Autumn Walk

The other day, I bought myself a new lens. I have gotten so accustomed to this new camera, it´s wonderful possibilities, and how the photos are so much more likely to turn out the way I want them, that I want a version of it that I can always just slip into my handbag. Clearly, none of the two zoom lenses I have are small enough. So I got this one, a 40mm "pancake" lens. It makes the Pentax look a bit like a pug, I think!

I took the new lens for a walk, and realized that it´s autumn already. Can´t believe how fast summer went by. We have been lucky with some very nice and warm days late in August. They say it was the coldest July since 1996, but it didn´t feel that way. For me, this summer was probably the best in years. I suppose the weather is only half of it.

I have been meaning to take a few nice photos of the slag buckets (I´m not sure about the translation here, I had to pick the word apart and make a guess) from the steel works that have been used as gigant flower pots in the Flora park. They hold 6 tons or 4,3 cubic meters of slag, often so hot that the casks get deformed and have to be replaced. The steel works go through eight of these a day, apparently. Anyway, I always come by when the sun is already too low to get a really good picture, but I decided to take a snap anyway, as I´m not likely to ever get there before lunch.

The trees in the park are pine, and the gardeners usually choose plants with much variation in the foliage rather than a bunch of pretty flowers; they are a bit coarser and rougher, with many shades of green that harmonize so well with the pine trunks. I think they also harmonize well with the rusty buckets.

I really like this view much better since they started building those big apartment houses on the left. For me, "nature and culture in harmony, you see Lizzy, wildness and artifice, and all in the one perfect county" (Mr Gardiner-quote from Pride & Prejudice, BBC-version 1995 - not the book, I have searched and searched...) is a sentiment I will always agree with, whether we are talking about Derbyshire or Lapland. Unspoilt nature has its worth, for sure, but I suppose that aesthetically I prefer the contrasts of the wild versus the man-made.


  1. we're still having highs in the mid to upper 90s F here, so i'm having trouble thinking of it as fall.

    i see the variety of foliage in your pictures. flowers last such a short time that it's good not to have to depend on them to add visual interest to a scene.

    1. Well, that´s the thing about living up north: the summers are often wonderful but oh so short. In Kiruna they say (jokingly, but they have a point) that summer lasts approximately one week, and if you are not observant, you are likely to miss it. Spring and early winter I dream of retiring some day to the south, have a small cottage with fruit trees and a vegetable garden.