The Weather Makes A Difference

This is one statue that people love to give nicknames. "The drain-pipe" is one of them, which may seem especially suitable on a rainy day. (It is not hollow, though.) A friend of mine calls it "that ugly yellow thing". Whatever we think of it, it is frequently used as a meeting place, since no one is likely to miss it.

Dragonflies In Courtship

This morning the rain had stopped, and still feeling inspired from joining the photo blog, I went out in search of more statues. Funny how you look at things differently through the eye of the camera. (Some things you may not even notice until afterwards, when you see the picture.) Most of the statues in one's home town are always there (although we happen to have some extra on loan just now for temporary exhibition) but you don't usually put on tourist behaviour and walk all round them and take pictures from different angles.

On my way home, I got an additional treat of a different kind, and much harder to catch with the camera. In the park, close to the water, I came upon two dragonflies in courtship. Quite literally very attached to one another, both in the air and when temporarily landing on the ground or on a leaf in the tree. I don't have a very powerful zoom on my camera, but I did manage to get close enough on a few occasions to use the makro close-up. Aterwards I also used the cropping function in the camera before I transferred these pictures to the computer.

Notice the shadows on the leaves!

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.

Why?

Why even try palm trees when we have perfectly good birches that are used to the weather?!

(Picture taken today in heavy rain.)

Quotation of the Week (29/09)

I'm beginning to think that the proper definition of “Man” is
“an animal that writes letters.” – Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

I copied this quotation from the Quotation of the Day gadget in my margin (8 July 2009). The picture is from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Ch VI), illustration by John Tenniel.

Survival

Where I lived before, I had this clematis growing on my balcony, since three years back or so. When I moved last summer, it did not seem possible to successfully move the whole plant. I took a chance and just saved some cuttings from it, without even knowing if it was possible to propagate this kind of plant from cuttings. But it was! The cuttings took root and survived the winter indoors in one of my windows. I put it outside in May. It is of a kind that usually goes into bloom early in the spring, so I didn't really expect any flowers this summer. But now, one year after my move, in July, the clematis is flowering again on my new balcony!