New bird species discovered

How exciting that a previously unknown bird has been found and that it looks so bizarre! This is the Laotian Bare-faced Bulbul (see article and another article) "Researchers found the new species in forests growing on the sides of tower-like limestone structures called karsts."
How many other species are there out there that we know nothing of? Intriging thought.

Project

I'm not saying where I got these rose hips, but aren't they big? (Spoon shows relative size.) It was a lot of work to clean, cook, mash, strain, cook again with Certo and lemon juice and sugar and pour into jars, but the final product was...

Interesting.

I added about half the amount of sugar specified and I love the delicate not-too-sweet taste, but what resulted was syrup not jelly as it did not solidify much. Very nice on toast however. (I'm not quitting my day job)

Recipe

Flora

Isn't she lovely?
A fresco found at Stabiae, preserved by the same eruption that buried Pompei in 79 AD.
Here are 8 more of the frescos now on display in Ravenna. How I wish they'd come to New York!

NY Times article

Would you...

...like to see some interesting garden sculptures?
(Cheryl especially take note)
These were on a Swedish blog I follow located in Haninge

Another yellow flower to identify

I seem to be fixated on the color yellow this spring and summer--Western goat's beard, prickly pear, sundrops, dandelions, and now this little wildflower. The pictures are from late May. Is it a cinquefoil? Nearby was a small pink wildflower with a strange needle-like seed pod.

For Danial

...who sent me this picture of his favorite football (soccer) player Cristiano Ronaldo.

Dani, have you seen this video ?

And this one ?

Wow!! Magic footwork!!

The mind's eye

THE BLUE SWALLOWS

Across the millstream below the bridge
Seven blue swallows divide the air
In shapes invisible and evanescent,
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s
Or memory’s power to keep them there.

“History is where tensions were,”
“Form is the diagram of forces.”
Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge,
While gazing down upon those birds—
How strange, to be above the birds!—
Thus helplessly the mind in its brain
Weaves up relation’s spindrift web,
Seeing the swallows’ tails as nibs
Dipped in invisible ink, writing…

Poor mind, what would you have them write?
Some cabalistic history
Whose authorship you might ascribe
To God? to Nature? Ah, poor ghost,
You’ve capitalized your Self enough.
That villainous William of Occam
Cut out the feet from under that dream
Some seven centuries ago.
It’s taken that long for the mind
To waken, yawn and stretch, to see
With opened eyes emptied of speech
The real world where the spelling mind
Imposes with its grammar book
Unreal relations on the blue
Swallows. Perhaps when you will have
Fully awakened, I shall show you
A new thing: even the water
Flowing away beneath those birds
Will fail to reflect their flying forms,
And the eyes that see become as stones
Whence never tears shall fall again.

O swallows, swallows, poems are not
The point. Finding again the world,
That is the point, where loveliness
Adorns intelligible things
Because the mind’s eye lit the sun.


Howard Nemerov, from Collected Poems

Where the swallows nest

The Hercules pavilion in old Stony Brook

The four corners where the roof meets the white horizontal beams or headers are the places where swallows always nest. The structure was built to shelter the Hercules figurehead from the ship USS Ohio.

More about the figurehead

Sneaking up on swallows

Why are those birds clustered on one rock? I'll see how close I can get.

Young barn swallows


creep, creep, shhh

Togetherness. Oh, they see me.

I've moved to a side view. Surely they're going to fly off now.

Still there. Are they waiting for momma to bring food? They flew around a bit then came right back to the same rock. Fascinating.

I'm giving prizes today

For recycling

For sidewalk luxuriance

For thoughtfulness to dogs

For the cleanest hull at the dock

Edifying

In place of all the silly beach reading we cannot do because it's raining again and we cannot go to the beach ... here is a classically-tinged solution:

In an amusing series called HORRIBLE HISTORIES we see

Helen of Troy