Raining Today

I went out to post some snail-mail, and on my way back home I met the snail…

I didn’t even notice The One With All The Legs until I got it up on the computer screen…! (Click to enlarge…)

A flying little one going for a swim in a wet wild rose.

Just drops of water on the last two, I think…

Rainbow

The other evening after a thunderstorm had passed by, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a rainbow in the sky. I went across the flat to the balcony, and from there I saw the other end of the bow.

So I grabbed my camera (and a jacket, because it was still raining) and went outside to see if I could catch all of it.

It turned out that from the edge of the football field, I could see the whole bow, stretching from one end of the open field to the other… But I could not catch all of it in one photo. I doubt that even with a tripod I would have been able to put a full panorama together. (I don’t have a tripod.)

When I tried to walk further away from it,  fence and trees and buildings got in the way.

So I had to settle for taking pictures of parts of it. But I stood there quite a long time just watching… I can’t remember ever seeing an unbroken bow quite as impressive.

For quite a while, there were even two bows. A double rainbow has reversed colours in the outer bow. The darker space between them (I just learned) is called Alexander's band (named after the Greek philosopher who first described it).

In Greek mythology, the rainbow was considered a path between Heaven and Earth. Iris, goddess of sky and sea, was the personification of the rainbow. As the sun unites earth and heaven, she linked the gods to humanity and acted as messenger between them.

In Chinese mythology the Goddess Nüwa used stones of different colours to repair a slit in the sky.

In Hindu mythology, the rainbow is the bow of Indra, the God of lightning, thunder and rain.

In Old Norse Mythology, a rainbow called the Bifrost Bridge connects the realms of Ásgard and Midgard, homes of the gods and humans respectively.

In Biblical Mythology, the rainbow is the sign of God's covenant with Noah and his descendants, that “never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood”. (Genesis 9)

In Sumerian/Mesopotamian mythology (The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literary writing),  the rainbow is the jewelled necklace of the Great Mother Ishtar (goddess of fertility), that she lifts into the sky as a promise that she will never forget the days of the great flood that destroyed her children.

In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the Rainbow Serpent is a common art motif. It is seen as the inhabitant of permanent waterholes and is in control of life's most precious resource, water.

In Irish folklore, a pot of gold is said to be hidden by leprechauns (a type of fairy) at the end of the rainbow.

The End of the Rainbow is in fact a place impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which depends on the location of the viewer. When walking towards the end of a rainbow, it will move further away.

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I decided to also do a Rainbow post in my Picture Book blog today, showing a few pictures a bit bigger and with the black background. In that post, you will also find a short note on the colours of the rainbow.

Welcoming the Rain

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls…

Paul Simon: Kathy’s Song

Autumn Is Here

My kitchen table

Summer is over, autumn/fall is here, and it's been "one of those days"... I had to shop some groceries in the morning. Outside the rain was pouring down. I put on rubber boots, an extra sweater, a jacket, and on top of it all a plastic rain poncho. And I took the bus. I still got soaking wet before I was home again. Moreover, in the shop the scanner system was not working. I hardly remembered how to shop without it but somehow I succeeded. Except that I forgot one of the things on my list. Had to come up with something else for lunch, and will have to be inventive again for supper with friends this evening.

The first thing I did when I got back home was get into a hot shower. (Warm wet instead of cold wet.) Before I even unpacked the groceries!

Then I had a phone call from one of the nice home carers looking after my dad. She informed me about some things I need to buy for him. I can do that, but I don't know when or how I'll be able to get them out to him. She also said he said he has a dentist appointment next week and did I know anything about that? I did not. Arrangements have to be made to get him there. She said call X. I called X. X said call Y. I called Y. Y said call Z. I called Z. Someone informed me Z will be back on Monday. (Sorry, I don't have the time right now to come up with suggestions for titles för X,Y,Z or explain the exact complications involved...) I also called the dentist to explain without really being able to explain.

Now I'm hoping the evening will be better. My friend G (the one who still writes letters by hand) with husband B will arrive in the evening and stay the night before they go on to catch a ferry to Denmark tomorrow morning. They have about 3½ or 4 hours drive here and it's still raining hard. I know they are even more exhausted than I am to begin with, and have to get up early tomorrow morning, so we'll have to make it an early night too. We'll probably end up trying to talk twice as fast as normal...

I'll also probably be late with my Wordzzle story this weekend, if I manage to get it together at all. 

It has been an Orange Week at Soaring Through the World. If you're not already following, click the link to see lots of colourful pictures! The one above, of my kitchen table, I decided to put here instead. The table cloth in this photo has a pattern of oranges and lemons designed by Swedish artist Lena Linderholm. If you write her name into Google picture search, a lot of colourful paintings by her will show up!

Now I'm going to have a rest before my friends arrive...

PS. I'm really fascinated by the LinkWithin gadget I put in a couple of weeks back. The one that suggests "You might also like..." When I published this post, one of the links suggested was my earlier post  Too Many Things...

Quotation of the Week (32/09)

"From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other."

Arthur Conan Doyle
(1859-1930)

It's Monday and it's raining again.

Last night, I watched an old Sherlock Holmes episode on TV.

In The Rain

This is one of the pictures I took in the rain yesterday. The name of this statue is "Ute", which means "out" or "outside"; but it also sounds like it could be the name of a person (although I don't think I've ever heard it used as such). She has become rather popular since her first appearance on the street a few years ago. I say she, because for some reason, most people see her as a girl. There are probably a lot more people than I who have sometimes seen her and at first thought "why is that child standing there all by itself" - until we realize or remember that it's just a statue.

See what I see...

I joined this photo blog today (click on the button above to visit!), and feeling inspired by this week's theme, statues and sculptures, I grabbed my camera and went out to hunt down some. It had been raining earlier in the day, but the rain had stopped when I went out. Or so I thought. It turned out it had only been taking a short break... I had brought my raincoat and umbrella, though, so I stayed out for a while anyway. The rain soon got so heavy that it became almost hilarious. People who saw me struggling with the camera under the umbrella probably took me for a fanatic tourist having travelled across the world to see these sculptures... I'll be sharing some of the photos during the week to come, both here and on the photo blog.