Andrew Lang. The Animal Storybook. New York [etc.] Longmans, Green, and co. 1904
Via: The Internet Archive
The Art of Book Design: The Animal Story Book
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
Andrew Lang. The Animal Storybook. New York [etc.] Longmans, Green, and co. 1904
Via: The Internet Archive
Can you find Jack? ©voyager, all rights reserved
For you, rq. ©voyager, all rights reserved
The trout lilies are open! Everywhere you look the forest floor is speckled with their bright and cheerful yellow flowers. I’m sorry to report, though, that the white trilliums are still not open. There are lots of them around, but I couldn’t find a single one with an open bloom. Just out of curiosity I looked back to last year’s spring photos and on May 7 (a year ago today) I shot quite a few open white trilliums. I hope that means that this year’s flowers will present themselves soon.
First, remember the not black tulips? Seems like the package contained two varieties, with the pink ones being earlier and the almost black ones being later. Here they finally are:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Next one is true kingcups that grow along our little creek. I wanted to get closer but then chose dry feet…
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Dungbeetles are no aliens, Sorry to disappoint you. But I quite like them.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
This, OTOH, is aliens. I guess at some point they are replaced every year by ordinary fern plants, but this is not something that just grows, it’s the result of extraterrestrial mingling.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s been an absolutely glorious day here, full of sunshine and flowers and bees. The tulips around our neighbourhood are opening up in a riot of colour and down the street hyacinths are in full deep purple bloom. We’ve had a day and a half of sunshine and it seems that’s exactly what was needed to kick spring into gear. Yesterday morning the trees were only just a bit fuzzy, but this afternoon there are actual leaves popping out all over. It isn’t quite leaf day yet, but I think it might be tomorrow. Everything is growing so quickly. Overnight my hydrangeas sprouted leaves and I swear my grass has put on 2 or 3 inches of growth since yesterday morning. It’s like someone waved a magic wand and said ‘go, hurry.’ So imagine my surprise to arrive at the park this afternoon and find all of the tulips there still tightly closed. Oh well, it obviously isn’t their day yet.
It’s my day! ©voyager, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack and I went to the park this morning instead of the woods so we could check the progress of the tulips, but there’s been very little progress since the last time we checked a few days ago. A bit of sunshine might help, but there hasn’t been much of that in the past few weeks and if the forecast is to be believed 7 of the next 10 days are going to be rainy. Sigh. We really don’t need any rain. The river and creeks are running high with localized areas of flooding and the ground is soggy just about everywhere. I know it’s the season of mud, but does it have to be muddy every single bloody day? Oh well, rain or shine the flowers will bloom eventually and just to prove that point we did find heaps of open daffodils all around the duck pond. They’re making their own sunshine.
The first trillium of the year, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack and I searched the forest today looking for open trilliums and we could only find one. It’s a red one which isn’t surprising because the red trilliums always show up first in our woods and it was in perfect condition which is surprising because the red ones seem to wither almost as soon as they bloom. There are masses of trilliums this year, but it’s been cold and damp and they’re slow to open. Last year many of them didn’t open for much the same reason so I’ve got my fingers crossed for better this year.
I did try using a mirror to take this photo, but I couldn’t make it work. It reflected too much sky and looked awful. Instead, I got down on my hands and knees as usual (hence the shaking blur) and pretended I didn’t hear those noises I made getting back up.
My favourite part is probably the mini world, where they rebuild cities and places in Lego. I could have spent hours there.
Also a whiptail found that a balcony in Venice is the perfect place for its nest.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
The huge dinosaurs are the best thing anyway.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
This shape of this young trillium reminded me of a hummingbird.
A stately specimen from Lofty.
This picture is of a well built male kangaroo that I saw out of the window right on dusk, complete with a “Wot U Lookin At?” expression on its face. It’s still very dry hereabouts and the slight runoff from our driveway grew a little green grass for it to munch. Fortunately it paused just long enough for me to reach around and fire off this shot. A few seconds later it bounded out of sight.
Roo, ©Lofty, all rights reserved
No, really, I don’t like rollercoasters. Maybe it’s an acquired taste or one you need to learn young, but it’s not my fun part. I rode my first one last summer and before even considering this one I researched whether it was faster (no way!) or slower than the one in Spain. I don’t like the sudden movements, though I was not fighting unconsciousness this time as I did in Spain. It’s not like I don’t like speed as such, there’s some fast stuff i really like, just not this. So enjoy the pics from the “harbour trip” in small boats at slower than walking pace.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©Giliell, all rights reserved
There have been multiple exasperated conversations here about how wildlife, especially birds, refuse to cooperate with our attempts to get pictures. I swear that there is a memo going around when I leave the house as to whether I carry a camera or not. Last week was no exception. On Monday, when we had our friends over, I took my camera for the walk. I also took many pics the days before, the ones posted on Saturday, so I left the camera at home on Tuesday. When we arrived at our fountain we took a small break and sat down. I looked up at the old willow tree and was like “This branch looks strange. It is fluffy. It also wasn’t there yesterday and trees don’t grow thick, short, fluffy branches over night.” I took a closer look and it turned out to be a young owl, drowsing there in the branches of the willow.
I was so fucking angry. This was the first time in my life that I saw a wild owl. Oh I hear them almost every night, no problem, but seeing them? Only at the zoo. And no camera but the crappy phones.I told Mr “I’m going back and I’m going to get the camera and heaven help this owl if it is no longer there!”
So that’s what I did. 1 km back home, 1 km back to the fountain, so about half an hour later I was there again and of course the owl had moved! But only a few metres and it was actually two owls. Back home I tried to identify them and my most likely guess is a tawny owl, since they’re also the ones I keep hearing, but honestly the pics I found all look very much alike.
To cut a long story short, I saw owls and here’s the evidence:
©Giliell, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
©voyager, all rights reserved
The trilliums are here. And there. And everywhere. They’re positively busting out all over the place and I can’t recall ever seeing this many trilliums in our little forest. It’s a bumper crop. I couldn’t find any open blooms yet, but it won’t be more than a day or two before they appear. Jack and I plan to come back tomorrow and I’m betting I’ll find a few open flowers to share with all of you.
Theme parks will always try to milk you for more money. From the entrance fee to overpriced food to games where you can “win” overpriced toys at every corner, it’s an all out assault on your budget. I don’t know if other theme parks “offer” a similar “service”, but at Legoland you can buy “express passes”. In their most basic version (just 20 bucks per person per day!) you can reserve you place in line and then wander off to eat some overpriced food and then return at your scheduled time to take your place in the line. This goes up to the premium version (almost no waiting time for only 70 € per person per day!) and of course you are simply not making any friends when you walk past people who’ve been waiting for an hour and take “their place”.
Now, it would be perfectly easy to integrate the basic version into an app for all customers and thereby eliminate those fucking waiting lines altogether, but that might lose them some money (maybe it would make them some money because people would have more time to hang around the food courts instead of eating home made sandwiches while standing in line?), therefore it’s inconceivable!
On the other hand I mentioned to Mr: “Imagine we’d spent some 600 bucks on those express passes and could ride one of those things every 15 minutes. Wouldn’t that be horrible?”
I still don’t know what I find worse: waiting in line for the rolercoaster or riding it, but I’m tending towards the latter. Before you think I’m all grumpy, enjoy some images from the “Atlantis” aquarium.
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