Nightjar has sent in some exceptional photos of the flowers that have persisted until December in her garden. We saw a few of those flowers last week, but I saved some for today because everyone should have flowers on a busy Monday.
Strawflower, ©Nightjar, all rights reserved
Yesterday on his blog Stderr, Marcus wrote about the creation of a very special heart in a post titled Un-Achable, Un-breakable. This is the rest of the story, told by kestrel who used her artistry to create a unique and meaningful braiding for the heart.
Marcus sent me this amazing Damascus steel heart that he had made as a gift for Someone Special, and he asked me to put some leather braiding on it. I was happy to comply and decided a key fob would be good to braid on there.
©kestrel, all rights reserved
Happy Solstice everyone. As far as I am concerned, Christmas can get stuffed, but I like the fact that from now on days will again be slowly getting longer. It will still take a month or so before it is really noticeable, but it is going there!
Anyroad, here are another two gingerbread houses my mom made this year. She made a lot.
©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
It’s going to be crazy busy this weekend with all those stressed and delirious Christmas shoppers clogging up the roads and the stores. I hope all of you are prepared for whatever your holiday season involves, but in case you’re among the stressed and delirious I thought I’d give you a moment of calm with some wonderful flowers sent in by Nightjar. These are all flowers that have survived in her garden until December and I am amazed at the variety. I’m also a bit envious, but not too much because we do get to share the life-affirming beauty of flowers in winter. Thanks, Nightjar.
Fire Rose, ©Nightjar, all rights reserved
Well, hopefully. This won’t be easy to pull off and it may fail at any time even before it really takes off. Plants sometimes fail to take root, and even when they do, they fail at becoming a bonsai tree, and even if they do, they sometimes just die after decades of work for causes unavoidable or unknown – like my most precious cypress tree did last fall and many others this spring.
But I hope this takes off. Last month I had encountered a very rare thing – a seed in a store-bought persimmon, fruit of Diospyros kaki. This was a first seed ever I have found and I have bitten into it and damaged it a bit because I did not se it originally. Luckily for years I am always cutting the fruit lengthwise in crescents and never across, because I have been actively looking for a seed. But the variety is mostly seedless and usually all that can be found are tiny under 5 mm unfertilized seeds, which are useless. This was clearly living one, it was over 20 mm in length, with the shape of a plum seed and consistency and hardness of an apple seed.
I have washed it carefully and thoroughly in luke warm water so it does not mould and my mother (because I had to work overtime and did not have time to do it myself and also I am a bit superstitious about my mom’s touch – she could make a broom blossom if she planted it) had planted it in a bit of heat-sterilized porous substrate immediately the next day. The pot stood near a heat radiator for the last month and I splashed in a bit of water whenever I remembered to, which was about twice a week. I was actually just beginning to worry that I underwatered it, which is just as bad as overwatering when…
A seedling Diospyros kaki popping out.
…today I found out that the seed started to come out of the ground, which was a rare moment of joy for me (I try not to drag you down with me, but you know those are small and far between). I will keep you posted on its progress. I hope for many infrequent updates for years, but you will get the info even if it fails.
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…]
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
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.
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.
Earlier this week I promised more flowers from DavidinOz and here they are, full, lush and in bright, cheerful colours. I hope they help chase away the winter blues.
Not everything in Renmark was roses… Cheers, David.
©David Brindley, all rights reserved
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
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
