The End of Australian Spring

These are the last of the Australian spring flowers sent in by DavidinOz and that makes me a bit sad. It’s been a treat for me to have so many bright, happy flowers to work with during the short gloomy days of late Canadian autumn. In 2 days time it will officially be another winter to endure Up Here, but that also means that it’s another summer to enjoy Down Under and I’m hoping that David will have a chance to share some of the flora that grows in Australia during their hottest season. Hint, hint.

Thanks for spreading so much joy, David. [Read more…]

December Light

At this time of year the days are almost at their shortest and the world can seem gloomy and dull. Nightjar has found some light, though, and she’s used it to create magic.

Still playing around with light! For me December isn’t just Christmas lights, nature can put on quite a show too and there is nothing like getting up early on a dewy December morning to fully appreciate all the magic of December light. The last photo of the ruins and olive tree is just to illustrate how lush the fields look right now, it’s not a morning shot but I liked the light in that one as well. We don’t get snow here, so that is exactly what my concept of winter is like: green.

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

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Slavic Saturday

I used to collect books by Karl May. What, you might ask, has a German writer have to do with Slavic Saturday? Well, I used to only collect editions that were illustrated by Zdeněk Burian. I would collect them still, only I rarely have a chance to visit an antiquarian bookshop nowadays.

Cover of a set of photoreproductions. “Pravěk” means prehistory. Click for full size.

Outside of our little land, he is probably most known for his paleoart, which to my mind simply has no equal in past or present. It might not be the most accurate paleoart by today’s standards as science progresses, but those pictures are so alive that they still have value and still are inspiring. One of my most prized possessions is a set of loose sheets of photographic reproductions of his works – this was also one of the first of his works I have got my hands on. The mammoths on the cover are simply amazing – and that is an understatement. I would very much love to see the original paintings some day, everyone who had the honor tells me their impact is much greater than of the reproductions.

The back side of one of the sheets. Click for full size.

Each sheet in the book represents some specific geological era and it contains one A4 color reproduction of an oil painting on the front, and some black & white inks and some text on the back. Shame it was not published in other languages, and is not even published now in CZ, because I think many aspiring artists, paleontologists and paleoartists would benefit greatly from being exposed to this work more. I never cease to be impressed by what he was capable of achieving with just black ink and a pen.

His paleoart has been a great inspiration to me. I wanted to be a painter and to achieve such great things, but alas I lack the talent. Burian’s genius has in fact demonstrated itself early on, when at the age of mere 14 years he was accepted into study at Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, which he left just two years later. And he went straight into the most difficult branch of the painting and drawing business – illustrating books. I consider this to be the most difficult part, because not only is the artist forced to draw realistic humans, the scenes also have to be living and dynamic in order to truly add to the book. And here he got his first claim to fame, by illustrating adventure books both by renown authors (like Karl May and Jules Verne) and pure pulp fiction trash. He was extremely prolific, the amount of work he managed to do in his life is staggering.

An illustration of the book “The Son of Bear Hunter” by Karl May. The book is in very poor condition, almost falling apart. I paid for it anyway. Click for full size.

I have failed my dream of becoming as good an artist as he was, but this did not spoil my love for his art and my appreciation of his technique, and I still learned a lot from him and thanks to him. There are many books out there containing his illustrations that I did not get my hands on yet. I will never pass the chance should it occur.

Jack’s Walk

 

Bubbles trapped in melting ice, ©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s been above zero for a day or two and most of our snow has vanished. In its place we have soggy ground, slush, mush and mud. Lots of mud. Jack didn’t mind. He was so happy just being outside again that I didn’t want to limit his fun, so I let him get dirty. His wound has healed and water is cheap and we keep a stack of “dog towels” for just such an occasion. Sometimes a dog just needs to be a dog. I remember once taking my other lab Lucy, who died last year, to the dog park. There was a small white poodle there who clicked with Lucy and the two dogs romped and played right through a mud puddle. The poodles owner stormed over to me quite angry that my dog had gotten her dog dirty. I laughed and said something about how much fun the dogs had while getting dirty and that made her even angrier. I finally told her that she shouldn’t bring her dog to the off-leash park again with such a bad attitude. She bent down to the dog and made quite a show about not wanting to touch the ick while she attached his leash. Her face was all screwed up and she was breathing noisily and heavily with punctuated snorts. Finally, mumbling not quite under her breath, she and her dog walked away and got into a small white car. Lucy and I both had a laugh. This is one of my favourite stories and it’s possible that I’ve already told it. After some 200+ Jack’s Walk it’s getting hard to remember. If it is a repeat, I’m sorry. The photo is new, though. Happy Friday, everyone.

