk tunes featuring often humorous tales of the life of the common folk: love, betrayal, rotten luck, mischievous youngsters, nasty bosses, sassy women and not so holy clergymen. While not quite as popular as other groups, they did have an appreciative audience, who giggled and laughed out loud at some of the (sometimes heavy-handed) humor. The singer took a break to go get some cool water for himself and his partners, so he only appears in the PIP, where he's singing the woes of a husband coming home to find his wife closeted in the barn with the next-door farmer.

Happy Bench Monday, everyone!

Some thirty years ago, when he was just a young adult, my brother visited Ireland with a friend. Since they wanted to move around the island freely, they drove my brother's car all the way from Italy. Their English was minimal but enough to get by while traveling and they really enjoyed the trip. While visiting the Cliffs of Moher, my brother became fascinated by Liscannor stones and decided to purchase a flagstone from a local quarry to bring back to my dad (who had a lifelong passion for stones and geology in general). He was, however, concerned about the weight of the stone, since they had a long way back to Italy and didn't want to tax the car too much. With their basic English, they asked the quarry worker: "How much weight is stone?" The guy replied: "A stone." My brother and his friend looked at each other in puzzlement, then decided it must have been a question rather than an answer. "Yes. We buy only one stone," they clarified. "One stone," confirmed the worker. "Yes, right," said my brother. Silence ensued. So they tried again: "How much weight is ONE stone?" The puzzled worker, probably thinking they were not just foreigners but a bit on the dim side too, repeated, enunciating slowly: "A stone." My brother was just on the verge of deciding the guy was a total jerk by the time it finally became clear that "a stone", in addition to describing the thing itself, was also a unit of measurement. (equivalent to a little more than 6 Kg.) So,"the stone that weighed a stone" finally got purchased, travelled to Italy and to this day graces the garden path of the house that used to be my parents' and now belongs to my brother. As you can see, after many years and a lot of foot traffic, it is still beautiful and one can still clearly see the squiggly fossilized marks left by creatures feeding on the sea floor in the Carboniferous era. The story of the Liscannor stone was also a favorite with my nephews when they were little and a great way to teach them about cultural barriers and differing points of view. :)) For more details on the geology of the Liscannor stones: www.cliffsofmoher.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Cliffs-of-Moher-Geology.pdf

It is not uncommon for Florentine palazzos to have inconspicuous side doors, usually service doors or side entrances to a courtyard or storage areas. This one was clearly commissioned especially to blend in with the facade and, despite the ageing of the wood, it is still pretty well camouflaged. Closer inspection revealed a slot for the post and an old doorbell, so this might have been used as a service door or was perhaps the entrance to a custodian's quarters.

Glad to hear you are home, Andy! Be sure to celebrate by spoiling yourself with the things you missed! :) Main and pip: a led light placed around the restaurant deck reflected on the wine glasses and, in the main, on our gold coloured Fiano di Avellino.

Wild grasses by a masonry fence protecting a private garden. I took this back in May. Now everything around here has turned the color of straw in the unrelenting heat. :( HFF and have a cool, green weekend!

The street musicians are back and these guys, with their jazzy rock, are among my favourites. Have a jazzy week ahead, everybody!

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!

With blinds strictly closed against the heat, sometimes the only sign of habitation is the laundry out on the line :))

By the fence of the Isolotto children's playground. No children around at this hour (too frigging hot!), but someone found a pole to secure their brightly coloured bike. Happy Colorful Fence Friday, everyone and an equally bright coloured weekend!

Happy (Do It Yourself) Fence Friday to everyone! Have a colorful weekend, full of interesting choices! :)

I have an internal stairway with a skylight where I shelter the potted geraniums during the winter. This year I got lazy and didn't return them all to the garden. The light from the skylight, however, seems to be enough for them to flower and this bloom lit from above caught my attention. For Andy and Maurice (HappySnapper). Wishing you both the resilience you need as Andy recovers from a tough battle and Maurice fights his own fight.

Care to guess how many fannies must have sat on these benches? :D Have a nice week, everybody! And forgive if I'll be returning visits later on in the week. My first three days of the week at work are always long and busy ...

On the banks of the Arno River. I find interfaces very interesting. Here the vegetation on the very edge of the river banks finds sufficient moisture to thrive even in the summer heat. A few paces away from the water everything dries out (and Park Services mows it down). For Maurice: no swans visiting this stretch of the river yet this year, but there's a small group that shows up almost every year. For Andy and Maurice: wishing you both a moment of simple serenity as you work at recovery or wait to learn news about the way forward.

A perfunctory fence at the Anconella Park as you look towards the right bank of the Arno River at the river front façade of Hotel Ville sull'Arno. Too darn hot to do much fence hunting these days, so this is from my spring archives. (does better on black, I think) HFF and hope your weekend is not as sweltering as ours promises to be!

An installation by French artist JR on the façade of Palazzo Strozzi, representing the wound inflicted by the pandemic to cultural institutions. The b/w photographic collage visualises a rip in the physical structure of the building that reveals its interior, in part real (the colonnade of Palazzo Strozzi's courtyard), in part imagined (rooms hosting art exhibitions and libraries), creating an arresting contrast to the brown stone of the Palazzo. In the PIP: a glimpse of the actual interior courtyard seen past its b/w photographic counterpart. For more info: www.palazzostrozzi.org/en/archivio/exhibitions/jr

Benches at Piazza Savonarola's city park. Happy Bench Monday, everyone! I apologise in advance if I won't be able to visit much. Next three days at work promise to be pretty exhausting ...