Cacti are blooming all over Hollerdom.
Prickly plants yielding fragile flowers.
Like gilded lilies,
in rainbow hues,
seeking sun,
through lethal thorns.
An Easter parade,
in a desert scape,
beauty triumphs in the harshest places.
Cheers & Happy Easter to you~
This video says about itself:
Hieronymus Bosch‘s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” HD
1 June 2013
“De Profundis Clamavi” composed by Josquin performed by The Hilliard Ensemble.
“The Garden of Earthly Delights” (1490-1510) by Hieronymus Bosch courtesy of Wikipedia.
Bosch‘s wild and bizarre Renaissance masterpiece set to contemporary music.
According to Dutch Vroege Vogels TV today, of famous painter Jeroen (Hieronymus) Bosch 24 paintings still exist today. On 75% of them, Bosch depicted animals.
Just on his painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, Bosch depicted over 500 animals of over 100 species.
Two special species in Bosch‘s work are the gadwall duck and the hooded crow. They are the two first depictions ever of these birds in the Netherlands.
View original post 72 more words
By Sharon St Joan
Going up a dirt pathway from the road, one comes to a sacred ant hill.
The tall ant hill looks a bit like a yellow rock with many shapes and indentations. Inside it termites live, called white ants. One doesn’t see any of the white ants, only the mound itself, and cloths that have been tied, with reverence, around it. Inside cobras live too, who come and go as they please – the cobras also are not visible, but they are sacred – invisible presences of the earth.
This particular sacred ant hill represents Ponni Amman, the Rice Goddess. Her worship here at this site is very ancient going way back before any of the nearby temples were carved into the rocks in the eighth century during the time of the early Pallava kings. It’s unclear how long the sacred anthill has been here, perhaps for…
View original post 646 more words
This video says about itself:
The Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand
6 November 2011
Forest & Bird has been protecting and restoring New Zealand’s natural environment since 1923. We are a not-for-profit independent registered charity that dedicated to the conservation of wild life and wild landscapes in New Zealand.
We are a community based organization. We have 50 volunteer branches throughout New Zealand. Our 3000 active volunteers manage and restore native forest and wetlands on our land and on public land. Each year they set over 10,000 traps and plant over 200,000 trees on our land and on public land. Our contribution to New Zealand since 1923 has been immense, as the Governor General Sir Anand Satyand said in 2009, “It would be difficult to imagine New Zealand without the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society.”
From BirdLife:
Forest & Bird launches ambitious strategy for…
View original post 557 more words
By Hilary Hanson in the USA:
This New ArcticButterfly Species May Only Exist In Alaska
It’s part of a group of butterflies that typically have special traits to help them survive the extreme cold.
03/17/2016 03:00 pm ET
A newly discovered butterfly species may be the only type of butterfly that can be found solely in Alaska.
The Tanana Arctic butterfly (Oeneis tanana), named after Alaska’s Tanana-Yukon River Basin, where the insect lives, has actually been present in a collection at the Florida Museum of Natural History for more than 60 years, according to a University of Florida press release. There, a specimen of the butterfly was categorized as the Chryxus Arctic (Oeneis chryxus), a similar-looking close relative.
But recently, Andrew “Lord of the Butterflies” Warren, a lepidopterist (that’s a scientist who studies butterflies and moths), was sorting through collections when he noticed that…
View original post 283 more words
On Monday I made a determined attempt to ‘bash the patch’and see if I could find some new local birds for the year. The main objectives were a couple of over due birds firstly a cormorant which I had expected to see by now and the second target a yellow hammer which I would also expected to have seen. The yellowhammer is from the bunting family and when caught in the right light is almost magical in intensity of colour. Alas after much walking neither bird was showing despite me visiting all their favourite haunts, hopefully not a sign of things to come. I did finally catch a photograph of a very common local bird which is busy preparing nests for this years offspring and very vocal all year round.
Gleaming in the spring sunshine a Rook with its distinctive bill and bare face ideal for digging for invertebrates without…
View original post 191 more words
By Sharon St Joan
The stone steps, narrow and slightly sloping from centuries of use, extend downwards from between the paws of the great lion down into the green waters of the tank where devotees put their hand into the water and sprinkle it on their heads. The largest and oldest of the temples in this area, the Vrinchipuram Margapandeswarar Temple stands near Vellore, in Tamil Nadu, in south India.
Its outer walls tower perhaps forty feet into the air and are massively thick, like those of a fortress. The atmosphere in the courtyard paved with giant stones is peaceful and very ancient — its ancientness being interwoven with its peace and its massive structure. Like eternity, it seems indestructible, permanent, and unmoving, calm like the great stones that dot the nearby granite hillsides.
Two Ganeshas in bas relief stand near the temple entrance – one for the main…
View original post 564 more words
One of the major attraction for me in Uyo is “art everywhere”. A really big influence. Right behind me there is sculpture on the wall depicting our traditional ways of life. Especially the cross-cultural harmony of Igbo of south east Nigeria and Ibiobio of south south Nigeria. Different culture that has married and become one. More prominent both in here, Akwa Ibom
state and Anambra State in the
eastern side. The drummer. The dancers will feature in the subsequent posts of this week theme. Hope you will enjoy it.
This video from the Netherlands says about itself:
30 November 2015
Het Noordbrabants Museum presents: Jheronimus Bosch – Visions of a genius. From 13th February to 8th May. Twenty panels and triptychs and nineteen drawings are making it the largest exhibition of Hieronymus Bosch in the Netherlands ever. The exhibition is a highpoint of the National Event Year Jheronimus Bosch 500 in 2016.
Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands today:
The Hieronymus Bosch exhibition in Den Bosch attracts so many visitors that the hours will be extended.
As of next Monday, the exhibition will be open for one hour longer until 20:00 daily. And from 24 March on the exhibition will be open from Thursday to Saturday until 23:00.
Since its opening on February 13, the exhibition attracted 90,000 visitors and now a total of 300,000 tickets have been sold. So, March and April are almost fully booked.
The…
View original post 86 more words
Art, animals, and the earth 