Roman roads

Look at this satellite photo of the Via Flaminia (one of the most famous Roman roads) passing through the suburbs just North of Rimini. The occupied (warmer) houses show up as white / pale green, while the darker rectangles are colder, unoccupied premises.

No, that's a load of rubbish. It is actually a picture of a leaf!  Here it is viewed more conventionally:

It's a Sweet Chestnut leaf, floating in a puddle of water.I just love the patterns created by its veins.

This is a more traditional style of photo - a close-up study of a Blueberry bud just beginning to form:

I'm "on" leaves today, so what do you think of this one? It's a tiny leaf from a Swiss Chard plant.

I think the pink stem is particularly attractive. During the Summer the plant's stems were all white, but in the cooler weather the bases of all the new leaves are this shade of pink, though it seems to fade when they grow bigger.

Finally for today, this lovely but unidentified red leaf. It looks a bit like the one I used for my "Autumn" picture a couple of months ago, but it must be of a different type since all the "Fish tree" leaves have been dry and brown for ages now. It must have blown in from someone else's garden.

The brown berries are the formerly bright red ones from the Fish tree itself. [Note to new readers: Fish tree is our name for a tree in our garden that is a type of Sorbus. It has very "fishy"-smelling blossoms in the Spring.]

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I'm afraid I haven't much time for blogging at present. For the first three days of this week I am commuting from Fleet to Bristol each day, a journey of about one and three-quarter hours each way, so spare time is a bit scarce. I hope to put together something a bit more substantial later in the week, and hopefully I'll also have the time to enjoy YOUR blogs too...