SkyBluePink
Three days of magnificent sky shows.
Precursor
by WaterGirl| 28 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging
Three days of magnificent sky shows.
Precursor
by WaterGirl| 9 Comments
This post is in: Amsterdam, On The Road, Photo Blogging
With this set we finish up at the Scheepvaartmuseum.
Ship decorations. There were also some…bawdier ones.
On The Road – Captain C – Amsterdam, October 2023, Part 5Post + Comments (9)
by WaterGirl| 10 Comments
This post is in: Amsterdam, On The Road, Photo Blogging
We continue at the Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum), finishing up on the Amsterdam and then heading inside. This set will be a little shorter than usual, so I can take advantage of the new limit of 10 to keep the various exhibits together.
The ship’s wheel.
On The Road – Captain C – Amsterdam, October 2023, Part 4Post + Comments (10)
by WaterGirl| 17 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging
Today in honor of New Year’s Day, we have our last holiday OTR post birds who should be Christmas ornaments!
Tomorrow we return to our regular programming. :-)
(click for larger, non-blurry image)
Week 2 of Birds Who Should be Christmas Ornaments features some birds for which I have actually see ornaments based on them. If any of you have some of those, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Here’s one that for sure graces Christmas trees in the USA, the Eastern Bluebird (Sialia sialis). Indeed, it has a whole organization dedicated to it! Click here for more information about this bird, and here to embiggen the image.
On The Road – Albatrossity – Birds Who Should Be Christmas Ornaments – 2Post + Comments (17)
by WaterGirl| 33 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging
I love all these holiday lights so much! So here a bonus Christmas lights OTR for New Year’s Eve. (morning)
Redshift’s Miracle on 34th Street (https://balloon-juice.com/2023/12/29/on-the-road-redshift-baltimores-miracle-on-34th-street/) reminded me that, when it comes to extravagant holiday decorations, we need to take a stroll through Dyker Heights.
Dyker Heights is a rich neighborhood in Brooklyn where people* put out elaborate Christmas decorations to the delight of hundreds of thousands of visitors who go to the area every year, to admire the shiny spectacle. I was there about one week ago, filming and oohing and aahing with everyone else.
(* A local resident, Lucy Spata, started the tradition in the 1980s. Today most people pay professional companies to set up the decorations.)
On The Road – ema – Dyker Heights Christmas Lights 2023Post + Comments (33)
by WaterGirl| 43 Comments
This post is in: Artists In Our Midst, On The Road, Photo Blogging
Dan B sent these photos as part of On the Road, but he is so talented when it comes to landscape design that I consider him an artist. Many artists, sp many mediums.
This myopic travelogue set on Whidbey Island, a 50 mile long Island in Puget Sound, came about from a project for a home in Medina, the place across the street from Microsoft’s Chief Technology officer and around the corner from that Gates fellow.
I started that project with no clue so just drew wild scribbles on bug sheets of paper until something coherent emerged. I showed Chuck and his wife my manic slashes and wild doodles. Chuck gasped, “You’ve drawn the ley lines!” I’m not a believer but there are some things that guide designs for every site. One of them, on a different note, was the 6 inches of water on the brick of their new addition. A vernal pond and swale solved that.
Several years later Chuck made a lot of money getting paid in futures from marketing a startup tech business. He decided to pay back thus good fortune by purchasing a plot of land with three lakes on Whidbey Island. The goals were ecological restoration, spirituality, and art. It was named Earth Sanctuary. I was asked to help design it and thus began many years of restoration design and wrangling massive stones to create magical spaces – we hope.
This drab spot, stripped of invasive Himalayan Blackberries, sits between a seven acre lake which has a several acre floating fen dating to the end of the last glaciation. Sundews and other fen denizens pickle the logs that support them. 150 year old conifers are less than fifteen feet tall due to lack of nutrients.
Featuring Dan B – A small piece of Whidbey Island in Puget SoundPost + Comments (43)
by WaterGirl| 18 Comments
This post is in: On The Road, Photo Blogging
The Ms. and I happened to be in Baltimore at the right time to visit the Miracle on 34th Street, a block of the city’s Hampden neighborhood that goes all out with fun and over-the-top holiday decorations. It did not disappoint! Hampden is a quirky neighborhood of rowhomes, known for restaurants, art galleries, and vintage shops, and its character is a mix of longtime residents and artists who began to move in during the 90s. The Christmas displays were started long before that, and have been going on for 76 years!
On The Road – Redshift – Baltimore’s Miracle on 34th StreetPost + Comments (18)