Betty Boob

I’m quite used to seeing beautiful flowers in our inbox from DavidinOz so this not-floral submission by him caught me by surprise and made me smile out loud.  Thanks, David.

In addition to roses, David Ruston also collected cars. Here are a couple of oddities.

The pink tractor, Betty Boobs, is used at functions / events raising money for breast cancer research and support.

The Yella Fella is a Lightburn Zeta, designed and build in Adelaide by a company best known for washing machines and cement mixers. Fewer than 400 were sold as it hist the market at the same time the Morris Mini arrived in Australia and mini mania took hold.

Cheers, David

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

Mushroom Hunting – Part 2

Yesterday we saw Part 1 of Nightjar’s quest to find mushrooms as a Tree Tuesday post. Today, the mushrooms have been found and Nightjar’s photos of them are so wonderfully evocative that I can almost smell that earthy forest scent.

... and here are the mushrooms! The yellow Tricholoma equestre were the ones we were searching for, and we did find enough for a meal. And then there were some pretty ones of unknown edibility (to us). There were more, but the mosquitoes make photography a very difficult task.

Thanks for braving the mosquitoes to get these photos, Nightjar, and thanks for sharing.

 

1. A mushroom-promising sight. © Nightjar, all rights reserved

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Flowering Money Tree

This is one of my most precious bonsai trees – Crassula ovata. My mother has got the plant before I was born and she tells me it was already relatively big at that time. It is therefore safe to assume the tree is at least circa 50 years old. I started converting it to bonsai about twenty years ago. It continues to grow succesfully each year after pruning, and in case you wish to start growing bonsai yourself, this species is ideal for a beginner. It responds well to pruning, it grows quickly but not too much so, insects do not infect it much, and if you forget to water it from time to time, nothing happens.

I want to share a picture this time around, because this year something special happened – the tree flowers. It has done it once already a few years ago, but not as much as this year.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Roses for Monday

Today we have one last look at Ruston’s Roses courtesy of DavidinOz. It’s been a real treat for me to see such fresh, lush roses at this time of year. Although this is the last post about Ruston’s, David has sent us a few more flower photos that we’ll be posting later in the week. I guarantee they’ll chase away the winter blues for at least a moment or two, so please check back.

Thanks David.

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

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Landsknecht and Death

I was looking for inspiration for a dagger&sword project for next year, and during my web crawl I found this image. And I was immediately reminded of Caine and the “Dance with Death”series she posted this year. I think she would love it.

I would like to provide you with the translation of the german text, but I cannot read the font no matter what so I cannot even reliably transcribe the original – I understand about a half. On top of it I suspect it is poetry and that gives me trouble even in my native language, let alone in archaic German.

Strauch, Wolfgang: Landsknecht und Tod

Source -click-

Let’s end the week with roses

These bright, cheerful photos are from Ruston’s Roses courtesy of DavidinOz. This area of the gardens looks perfectly set to host a wedding. The path is lined with pure, white roses and at its end is a lush canopy of deep red roses signifying love. David didn’t specify, but I think Ruston’s must host a few weddings here. I was most delighted by the wandering red rose who has traveled far from home alone. Perhaps it was for love.

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

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Contortions

Many things have fascinated me over the course of my life, not necessarily because I understood or understand them fully, but usually because there is some element of incomprehension – the idea of Schrödinger’s cat, for example, or a mysterious book that is actually a treasure hunt. While the first led to many… odd creations of art that included cats perched pensively in boxes in outer space surrounded by snakes and spiral galaxies, the second had gorgeous paintings of their own that I can still remember clearly (though I never solved the riddle itself).

About a year ago, I found myself returning to the paintings of Masquerade – though subconsciously. I was playing around with cats contorted into unusual positions by virtue of being forced into a small box: the frame, as it were. The whole idea was that you could place it any way you like, there was no proper up-down orientation. Later, as it happened, I had to adjust the subject matter to more closely align to a colleague’s preferences, and the final painting is of a horse (of course), about 10cm x 15cm.

It even works when upside down.
©rq, all rights reserved.

And although one’s own paintings should look familiar, there was something more to it that wouldn’t stop poking at the back of my brain, until I remembered this image:

A page from Masquerade by Kit Williams.

Not quite the contortioning example of equine flexibility I came up with, but one can see the signs of influence. And it’s always fascinating how these sorts of little things can come together to become something new and different.

Anyway, I like my horse-in-a-box, and one day I will also complete the originally-intended cat-in-a-box.

To be honest, I always pictured Schrödinger’s poor cat as something of an unfortunate astronaut.