snowdrops on black

a little bit more of the same, it's that time of the year

blue and yellow

outrageously oversaturated in yellow band, I know. but it got a certain something in exchange, hard to define, but it sort of speaks to me.

snowdrops

mandatory yearly snowdrops picture. looks like the weather is changing finally.

left behind

as far as I know, the scooters don't belong to the pair walking up the steps. but the accidental color-coordination created this impression of two pets* left behind when the owners went for a walk

* - (dogs, I guess, cats don't do that "look mournfully after" act as good

tulips

with tulips, I like when there's a lot of them. bucketful (why one "l", for crying out loud? I would never understand this language), for preference. Alas, I don't have a suitably ornamental bucket to hold this lot, but hey, I still bought three bunches. they take most of the space on the dinner table, so the setting becomes somewhat problematic. Still

Pac-Man Graveyard

those strange sculptures are in Palma, sort of between the cathedral and the seafront. I didn't find them hugely interesting till Yuri suddenly came up with a name for the whole complex - Pac-man Graveyard. And yes, those things do look like big stone pac-mans that plummeted from the sky and got stuck in the pavement.

not that Yuri played a lot of it, but at least one episode in Futurama features an appearance by both mr and mrs pac-man

what exactly did the sculptor meant remains unknown to me. and uninteresting, too

waka waka waka

nice doggy

we only had two full days on Mallorca, and we spent the first one in Palma. It is now out of season, and the cathedral-old town area is perfectly pleasant - not crowded narrow streets, little pretty graden with citrus trees and goldfish we stumbled upon, etc. Overall atmosphere is kind of generic Mediterranean. Once out of old town area, which is not very big, again, it reminds of many other places at once - Agherro and Malaga especially, at least for me, but obviously I haven't been everywhere.

Unexpected success with our kids was museum of modern arts, and that with us even not going inside it - they have some abstract sculptures outside. you also get a good view over the rooftops from what I think was city walls and now house some of the collection.

The cedar-cone structure behind Timur was outside too. I immediately (and wrongly) thought it was by Andy Goldsworthy, but no, it was by a different author - don't remember the name.

Little doggy was hanging around the cone, and wanted to make friends with Timur (as many dogs do). Timur got somewhat worried if the nice doggy was a stray, but with not one, but two collar on it, I guess it was very much owned by someone

Parakeets

there were quite a lot of those loud birds in the little pine grove by the beach in Santa Ponsa. The built complicated-looking nests in the branches, and were easily outnumbering ubiquitous pigeons. there was at least one restaurant named after them (restaurante papagayo), and local-looking people were feeding them - something different from what they fed pigeons, since each feeder attracted either pigeons or parrots, but not both together.

they were obviously not native to balearics, so I made a quick search just now. they are monk parakeets apparently, native to subtropics of Argentina. wikipedia article doesn't list balearics as a home to feral flocks. maybe I should go and correct it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_Parakeet

PS: I just did, but am not sure if the change will stay since I have no source of information that wikipedia would consider appropriate. reference to blog will probably be considered as spam

fake waterspout

I have a few pet fears. those include flying (not very original, I know), and natural disasters of various kind. I never experienced one yet, and hopefully never will, but I do feel somewhat panicky when, for instance, wind is getting too strong for my liking

picture above is not a real tornado, of course. people who saw one will probably point out a lot of things that are wrong .

but there is some justification behind it - when on Lanzarote in December last year, we saw this cloud that I think was trying to become a funnel, but kind of abandoned the idea half-way. I took a picture (surprise, surprise). and worked on it a bit :)


that's how the original cloud looked, only the contrast bumped up.


