This week, we invite you to share what you treasure. Our first Guest Host for July, Aletta, is asking us to share our treasures. If you read my blog sometimes, I am sure you know some of my treasures already – they are many, just like yours, but these are my most treasured treasures:
Everything nature …
Just living is not enough… one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
– Hans Christian Andersen
My number one friend, Milo…
Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.
– Roger Caras, author of A Dog Is Listening: The Way Some of Our Closest Friends View Us
And of course my funny family –
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
– George Bernard Shaw
Since some weeks now, I have to add a new sweet treasure to my family – my first grandchild – Myra.
Children are the keys of paradise.
– Eric Hoffer
Never sleepy, always alert – so, this is the first time I have seen her yawning properly!
Please visit Aletta’s wonderful post for more inspiration, and if joining us, remember to link back to it and use the Lens-Artists tag so we can find you.
Last week we focused on eyes and the responses we had were fun and very diverse. Continuing the tradition of inviting Guest Hosts during the month of July, next week is Jez Braithwaite’s turn with Seeing Double as his challenge. Be sure to take a look on Saturday 9th of July.
Posted for Aletta’s Lens-Artists Challenge
This week, Patti is our host, and LAPC#131 gives us the opportunity to focus on Emotions. We can do portraits or street photography – or, choose a subject or scene that evokes an emotion in the viewer.
Flowers are restful to look at. They have neither emotions nor conflicts. – Sigmund Freud
No flowers this time… In my opener, I have chosen rippling water in a soothingly green environment – Madeira’s levadas. Green is always recommended for bedrooms because of its calming effect – and that is the emotion I get whenever I meet the colour Green.
My images here will show maybe one main emotion – happiness. But, also love and friendship.
I cannot think of better choices than students and the storm of feelings on their graduation day. It’s impossible to get enough of their happy faces and their vivid body language!
Two of the photos are of my daughter. Now I am maybe being too personal…, but seeing her walking up the stairs last Friday as a freshly baked Doctor – filled my heart with pride. She looks so happy, so confident – so ready for a working life outside university.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. —Franklin D. Roosevelt
And, don’t we all feel that for our children, for their first steps into this world, for our students and for every person who have worked hard and reached their goal? (For making tears fall it is even enough reading a good book where the hero succeeds…) I am very grateful to have met so many students in my life – and to have left them as fully fledged young men and women.
Looking back at last week, thank you Anne Sandler, for It’s a Small World, which made us all see the beauty in little things. And thank you for the fabulous macro/micro and close-up images from all of your collections!
I, Leya/Ann-Christine, will be your host for LAPC #132 next Saturday, January 23rd at noon. So, stay tuned… and for all of you in the USA – may the inauguration go smoothly.
Now we are looking forward to seeing Your emotional images! Be sure to link them to Patti’s beautiful examples, and don’t forget the Lens-Artists tag. As always – stay safe and well and mind the little things until next time.
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. —The Dalai Lama
Now and then – Then and now
Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.
― L.M. Montgomery
Amy is our host, and she says: ”For our challenge this week we’d like you to tell us about your perspective on now vs then – it could be before and after the pandemic or any other changes you have experienced.” See her perspective on what the current changes can bring to everyday life!
As I was contemplating what major differences there are in my own life now, compared to a few years ago, some things stand out very clearly to me. I will try letting the images tell most of the story, as you change between Then and now, Now and then in my series. ( A new possibility with the block editor – but you have to go to my site to see it. I found out it doesn’t show in the reader …) Somehow I wish it was just as easy to mend things that are broken…
Due to climate change, our winters here in Sweden are very different from those we had only a couple of years ago. These two images are from November 2017 and November 2020.
Two of my best loved hiking trails have been destroyed. The forest is down. Colourful grasses are now taking over, and soon the old stumps will be totally hidden in the new vegetation.
Traveling is no longer an option, due to Covid19 and the pandemic. But, also in order to save the world from more air pollution. Instead of exploring exciting new places abroad, this autumn we built my much longed for glasshouse, where we greatly enjoy a quiet lunch every day.
Ever since I was a child, the forest has been my second home. I usually walk for hours every day, often in the company of my mother and my dogs (in this photo, Mille and Totti). In Spring we always pick wood anemonies and have ”fika” with coffee and cakes in the warm sunshine. Mille left us 2014 and my mother, this unruly year, 2020.
And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees
and changing leaves.
― Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
Changes are obvious to us all this year… and now we are looking forward to seeing Your perspective! Don’t forget to include a link to Amy’s post and use the Lens-Artists tag so that everyone can find you in the WP Reader. Next week, Tina will be our host for Challenge #125 on November 28th. Be sure to visit her site.
Lastly – Thank you for sending us so many delightful walks through neighbourhoods all over the world! It has been an adventurous week, a glorious and expressive week. As always – We are grateful that you want to share your world so generously.
