Xander's Skyscape

@wellmanneredxs.bsky.social

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Wandering Egyptologist/writer/wildlife gardener. Openly Womble. Likes: conservation, archaeology, the natural world, beautiful words, art, and writing 18th Century fantasy.

A huge jar of elderflower cordial in preparation, with lemon slices and elderflowers floating in pollen-tinted water. It'll be delicious. Photo and cordiality by Xander's Skyscape
Three big fat loganberries, shiny as jelly and blood-red in my hand, with all the juice running about as if I've staved off a vampire or something. They were very tasty. A lavender plant in flower is out of focus behind my fingers. Photo and haphazard loganberry-growing by Xander's Skyscape
Swarzwalderkirschamisu - a big cut-glass dish full of very tasty layered dessert, with chocolate sponges soaked in a chocolate-cherry liqueur, layered with zabaglione, and topped with liqueur-doused dark Kent cherries. It was very nice and a rematch would be its just dessert.
A clump of snowdrops out in full sun at National Trust Chartwell on 27th December 2025. A beautiful view of Kent countryside is in the background.
The Roman theatre in Alexandria at Kom-El Dikka, a smallish, horse-shoe shaped structure of 13 rows of seats built in white marble, with red Aswan granite columns. A park and modern Alexandria is in the background. 2008 photo by Xander's Skyscape
Kom el Dikka in Alexandria, with the red-walled large public Roman bath-house in the background, and low-walled remains of part of the 5th-7th century school-complex with its many small auditoria to the left in the foreground. Distant modern buildings hem in the site. 2008 Photo by Xander's Skyscape
A large tortoiseshell butterfly basking on a dead tree in mid Kent, in early March 2024. Still officially extinct at that time, they have now been confirmed as breeding in the UK (2026). The butterfly is indeed large, a good 7cm wingtip to wingtip, and has bright orange wings with large black spots, blue beading around the edge and some pale yellow patches along the upper wings' leading edges. It also has a slightly odd flight, and a vivid sense of orangeness when in movement, unlike other large UK butterflies. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
An archaeological excavation at Point Rosee in Newfoundland. A lush green meadow slopes away to cliffs and a glittering sea, with headlands in the far distance. It's sunny, and there are white hazy and fluffy clouds. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
A dwarf iris in the rain, with fat raindrops on the fall of the flower, which is dark violet blue with a yellow flash and white speckles. The frilly standards are more of a sky blue. Photo and haphazard gardening by Xander's Skyscape
Barbara twigs - cherry twigs brought in from the garden on Saint Barbara's day, December 4th - in early flower. The twigs are in a glass vase, and the flowers are white with yellowy centres. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
The Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza with a smoggy blue sky in the background - not a high-res photo, but at least phones today do the funky elongated full-screen thing. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
A teeny-tiny image of the Royal British Legion standards of Sark, from the Sark Standard Box that supports them when they're not being used on duty. The whole is only 3 inches high or so and I've never really done miniatures before. Also didn't have the right weeny brushes, but I gave it a whirl, and the folk who commissioned it were pleased, so I'm pleased. The King didn't say it was rubbish, either, so it's probably all right. Photo and painting by Xander's Skyscape
Sparkly Christmas trees and fiddles, accordions, a guitar and a cuddly hippopotamus fill the stage at St Dunstan's church in Cranbrook for the last night of Carthy and Boden's wonderful Wassail Tour. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
Awfully impressive handmade beaded brooches at the National Gallery showing a jolly lobster and a crab, and some fine lemons. They're priced at £75 and must have taken hours to make. Photo by Xander's Skyscape.
A cheerful womble with a big handful of dahlia tubers and a purple and cerise patterned scarf. Photo from the WellmanneredXS Youtube video.
A very beautiful heron reflected in the Nile at Aswan. Despite being sandy brown, it's still well camouflaged among the green reeds. I think it's a purple heron, but it's not a great photo. Photo by Xander's Skyscape.
A cute stuffed crabby, in red fabric with sparkly red sequins on their shell and white applique eyes, as part of Leeds Castle's very nice Neverland Christmas, with much piratical cheer. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
A propelling pencil and an eraser slotted into the hieroglyphs of a cartouche on the belt of a colossal statue of Amenhotep III. The eraser fits very pleasingly into the mn glyph, which is a long rectangle with 7 points projecting upwards. The stone is a beautiful purply brown quartzite and the glyphs are large and finely-cut. Photo and stationery arrangement by Xander's Skyscape.