Island in the background is Fuerteventura

cattleya

another one of a few orchid I have that not only survived after the first bloom, but started blooming again.
It was standing by a single-glazed window, ie it was quite cold, what with the weather we had this winter. it took almost two months for the plant to grow the buds to what I though was a goodish size.
yesterday I took it off the windowsill and put it on the table in the middle of a warm room, and it *almost* opened overnight, only two petals are still stuck together. maybe it was just a good timing, or course, but I am inclined to think it decided that warm season is finally here :)

fire and water

above is a manipulated image of a drop of black ink going through water, isolated, inverted and toned with gradient map of red to yellow

when you drop the ink into water, it also forms a rather nice spiral on the top


just playing around basically

clementines

when I was a kid, I thought there's nothing more beautiful than a mandarin that still has a branch and a little leaf attached. or an apple with the same features, but not so much, because there were more apples around than mandarins.

oh, and also seed beads, but that's a different category, I guess :)

hot royal blue

seems like everybody is freezing and snowed under. sun from Lanzarote to help.
spring will be here shortly - I was told that crocuses are already out in Bournemouth.

opening iris

unlike hyacinth, and especially amaryllis, this iris only took a few hours to fully open.

the speed made me to miss the stage when three outer petals open but inner part of the flower is still together - that all happened while I was asleep
iris oics at shutterstock

full moon collage (again)

whenever there is full moon/clear sky combination I feel compelled to take a picture. They are all very similar to each other - well, the moon is the same and my biggest telephoto lens remains 300. This doesn't really give a big picture of the moon itself - it comes out about 300 pixels across, so to use in collages I blow it up, overlay with different texture (paper in this case), increase contrast, sharpen etc. Occasionally I throw the results away - they are very similar to full moon pictures I already accumulated.

This full moon was very bright and pictures came out nice and sharp, so I am keeping them. And this was that rare occasion were I had to agree that a planet could be colored. Usually I see starts and planets as white with blue tint. This time Mars really was reddish, I could see it. and it came out as a (completely useless, of course), red dot on the picture I took

when lights are switched on

the lighthouse on Murano is painted white, with two wide black stripes that don't quite meet on the island side. You can I am not sure if there is any meaning to it, but it looks like somebody realized that there's not enough black paint and painted the sea side only - for the tower to look its best when you approach the island. How it looks when you are on the island was deemed less important.

the lights were being switched on everywhere on the lagoon when we were coming back to Venice from Burano,

celtic octopus

Timur is studying all things celtic at school at the moment. As a result, he got fascinated by celtic patterns and knotworks and produced dozens of his own drawing, celtic-y in various degrees, some better than others. But I think this celtic octopus is the best. Timur clearly figured that it's an animal made for knotwork. Maybe I should ask him to produce jellyfish (man-o-war type), too, and some seaweed for an epic "celtic aquarium" set

here is the central element, quickly vector-traced



Timur's drawings and Timur's drawing on shutterstock

Arco Iris Samba band Haiti earthquake appeal

today Arco Iris samba band collected money for the Haiti earthquake victims. They did two standing sets around Cambridge Market square and a short procession around it.
There were three kids with collection buckets - two of them ours. People were quite astonishingly generous, and towards the end of the performance the buckets were full to overflowing. I don't yet know how much was raised, but it looked a lot.

Nymphaea

Such a pretty name.

I was browsing through the pictured I took in Venice and Padova in October, hoping to find something I missed when going through the folders first time. I didn't find anything new, but colors on pictures from Padova botanic gardens called for attention, and here is one of them.

The garden is small and mostly geometrically laid out and walled, with some space outside the wall dedicated to more natural layout. Apparently, it is the world's oldest academic botanical garden that is still in its original location (which I didn't really know up till five minutes ago, just knew it's old). Far as I remember, it's not cheap, considering the size - 4 euro, and our kids paid full price. It was worth it, though.

Amaryllis (well, ok, Hippeastrum)

amazingly, it survived our absences over holidays. not that I expected it to become lonely or worried, but I semi-expected it to die because of temperature drop. we did leave the heating on, but on low setting and when we arrived from Lanzarote, the house felt freezing.

anyhow - it did survive, and now it's getting taller and taller and more and more top-heavy by day. it should be stripy when it opens. we'll wait and see.

PS - I think I know why it is misnamed so very frequently (practically always).
Misnomer "Amaryllis" seems to be a self-sufficient word which doesn't fall into two halves, doesn't ask for explanation and doesn't create a conflict in reader's or writer's mind. "Hippeastrum", on the other hand, falls into halves, wants to make sense and begs to be changed into "Hyperastrum". Granted, it's not clear what's so hyper about that astrum, but then - what could possibly be horsey (Hipper) about it? Wikipedia provides an explanation, but it only makes sense if you take into account the biography and occupation by the namer.