My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one.
The Amazing Great Gardens Of Het Loo Palace In Apeldoorn – the “Versailles” of Holland – YouTube
This is one video worth seeing till the very end. One of the best I promise you. We are proud of it.
It is a privilege to be in that amazing place and experience the wonders of everything it has to offer. This is one venue you have to see at least once in your lifetime.
San Miguel de La Palma – A diamond in the rough. – YouTube
When I saw on the news what is happening on that beautiful island of La Palma, it saddened me enormously. We’ve been there a couple of years ago. The one and only time we have visited that part of the world and I can tell you that I am pleasantly surprised…
Connecterra x TerHills – YouTube
… and still, the corona issue lingers.
I could sympathize with the sociables and extroverts out there who need human contact to properly function though I don’t share their predicaments. If truth is to be told, nothing really changes with my lifestyle since the lockdown. I have always been in self-imposed quarantine since I decided to distance myself with all the dramas of humankind. Most of the time I enjoy my solitude. Sometimes I want to be lost in anonymity among strangers who don’t know and want nothing from me. I like it that way.
Probably, the only setback I have experienced during this crisis is not being able to go on vacation and lost my booking. I got a form of a voucher claimable the next time I book a holiday and would be expired within a year. The catch is, nobody knows yet when people are allowed again to travel outside their own countries so, it’s a waiting game. I hope to be out here by October. Fingers cross.
They are predicting the hottest summer (which is becoming the norm these days) I have given up on gardening. My water bill is sky high already and it is not even summer. The driest month so far they say. If it gets even drier, there will be no plant left to water. I don’t know if it is good or bad.
Anyway, I hope June will be kind to you, and let’s pray that this crisis will be over soon.
See you around.
Gifted people are sometimes called Zebras (a term proposed by French psychologist Jeanne Siaud Fachin). This is in part because zebras are non-domesticable by humans — they are too free-spirited and unpredictable to be tamed and controlled. It sounds like many gifted people we know!
Zebras also stand out from other species because of their loud black and white stripes, much as gifted people stand from the crowd out whether they want to or not. The interesting thing about zebras’ stripes is that they each have a unique stripe pattern – as fingerprints are unique to each human. This brings to mind the popular saying, “If you’ve met one gifted person, you’ve met *one* gifted person” — we are not a homogenous group!
Stripes serve zebras to protect themselves, by blending in with each other when predators are around, as predators cannot make out individuals when all they see is a group of stripes. Siaud Fachin said that gifted people tend to blend into the “herd” when they feel threatened too, which in one way is healthy; however, this can go wrong when a gifted person feels *constantly* threatened and is unable to feel safe enough to find their unique pattern, voice, and expression. Unfortunately, that’s not an uncommon experience for many gifted people.
Zebras are highly sensitive and perceptive animals, with excellent eyesight and night vision, excellent hearing with ears that turn in almost every direction, and acute senses of smell and taste. They have very high stamina, are fast, powerful, and resourceful. Every gifted person knows what it’s like to have an exceptional perception, speed, stamina, and resourcefulness in one area or another (or in many all at once).
Today we’re featuring zebras, as it is Endangered Species Day. This is an important time for us to remember that our lives, and even our metaphors and self-concepts, are intertwined with other species. We can understand ourselves better in a context of rich biodiversity around us, and it is up to us to protect that biodiversity (and rich intellectual diversity across species). And just as human “zebras” deserve a dignified life, so do our animal counterparts – many of whom are threatened with extinction due to our high consumption lifestyles and political and economic choices and ideologies. Among zebras, the Cape Mountain Zebra and the Grévy Zebra are both at risk of extinction. It’s estimated that 50% of the earth’s species are currently at risk of extinction due to human action.
It’s equally important that we extend this dignity and responsibility to our fellow human populations which are endangered — namely many indigenous groups. Indigenous people and their cultures bring rich sources of knowledge and connectedness and contribute so much to the beautiful intellectual diversity of our interconnected whole.
Let’s do all we can to protect the animals, our fellow humans, and all other endangered beings on this planet.
(Source: InterGifted via Facebook)
When the greenwood laughs with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
-William Blake 1794
Dark and light
striking
each other,
vividly etching wild colors
through the horizon.
The charm of sunset
makes me want
to scurry home.
―
Golden hour is my favorite time of the day. The softness of colors yet astonishingly vibrant and the peaceful feeling it brings. As if saying: Let go, relax, prepare yourself, it is time to rest.
I saw the above photo online with the title caption and I thought: That’s it! Finally, a description I could accept. I don’t like to hear pretty, sexy, beautiful, charming. etc. etc. Interesting is the only option I considered in the past alongside the likeness of Pumba which I happened to believe closely resembled how I look like though lately, even that is not an alternative anymore. Anyway, I saw the image of this Robin and I yelled: That’s how I like to look like. Exactly like that. Cute Vibrant And Oh So Very Round. Wonderful!
It is the HOMELIEST month of the year. Most of it is MUD, Every Imaginable Form of MUD, and what isn’t MUD in March is ugly late-season SNOW falling onto the ground in filthy muddy heaps that look like PILES of DIRTY LAUNDRY. ―
Well, I don’t agree. Especially now that almost everything becomes evergreen due to global warming no doubt. Even deciduous trees and plants somehow failed to shed their leaves entirely. The photo above and below I’ve taken both in February 2015 and look how beautiful they are. And there is no snow this year aside from occasional night frost which right away disappear in the morning. We had more foggy days and nights though that linger compared to other years. The temperature now is in most days double-digit which is on its own very alarming but who noticed? In my experience, December and January are the most depressing months of the year. Cold, wet, windy and dark. By February the days get longer and the garden is starting to wake up. No, March for me is okay. That is when I start pruning the roses and from then on, the work never stops.
“As my grandmother discovered long ago, the Japanese excel in cultivating nature. Their gardens come in numerous styles, including paradise gardens, dry-landscape gardens, stroll gardens, and tea gardens. Although each type has its own goal, tray all share the same principle: nature is manipulated to create a miniature symbolic landscape.
A paradise garden is meant to evoke the Buddhist paradise through the use of water dotted with stone “islands.” Dry-landscape gardens, usually tucked away in Zen temples, use dry pebbles and stones to create minimalist views for quiet contemplation. Stroll gardens offer changing scenes with every step, a pool of carp here, a mossy trail there, and a small bridge to link them both, while a tea garden provides a serene path to take you from the external world to the spiritual one of the teahouse.”
―
“There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia.
I can’t get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blossom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. …
Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can’t take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower…
I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light.
I’m going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.”
―
A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April — drip — drip — drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon’s meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs —
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.
―
MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO 
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