Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #113 – A Labor of Love

/ Leya / 70 kommentarer
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #113: A Labor of Love

First of all – thank you for so many inventive, creative and fun interpretations of last week’s challenge – Pick a Word! Fabulous!

Rusha Sams of Oh the Places We See is our host this week, and she has chosen to highlight all those people who work for a better society and a better world. A Labor of Love.

As so many of us do these days, I think of the health care workers, police and firefighters – all those brave people helping us in this unruly world. But my thoughts also go to all those who work for a sustainable world and helping vulnerable species to survive – because biodiversity is essential to us all. Without biodiversity we will all perish and our planet is lost. Even if we are living in a pandemic now, we know that other problems will not go away – we have to fight them all, simultaneously. Tough. But, the pandemic is also a result of how humans have abused and misused Nature and our only home, planet Earth.

In the header, the dotterel beach in Coromandel.

My daughter voluntered in New Zealand in 2011, working in a Nature preserving program.
She worked mostly with inventory of traps and keeping the forest open. All voluntary work is of course unpaid (monetarily…) work – A Labour of Love for the planet.
Saving the NZ Dotterel was/is a project involving many volunteers. During hatching time there was a time table for those watching the birds 24/7. We saw some Dotterels running on the beach, but also some little ones dead.
A big threat to all endemic animals, maybe especially the NZ flightless birds (the kiwi is only one of them) are the invasive possums. Emma brought home several skulls and bones from roadkills.

In 2016 we went to Ecuador, the Amazon Basin and the Galapagos Islands. Threatened already then by the oil industry and new settlers burning down the rainforest, but little did we know of the many fires that would arrive through mismanagement and the pandemic.

A vast piece of jungle was once bought by a man from the Netherlands who wanted to save it from getting destroyed. We stayed at his eco-lodge with local people guiding and lecturing about herb medicine and Amazon plants and animals. These people were born and raised here, lived here and knew the jungle like the back of their hand.

They took us out on crystal clear waters…
…silent canoe days
…and if not out on the waters – then bird watching high above the Amazon jungle.
Luis was one of our skilled guides, helping us find essential plants for cuisine and health. This was certainly a Labour of Love for him – a way of helping his people, animals and plants survive. He could also recognize and identify several hundreds of different bird sounds.
For Andi, his Labor of Love meant that several villages could survive – and thrive.
This journey is the most highly treasured one of all my journeys through 47 years. To see these people’s loving faces in preserving and teaching about their natural environment was a great joy and to learn how deep their knowledge is of Nature’s secrets was truly humbling. Knowledge and skills of this kind can only be yours if you are born and raised here. I am forever grateful to have met them all.

”We hope you’ll join us in sharing your interpretations of “A Labor of Love” whether you showcase a person or a group or an object notable for the labor or laborer involved.” Publish your post and add your link to the Comments section at the bottom of Rusha’s post. Please don’t forget to add the tag Lens-Artists so you can be found in the Reader.

Next week we will be back on schedule, and Amy will be our host for challenge #114. Until then – stay well and be kind. To yourself as well.

THURSDAY’S SPECIAL – Pick a Word – 2020 – 1st ed.

/ Leya / 25 kommentarer

Paula is back with her monthly challenge Pick a Word! If you haven’t seen it or participated before – have a look at her lovely blog Lost in Translation. Excellent photography and simple rules for the challenge.

ESTIVAL in the header

CUISINE

RIFT

INSTRUCTIVE

SPAN

About the images:

Estival – The last of my Bougainvillea against a hot summer wall

Cuisine – The biggest Sami market in Sweden – with lots of tasty food

Rift – Thingvellir, Iceland, lies in a rift valley that marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

Instructive – New Zealand sheep shearing champion on how to do it fast and effective

Span – Valle Verzasca, Switzerland, with its fantastic Roman bridge

The Changing Seasons – My August 2020

/ Leya / 43 kommentarer

I decided to join in The Changing Seasons at Su’s place, where each month, you should post 5-20 photos in a gallery that you feel represent your month.
Use only new shots. I think this is a brilliant idea. Fun and good for my memory.
Tag your posts with #MonthlyPhotoChallenge and #TheChangingSeasons so that others can find them.

My daughter, Emma, and the Princess of the Night displayed their glorious flowers
Our neighbour decided we had to cut down our Rowan tree because it disturbed His garden…And, the hedgehogs had two little ones, visiting every day

The last jigsaw puzzle was finally framed
We started on our green house project – today we moved the Agapanthus to make room for digging and filling for the new glass house
Autumn arrived

Thank you, Su, for making this possible!