The Dream of the Secret Garden

1. Sprouting   2. Flowergate   3. Live Rust
4. New Wave   5. Seed   6. Vine
7. Tradition?   8. Skansen-inspiration   9. Song of Songs 4:12

For a week and a half, I have been showing pictures of these gates at my DawnTreader’s Picture Book blog. I also showed most of them at the Soaring Through The World blog during “Fences and Gates” week. So some of my followers are probably tired of them by now… But for those who have not been following the other blogs, I thought I’d throw in a summary in the form of a collage here. The gates are all from an open air exhibition Gates - The Dream of the Secret Garden.

I was asked in a comment to reveal at the end of the show which one is my personal favourite. I have to say I find it hard to choose. It so much depends on the context – what kind of house, garden, fence, surrounding… I don’t have a garden, and any of them would look rather silly on my balcony!

The ‘Song of Songs’ gate I cannot imagine as entrance to somewhere I’d actually live. But as a sculpture, I love the mystery of it. All the other gates are of the kind you can see through. They are inviting kind of gates. This one however is the shutting out kind; but at the same time makes you wonder all the more what’s on the other side.

In that particular setting in the museum park where they were exhibited, with all the old buildings as background, I also took a special liking to the ‘Live Rust’ one. But if I actually had to use it daily, I would prefer one that was not rusty.

In an “imaginary real life” I would probably go for either the simple but elegant ‘Vine’; or possibly the somewhat bolder ‘New Wave’.

End Of Summer

It’s not over yet, but nature is beginning to bear witness to the change of season…

One thing I like about the rose hip bush is that it sometimes has fruit and new fresh flower buds going at the same time.

What really speaks of the turn of season is the Rowan berries turning red:

 
28 July

 
17 August

Quotation of the Week (33/2010)

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

Vote For Us, Please!

 

The local Election Campaigns have started.

Lucky me, other people have already written various Wikipedia articles in English about the political stuff, so I don’t have to bother with that.

Elections in the Kingdom of Sweden are held every four years, and determine the makeup of the legislative bodies on the three levels of administrative division in the country. At the highest level, these elections determine the allocation of seats in the Riksdag, the national legislative body of Sweden. Elections to the 20 county councils (landsting) and 290 municipal assemblies (kommunfullmäktige) are held concurrently with the legislative elections on the third Sunday of September, and use roughly the same electoral system.

The next general election to the Swedish Riksdag will be held on 19 September 2010. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of the governing coalition Alliance for Sweden, and his right-wing Moderate Party is facing a tough election battle against the opposing Red-Greens coalition led by Mona Sahlin, leader of the Swedish Social Democratic Party, who narrowly lead in pre-election polling.

I really just wanted to show the pictures.

For the next month, the political parties all have their own market booths in the town square as basis for the local campaigns. When they’re open you can go there and ask questions and pick up brochures and so on. (Or if you don’t, campaigners might come chasing you and offer you brochures anyway.)

Sometimes, they use other means to attract attention. Like hiring a band.

Not that I know if these guys were paid, or by whom.

Can’t help but think there may be some symbolism in that lack of clarity…?

Thank You, Blogger

Blogger made me very happy yesterday, by introducing the new automatic spam detection! I’ve been thinking for weeks, not to say months: Surely there must be some better way to deal with this problem than leaving it up to each and every blogger to keep chasing and deleting them one by one?!?? Thank you, Blogger, for the new Comments Tab and the Spam Inbox.
For you who have so far been lucky enough not to be troubled by spam, I can report that the new filter seems to work as intended. At least with the sort of spam that I have been subjected to for a while.

BTT: Have You Changed At All?

http://btt2.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/evolution/

Have your reading choices changed over the years? Or pretty much stayed the same? (And yes, from childhood to adulthood we usually read different things, but some people stick to basically the same kind of book their entire lives, so…)

Hmmm... I guess I will have to give another "yes and no" answer... Because of my tendency to still like children's books (at the age of soon-to-be-55!), and also in later years having re-read quite a few old classics, I guess I could simply say that no, it has not changed all that much. But on the other hand...

I think as a child and teenager, I had a preference for mystery, adventure, humour, romance and history, but not so much "fantasy" (even if I did have some favourites that were "more or less" that genre). In my teens I also read quite a few classics: besides Swedish and English ones also French and Russian (in translation). In my twenties, I studied English and German and history at the university; that definitely influenced my choices. I never acquired quite the same feeling for German literature as for English, though. It remains to me kind of "heavy" reading (even though the German books from my study years are really all very thin!). English classics on the other hand I have kept on exploring and re-exploring without the help of any schedules.

In my late teens I read Tolkien, and a few years later became a huge C.S. Lewis fan - not only his fiction, but also his theology and literature essays, and biographies about his life. From there I moved on to other worlds of fantasy as well.

In my twenties and thirties especially, I also read a lot of Christian books - theology, Biblical history, counselling, ethics, spirituality, mysticism and whatnot.

In my mid-forties my reading habits changed physically, because of neck-and-arm problems after an accident. I had to get used to reading more with my ears than with my eyes, i.e. listening to audio books. Borrowing most of them from the library, this led to some catching up with contemporary Swedish literature, and other books popular enough to have been both translated into our language and recorded as audio books. That means a lot of detective stories! I'd say a few too many, actually. Lately I find myself tired of them. Especially the all-too-realistic sort with super-abundance of forensic details.

But I have also had time over the past decade to delve into more fantasy worlds - like Harry Potter, and Terry Pratchett's Discworld. I have also read and re-read some classics that I had either half-forgotten or never read at all. As for none-fiction, I think "mythology" has dominated this period (trying to get behind the origin and inspiration of the modern fantasy genre). But also on and off some medical and psychological books about how to deal with pain and involontary changes in life.

To sum it all up, I'm more fond of fairy tales at the age of 55 than I was at 5, 10 or 15. I take comfort in the fact (for example) that C.S. Lewis, old bachelor and learned professor as he was, didn't write the Narnia Chronicles until he was over 50...!

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…