Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #50 – Trees

/ Leya / 197 kommentarer

Most of you know how much I walk in the forest – all year around. So the theme this week comes natural (!) to me – Trees. I will stay in Sweden, except for the header – waiting for you to post trees from every corner of the world! Anything about trees is free for you to explore in this theme – leaves, forests, fruits, stumps or saplings…maybe tree houses? Looking forward to seeing you here!

In the header, a famous site – The Dark Hedges in Ireland. Famous because of the Game of Thrones. There are thousands of pictures from under those old giants…I guess it must be the most photographed tree avenue ever?

Mille posing

The tree I had in the garden as a child, my beech tree, I used to climb up there and spend hours. I took my homework up there, my books, I went up there if I was sad, and it just felt very good to be up there among the green leaves and the birds and the sky.  – Jane Goodall

This is Mille, my first Lagotto, posing nicely… As a child I too spent many hours every day in the forest and in the trees – climbing, jumping, playing and wishing I could swing in lianas, like Tarzan. Sigh…

The old Sallow

A tree grows. If you’re staying the same, something is wrong. You’re not alive. – Hamza Yusuf

This grand old Sallow stands in our summer garden, and someone lives in this flat every year. This spring a Eurasian blue tit – but, the family left last week for new adventures!

Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish. ― Munia Khan

If a tree dies, plant another in its place.  – Carolus Linnaeus

There is little in the architecture of a city that is more beautifully designed than a tree. – Jaime Lerner

I’m just delighted to be living, to be able to have a simple conversation, to feel a ray of sunlight on my skin and listen to the breeze move through the leaves of a tree. – Ryuichi Sakamoto

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.  – Robert Frost

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.  – Albert Schweitzer

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.  – Martin Luther

I think the kind of landscape that you grew up in, it lives with you. I don’t think it’s true of people who’ve grown up in cities so much; you may love a building, but I don’t think that you can love it in the way that you love a tree or a river or the colour of the earth; it’s a different kind of love.  – Arundhati Roy

 

Hope I haven’t been ”too much” with many photos this week – but you who know me will understand – Trees have always been close to my heart and a big part of my life. Now I am really looking forward to seeing Your posts – hopefully you too will have a great time with this challenge! Thank you to Patti for last week’s  abundance of Favorite Things –

Finally, wishing you all an inspiring week!

Thursday Thoughts – Garden News

/ Leya / 30 kommentarer

So far this Spring and start of Summer has given the ideal weather for the garden: Raining during the nights and sunshine during the days. Such wonderful difference from last year’s extreme heat. Come along for a short walk!

 

These are only some of my flowers – but I am so glad they survived last summer’s heat! I adore the little rain gauge my son bought for mother’s day.

My wild roses were planted maybe 20 years ago – I got them from a friend who in his turn had got them from a little old lady in a forest cottage.

I love those little ones – a sea of pink! If you study the bumble bees below, you will understand how small these roses are.

This year, the Painted Lady, being a long-distance migrant, caused the most spectacular butterfly migration observed in Sweden.

Each year, it spreads northwards from the desert fringes of North Africa, the Middle East, and central Asia, recolonizing mainland Europe and reaching Sweden and even Svalbard. In some years it is an abundant butterfly, but never as early as this year. I usually see them in my Buddleijas in late summer.

This year they migrated in millions, and Gotland, our biggest island, received more than 6000 of them in some hours. In my garden now, I have hundreds of them. Some battered and torn – but who wouldn’t be after such a flight!

 

Macro Monday

/ Leya / 15 kommentarer

Walking in my garden is such a joy right now – enough warmth and just enough rain has made it into a dream compared to last summer. I am very grateful, and so are the insects, the birds and the hedgehogs…

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #49 – Favorite Things

/ Leya / 55 kommentarer

Our host this week, Patti, challenges us to show some of our own favorite things! They may be old or new – but all of us have favorites…

Many favorites have their own story, and some of my favorites are living things. In the header, a precious tulip I got from a collector, a friend of mine who sold his garden last year – he and his wife are now in their 80’s, and found it too hard to maintain it all.

Voltaire had Candide concluding, after all his travels around the world: Il faut cultiver notre jardin – ”We must cultivate our garden”.

And in my garden, I find the peace and magic I need when life gets too busy. I guess he was right, the old Voltaire…

Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened. ― Anatole France

My best friends ( maybe not ”things”… but…) – Totti and Milo – belong to my family, and therefore they are also my favorites, together with my other children. I grew up with animals – so living without them would be impossible.

The orchid is Mother Nature’s masterpiece. – Robyn.

I have kept my grandmother’s geraniums for more than 30 years, and they are my favorites as well. I can see her loving smile whenever I tend to them. The same feeling is there for other flowers I once got from old friends and relatives, now gone. But the orchids are something extra when it comes to beauty – first and foremost this delicate Cattleya, which has lived here for quite some years now. A glorious treat when in flower, filling the rooms with a delicious scent.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
― Groucho Marx

Not to forget – books and pencils, of course… Favorites for reading, writing and sketching. Preferably outside of a dog…

 

Welcome to join in the fun! Remember to link your post here and tag it ”Lens-Artists” to help us find your post in the WP Reader.
Next week, it’s my, Ann Christine’s, turn to host the challenge, so be sure to visit!

 

 

 

 

 

Friendly Friday – Shadows

/ Leya / 17 kommentarer

Amanda has a prompt for us – Shadows – and you get Me at my best (;-D) in both pictures: In my forest and in the Sahara desert.

 

This photo challenge is alternately hosted each Friday by the bloggers:
Something to Ponder About  and The Snow Melts Somewhere

Thursday Thoughts – A Life’s Work

/ Leya / 42 kommentarer

Söderto is a tiny place in the southern part of Skåne, Sweden, where Karl-Göran Persson built a fortress for himself, his family and friends – in case of an attack from Russia. Karl-Göran died in 1975, and he had spent his whole life building and reinforcing this fortress.

One day we decided to try and find it, all of us intrigued by the story. So this spring we went, the three of us. And it became a strange adventure, a day to remember. You can come along if you want to…

It is not a very big place, Söderto, and the remains of his own home nearby were gone.

Karl-Göran was a simple man, a single farmer, and well known in the neighborhood for his warm heart, for his building and for his transporting all material on his bicycle.

He even mastered setting rails and railroad ties into the fortress – all by himself. The thought was to build a balcony.

He used what he could find to reinforce his fortress, be it iron beds, chamber pots, baskets or bicycle parts. Look closely at the pictures, and maybe you will find them…

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After so many years of withering down, it is not advised to go inside anymore. But…

there is a friendly silence, a loving atmosphere when you walk here… you can feel his spirit still being there – in his life’s work.

A soft whisper in the fields, and the beauty of the landscape touches your soul.

Thinking of him, Karl-Göran, I believe he would have loved it that we came all that way to visit. And how much we enjoyed it too.

Just see how beautifully the villagers keep his memory.