Back to Christ Church Meadow

I visited Christ Church Meadow my first day in Oxford, but I didn't include a picture of the actual meadow. I've now done the meadow walk—a 1.5 mile path circling the meadow—several times. Christ Church College is our next-door neighbor in Oxford, and if you go out the back gate of Merton it's a five minute walk to the meadow.

What still astonishes me is that it is an actual meadow—acres and acres of grass, in the middle of a city where land is almost as expensive as Manhattan. Which tells you how ridiculously wealthy Oxford colleges in general, and Christ Church College in particular, are.

Of course, it wouldn't be a meadow without cows.

Water feature, plus cows

Summer, upstate New York.

There was no place to pull over, but I was the only one on the road so I just stopped the car and rolled down the window to take this picture. I might have liked to try to get the cows from a better angle, but I had an appointment with the alpacas and couldn't hang around.

The road back to San José

There are some more tree pictures to post from Monteverde, along with several birds, but I'm going to circle back to San José, and our various excursions in the vicinity, first.

I took this picture driving back to San José: cows on their way to auction.

Urban poetry

If you're going to have “urban” and “cow” in the same post, we must be in India.

This particular cow was hanging out near the City Palace in Jaipur.

Snow day

Sunday we drove to Mount Diablo to see the snow that had fallen during Saturday night's storm -- and yes, I mostly restrained myself from making snide comments about “real” snow, because it was a beautiful day, if cold enough to make even my jaded New York teeth chatter, and the dusting of snow was a lovely garnish.

Here are some cows outside the park. That figure on the right that appears to be some kind of pied piper leading them into bovine mischief is actually a tree that's lost its crown and most of its branches.

Urban poetry

I have nothing against cows, but I don't think of them as art, especially when Mama Cow is the size of a Manhattan apartment. Obviously they feel differently in Denver.

I have a raging sinus infection that presented as a toothache so bad I went to the dentist. Advil keeps the pain at a low throb, but I'm giving fair warning to anyone who approaches me today -- think very carefully about how stupid your question or request is before you ask it.

Because I might have a cow. And it would be a big one.

Sometimes scenery is practically a drug

Viaduct, with cows

Cows ignoring a marvel of 19th century Scottish engineering, the Culloden viaduct, outside Inverness.

To be fair, they may have just been wondering how Mairi over there managed to grow her head out of  her shoulder. (These aren't particularly hairy cows, but it's still sometimes hard to tell where one ends and the next one begins -- those two cows merge together so perfectly I had to enlarge the picture several times to figure out what I was looking at. Click to enlarge and you'll see what I mean.)

I hate to cast aspersions on any creature, but I'm fairly certain that Flora, over there on the other end, has never wondered much about anything. Even for a cow, she doesn't look all that bright.

Bonus cow blogging

I am in the Highlands, after all, so I can't forget about the hairy coos.

They've always reminded me of Donald Trump, but now that he's so much in the news, I've overheard multiple people remarking on the resemblance.

Sunday cow blogging

Just because this cracked me up. Who knew cows were into Lorde?

A not-so-hairy coo

A cow outside Luss stalks over to confront the chick with the camera.

I love how the grass stalk dangling from the mouth and the expression on the cow's face look like an audition for a bovine version of West Side Story. With the ear tags as gang colors.