18May2019: Crocus albiflorus growing on the edges of melting snow at 2,300 meters above sea level at the base of Mt. Eiger, Jungfrau Region, Berner Oberland, Swiss Alps.
Crocus–some might say it is carpeting this landscape.
I thought of it as a forest and imagined a walk through a Crocus Forest.:)
You don’t think so? Where is the singing if there are no flowers?
Right here! Can you hear the music? Spring is here.
I had lunch, with a couple chums, over at my friend’s place today.
In case you think it was too early to have a picnic…just nearby the first spring hay was being cut. And, oh how I wish I could share with you that sweet spring green fragrance.
This is the pasture the morning before it was cut.
In German speaking Switzerland, on the north face of the Bernese Highlands at about 600 meters above sea level…
It is time to wake up because…
Spring is here!
Look carefully, spring is everywhere.
I suppose this image is about design. But it is also about people who have lived for generations with the forest. Wood takes on many important facets of their lives.
What do you do with wood? On this window sill is a painted wooden model of a village in the woods.
The village in the woods.
My heart’s in the forest.
Hamamelis species
Witch-hazel
Can anyone share with me witch lore about this plant?
Early March, full flower, no leaves, yet.
Every so often something makes me take a photo–something?
Walnut tree–Juglans nigra
Is it my eyes, is it my heart, is it paranormal?
I don’t know. But Alfred Joyce Kilmer wrote, in his poem ‘Trees’:
I think that I shall never see
A poem as lovely as a tree.
My photos may not be technically the best but they do have my heart in them. And I love living in the Swiss Highlands because such simple things as the beauty of a tree have become embedded in their culture for all to appreciate.
A few years back, I posted a story here entitled ‘Landscapeyness’. The title was not so accurate related to its content about trees and culture in the Swiss Highlands. The following image shares the flavor.
Forest, animals, people, nurture, rest, music, landscape…
The artwork is called Schnerenschnit.
Purify by fire…elimination of last year’s evil. The municipality arranged for a community Christmas tree burning. Presto! Last year’s evil is up in smoke.
Every country and culture has a different interpretation of Christmas, trees and Santa Claus.
After the passing of the Christmas and the New Year, our local neighborhood, in the Jungfrau Region of the Swiss Alps, furnished these three image examples.
Saint Nikolas prepares to distribute bread, while his companion, Schmutzli prepares to sweep away what remains of this past year’s evil.
And if some evil escapes Schmutzli, numerous helpers are prepared to scare it away.
Have no fear, Happy New Year!
Fog.
This is not fog.
What is fresh air?
Settled science? Humans and animals–oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Plants–carbon dioxide in, oxygen out.
In cold weather those are small clouds coming out of our nose when we breathe.
Does the earth breathe out clouds like we do?
Mountains, creeks and lakes come together with temperatures just above freezing and a light drizzle from cloudy skies…that makes my day.
The play of air, water and earth can be visualized best by observing the visual interplay of low level clouds–they appear and disappear with a rhythm and frequency that reminds me of my own breaths.
On a calm day, the very low clouds come and go as if breaths from a huge giant–the earth itself.
What is fresh air if it is not air that has been filtered by plants …or filtered by earth…or filtered by both.
Think about it the next time you inhale a deep breath of fresh air.
Think about it the next time you exhale a cloud.
Clouds often arise from creek beds like this.
Cloud arising from adjacent forest.
Clouds arising from the earth via forests and creeks have a scaled up size and time span not dissimilar in proportion to small individual human exhales. They appear…
…and they disappear.
For me, the action is at the cloud edges.
Inhale…exhale…repeat…more slowly…more deeply…recharge is real.
The unpredictable dynamic mystifies.
I grew up on the East Side of Detroit, post WW2, near the City Airport. Then, Detroit was booming, steel and autos, proud and popular. At the corner of our block, there was a store where, if I had a note from my mum, I could buy her a package of cigarettes. The real grocery shopping though, was done with my dad’s car taking us to Kroger super market about a mile away. And that is how I grew up for some 25 years. Groceries came from a well kept super market. Cigarettes and spur of the moment snacks from the corner store.
Then I found myself living in North Africa. No super markets and lots of corner stores, called bakals. We bought almost all our groceries for daily sustenance at the bakal. Convenient and efficient.
Time travel to the present, in Switzerland–no bakals, no corner stores but there, to serve local small populations, are local mini supermarkets–downsized versions of supermarkets. Very convenient. They are the smallest in scale of stores increasing in size as the surrounding populations increase in size. Yes, there are supermarkets. Yes, there are regional sized superstores.
Yet, even with all that, there exists these days an annual excitement like we use to have 50 years ago in Detroit when we would go downtown once a year for a special shopping festival–like the Christmas season. Here, once a year, end of the harvest season, in the capital city of Bern, there is an onion festival. There are two images in this post. Above is the 2018 festival itself. Below is the content of a shopping bag from the festival. The shopping bag collection of goods can not be found in local stores now, or fifty years ago, or in North African bakals.
Not bragging–just amazed at the range of goods. Pain d’épices from France. Onions and garlic from Germany and France. Decorative garlic, onions and peppers from Switzerland. Honeys and blood orange marmalade from Southern Italy and magenbrot from Switzerland.
Holiday season is upon us like no corner store could imagine.
Best wishes to all.
Shopping bag content.