A very unexpected Third Generation Holly Blue butterfly - November 8th is very late in the year. Ivy is in bright acid-green flower, attracting many insects - here, a greenbottle sits in front of the silvery underside of the butterfly's wings with their pattern of tiny dark spots. Photo by Xander's Skyscape
This year's pumpkin. The medallion on the front is the design of a lovely Yule decoration a good friend made me more than a decade ago, and shows an ivy-leaf in a lozenge, with little spirals, all in the intaglio style. Cut-work ivy tendrils extend to either side, and clustered Ankhs of light project out of the back from the ankh-shaped air-vent. Photo and pumpkin carving by Xander's Skyscape, ivy design by Ni Claydon.
Pots of Spring flowers, with narcissi and tulips, in white, pink, yellow and peach. Some of the daffs are big fat doubles, and the leaves are very green. A hazel tree is just bursting bud in the background. Varieties include Narcissi Salome, Lothlorien, Replete and possibly Pueblo, with Tulips Pretty Princess and Quebec. Photo and bulb-planting by Xander's Skyramblings.
The world's oldest cake - image shows 4000 year old stuffed pancake in the green-coloured bronze, clam-shaped cookware that created a sort of vacuum to cook and conserve it when heated up. The pancake looks quite fresh. Photo from the MSN news article, showing a screenshot of the arkaeofili instagram account - no individual photo credit is given on the site - sorry!
A view over Orkney's spectacular treeless landscape, with a hill sweeping away down to the scallop-edged bay, and other islands off in the distance. There are broken fluffy clouds in the sky, the sea reflecting grey and blue, and the summer grass is very green. Photo by Xander Sable
The magical caves at Derrible Bay, Sark. A large pool of cold, mirror-bright seawater reflects the sunny cavemouth and the dark maroon cave ceiling. Sand edging around the pool is rippled by the tide. The acoustic in here is wonderful. Photo by Xander Sable.
A two-storey bookshop in the marvellous Shakespeare and Co bookshop in Paris. Colourful books fill the shelves at reachable height, include Damian Barr's The Two Roberts. Photo by Xander Sable, by permission of the bookshop.
A picture of the Canterbury Poet of the Year 2025 anthology of 30 longlisted poems, showing a bronze statue of Chaucer on the cover. The competition is part of the Canterbury Festival. Photo (and one longlisted poem!) by Xander Sable.
Some very pretty fluffy seaweeds pretending to be a seaslug.
A rockpool in the crystal clear waters of Orkney, with some beautiful wrack floating beyond the perfect reflection of the clouds, sky, and rocks. The rocks are pinkish with green incrustration, and there is a tiny little passenger on the wrack, waving a little pincer out of his scavenged shell home.
A dodgy zoomed phone-photo of a gorgeous, very freshly emerged peacock butterfly Aglais io, on some cracked concrete, its large false eyes showing against its colourful chestnut-red wings and its thread of a waffle-edged shadow. Stunning thing, joy to see unexpectedly at the train station.
Image by Ernesto BENAVIDES, from Newsweek El Salvador, and reproduced here only to emphasise the EXTREME CUTENESS of the little double toad sculpture found by Peruvian archaeologists at the site of Vichema. A red toad and a paler toad in clay are side by side and look cheerful about life.
An artisan at Lisht hoes a huge oval bank filled with crumbled Nile mud, straw, and water to make new mud bricks to consolidate ancient mud bricks. The process is barely changed since the original mud bricks were made 4000 years ago. Tents and date palms are in the background.
An agretti seedling, uncurled from its little husk, like a little fiddlehead crook. Do not be fooled by the daunting hype, in sowing - they don't take long to germinate, and will uncurl like this during the first 24 hours of soaking. it is grassnake green and shiny with moisture, with dark peat-free compost and a red flowerpot wall in the background. Photo and more-luck-than-judgement gardening by Xander Sable
A heavy shower on the garden after the worst UK Spring drought in a hundred years. All the trees are drinking it up in their green spring clothes, and the raining is drumming on the rooftops.
A snippet of video of after-sunset dusk, the sky a band of peach rising into dark blue, with a tiny crescent moon. A skylark, unbelievably, is still singing.
Dodgy screengrabs of different bumblebees as they arrive at and leave their little nests. One set is in the midst of ivy leaves, one is under a wallflower. They are blurry and quite small, but the left hand set has a gingery bottom and yellow band near the neck, with a black body, and the right hand one has a white bottom, a yellow band just on its abdomen and a yellow band behind its neck. It's not very clear what sort of bee they are, but it amused me. Screengrabs and montage by Xander Sable.
A big basin full of bright shiny mandarins in the sunshine, their skins pricked to start the process of Sicilian marmalade. Photo by Xander Sable
The complete eye-inlay of an Egyptian coffin held between my finger and thumb, It reflects the sun and the team members behind me. The busy excavation site and Egyptian archaeological workers are in the background. Photo by Xander Sable.