Thinking of you who are celebraing Thanksgiving, and to all of us – Take care, stay warm, loving and safe.
“One day you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. Do it now.”
Paulo Coelho
And many of us tried, hard, this summer.
Last week we saw a tremendous amount of beautiful answers ”Under the Sun”, hosted by Amy. This week, ”We’d love you to share with us the ways you’ve fueled and satisfied your creative energies these past few months as the pandemic has restricted our ability to move freely.” And this time, Tina is our host.
When all this started, I had just visited my daughter in Umeå, and bought a fascinating jigsaw puzzle with many house plants – most of which I some time over the years had grown in my house. And, puzzling hade not been on my mind for some 20 years…This was february, and we knew nothing about what would happen only some weeks later.
Emma’s birthday is in September, so we decided to celebrate during her summer vacation instead. She wished to take a short course in ceramics and clay work, together with some friends. I joined in as well, and we all had a creative day at the small farm, where the artist, Caroline, had her studio.
During the whole summer, Emma kept working on the costume for her graduation. She also made a prototype for sewing her leather spats. Much work, but I am sure it will look really good in January for her Big Day. Posing for me? Well, some minutes only – it was 37 degrees C that day…so fast I had to be!
For her birthday, of course I made her favorite lamb pies with lots of vegetables and fruit. For me it is a joy to cook for her when she comes home – I want to make her feel relaxed and having nothing to worry about. Being a student for so many years is tiresome – not least doing all the cooking yourself.
We did many other things togehter of course, but these were some of those that made our summer worth remembering. I think we worked on 5 puzzles at least, and we had so much to talk about and debate – things that might never have come up an ordinary summer. Summing up, this Covid summer went from hopeless to meaningful in the end.
Emma has left now for her final term, so maybe this was her last stay ”at home”. And the last puzzle we started together, I have to finish on my own. It has a name: Universe Creator, by artist Lora. Autumn is coming, and I sit in the warm evening light, looking at Lora’s painting. It shows a little girl cycling, and a giant panda blowing soap bubbles that sails through the air, making new planets and galaxies. I like that idea.
Finally, are you interested in learning more about about the team behind the Lens-Artists Challenge? If so, we invite you to visit TCHistorygal.net where you’ll find our recent interview with Marsha Ingrao of Always Write. It was great working with Marsha and being a part of her Artists’ Interview series. We thank her sincerely for her efforts on our behalf.
We hope you’ll join us next week for Patti’s challenge #111. Until then, take care and stay safe.
Photo from last year’s birthday, when you turned 84.
Today you turn 85, and you two have been married for 55 years! The sun is shining, and we will make it a memorable day for you – despite the difficult times we are living in.
Once a year, go somewhere you have never been before – Dalai Lama
Tina allows us all to take a break this week, and I am just back from a lovely break together with my family. The best way for me to enjoy life!
We went to Denmark this weekend, the whole family, and watched the Danish wake-board championships together with many enthusiasts.
The weather was great, and the competitors skilled.
The only means of transport needed in summer!
Afterwards we decided to go for the sand sculpture exhibitions – and they were spectacular too. But, what I enjoyed the most, was being together with my children.
Find what brings you joy and go there. – Jan Phillips
On coming home this afternoon, I walk in my garden, among the flowers, listening to the late summer fluttering of tiny wings.
The Painted Lady is watching me, closely.
When she turns around, I admire her intricate outfit. And I feel good.
Welcome to join in the challenge!
Tonight, after a lovely day out, hiking and enjoying the sunshine, I was contemplating what really made me happy and in a good mood these last weeks. Do you often reflect upon what makes you happy? We should. At least reflection brings me more harmony.
To experience things together with my children is a great joy. In Umeå, we had some really bright and crisp days with much snow. The walks were gloriously fresh and beautiful. We laughed and talked and had Swedish ”Fika”.
My son and I had an excellent guide – his sister. Here admiring the sculpture ”Green Fire”
I loved seeing David without a skateboard too…but keeping his skate shoes on of course…
Two saints – for a day…
This bench was warm…I don’t know if it was because of the two saints sitting there, or… obviously it also could have been warmed up by its previous guests – who left two empty bottles in the snow…But I do believe the answer lies inside the concrete…
Meeting lovely people is another great joy. Umeå seems to be the place where many of them live… – this lady looked really sweet, and had left her home knitted mittens on top of the bag. It’s warm today, she said, – last week we had – 25 C.
Passing by this balcony, we could not help stopping to admire the bird house. As the door was open, the lady came out and said hello – all smiles and waving to us.
”Imagine Peace”
Finally, I must return to the homely book store once more. It holds still another answer to what brought me great joy those days – Imagine Peace.
Milo moving in with his favorite toy last summer. A tender moment on a very hot day.
Leya 
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