More of the eye-inlay finds illustration sheet, with the complete eye-inlay in the back ground, and the entry for the stray iris-inlay in the foreground. Front, rear-view and side-view are shown. Photo and illustrations by Xander Sable
An eye-inlay from an Egyptian coffin lies in the sand in the trench where it was found. It is made of white marble and onyx, and the iris is intensely shiny, reflecting the shapes of the excavators. Pieces of skull are in the background. Photo by Xander Sable.
A Brimstone butterfly in summer, nectaring on Knapweed He's a bright lime-yellow, with maroon spots on his wings, and they are a beautiful elegant shape with little points. He has a fabulous maroon line to his wing-joint and body, and even his eyes are patterned. Stylish little dude. A green meadow is in the background. Photo by Xander Sable.
Scarlet or Ruby Elf Cups opening on the forest floor near Folkestone, with dried bracken stems in the foreground and green and brown mossy twigs underneath. The most open one looks like a thin red coral. Photo by Xander Sable.
Dublin Daily Express, August 4th, 1883. An advert reading 'Most Important to families. Guinness's XXX Porter. J Bebe and Co beg to invite attention to this Celebrated Porter in bottle, being specially ordered to Invalids for its nutritive and strengthening qualities, it having been proved in great many instances to supersede Wine in recruiting health and strengh (sic). Each Bottle is wired and tin-foiled, and is protected by their label and "Trade Mark" - Price 2s 6d per doz.'
Three contiguous fragments of Middle Kingdom Egyptian painted sunk relief in fine-grain limestone, showing a male offering bearer wearing a striped green and blue collar over his shoulders and chest. His ear and mouth are quite sculptural, but the painting is relatively loosely done. Together, the effect is lovely. They are lying on desert sand. Photo by Xander Sable.
A right yellow daffodil, February Gold, with quite a delicate frilled trumpet, against a background of dark green ivy.
Hazel catkins swing long and sulphur-yellow in the breeze. Out rather early this year. Trees in the background are still bare and will be for weeks, and a collared dove and magpie sit on the oak branch behind, enjoying the warmish sunshine and contemplating life. Photo by Xander Sable.
A stunning little golden-eyed snake curled up in an old water bottle. They are mid-transit to a safer location. They are a cinnamon colour with a pale belly and stripes, and they're just beautiful. Photo by Xander Sable.
A young starling yells about at an older one who is clearly judging. They are standing on the metal base of a hanging suet-ball feeder - trees and a washing line are in the background. Photo by Xander Sable.
Waxing gibbous, about two days off full, the moon rises behind an old Christmas tree tinted orange from the setting sun behind the camera. The bare oak tree is sunlit, and the sky is blue. Photo by Xander Sable
An image of the painting Olive Grove, Saint-Rémy, by Vincent Van Gogh, with beautiful textured olive trees and blue shadows on the sunny ground. A little stand of poppies burst at the edge. Photo by Xander Sable
A branch of Witch Hazel, covered in spikes of hoarfrost - even the thread of spiderweb is frosty. One yellow flower is just about to unfurl, and a low sun is hazy in the background. Phot by Xander Sable
A thick crusting of hoar frost cover cotula cuttings and other little plants on the potting table. Photo by Xander Sable
A round fat pumpkin, carved with rudimentary bat shapes, stars, and a crescent moon. A lit star-shape at the back is shining on a granite wall. Photo and silly pumpkin carving by Xander Sable
The banqueting scene from Dyn XVIII tomb reliefs of Nebamun at the British Museum, showing a servant offering a guest a silver fluted cup with a delicate foot. The guest holds her hand up to the cup as if she's refusing it - though she probably isn't. She is holding lotuses, and she and her girlfriend have elaborate clothes and jewellery, and incense cones on their heads. It looks like a hell of a party. Photo by Xander Sable
Close-up of the sandy cat, trampling what looks like a sparrow. Spare space is filled with a beautiful butterfly, very delicately painted. The 'fluffiness' of the cat is brilliantly achieved with very fine strokes. Photo by Xander Sable
The Goddess Nut in a white dress appears from a sycomore fig tree beside a rectangular pond in the reliefs of Nebamun at the British Museum. She is presenting baskets of figs and jars.
Detail of the relief of Nebamun at the British Museum, showing how the papyrus-stand full of birds opens out in front of him. He is grabbing what might be pintail ducks, and the solar cat is shown rather bigger than the small child holding Nebamun's ankle. Photo by Xander Sable.
A close-up of the sandy cat's face from the Nebamun reliefs at the British Museum. He has the most wonderful bristly black whiskers, and is grabbing a duck's wing in his mouth. Photo by Xander Sable.