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Vegan or not Vegan?
Sometimes known as Lady’s slipper vine this Thunbergia mysorensis (yes, just like Greta) is a native of Southern India (not like Greta). I thought it might be an insect-eating plant but the ants (which I only noticed on the computer screen at home) have a different opinion.
Macro Monday
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In Need of TLC
Monday Window
Seven in Fairy Tales VII
This one is obvious – it’s Cinderella, of course. Cendrillon, Aschenputtel or Aschenbrödel. In the fairy tale the number of doves helping her to sort the lentils from the ashes is not clear but in this depiction (the same half-timbered house which illustrated the story of the seven little goats) there are seven doves. Seven doves for the seventh fairy tale! I have to admit to cheating again – in order to get the mural square I had to delete a panel. It only contained the prince, though.
It’s the most international of all fairy tales, with Italian and French sources, a couple of German versions, and apparently versions of this story are found in India, Arabia, Iran, and South East Asia.
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Even Cemeteries Need Maps
The old cemetery of our town. With no less (and no more) than four local celebrities: an industrialist with a legacy of one of the richest families in Germany today, a progressive educationalist who founded a school, an almost forgotten author who was quite famous nationwide in 1923, and a revolutionary innkeeper from almost 200 years ago.
It’s nice to have maps around to show you what’s what and possibly who’s who.
With Sewing to Victory
Although my mother-in-law lived in the Pfaff town (at one time the largest sewing machine manufacturer in Germany) she had a Victoria. But an “original” one! This was a cellpic “taken on the run” with the sun blazing on the window which made it difficult … Continue reading With Sewing to Victory
Seven in Fairy Tales VI
I had to cheat a bit with the photo. There are really seven swans, five cygnets and the parents, in the original photo but no way I could get them completely in a square.
Just to show that I was only cheating a little bit, here is the photo with mum and dad cut in the middle:
Another non-Grimm fairy tale. After finding Little Thumbling by Charles Perrault I started looking around and found Die sieben Schwanen (The seven swans). This tale is one retold by Ludwig Bechstein, a German Romantic who also collected fairy tales like the Grimms. The story is similar to the one about the seven ravens except that in this case the seven brothers are babies born to the Prince’s wife. Mother-in-law hates the wife and replaces the babies with dog pups. She orders the babies killed but the servant tasked with the deed lets them live. They survive, their days split between being swans and boys. The mother-in-law is decidedly cruel against her daughter-in-law, has her buried in a hole up to her neck, only gives her dog food to eat and – quite unusual – has a fountain built close by so that people who come to wash their hands dry them afterwards on the woman’s hair. The swans carry gold chains around their necks, gifts from their mother. When the bad queen hears of this she has the swans caught and collects the chains as the boys can only become human again through the chains. She orders the chains to be melted down but after she has done this with one she is discovered and buried in the self-same hole the wife of the prince is freed from. Six of the swans turn permanently into boys but the seventh swan has to stay a bird and according to the storyteller has many adventures afterwards.
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Lifting
A drive-by shot at Lake Geneva. Serious work at the playground. One Word Sunday
Frankfurt, Today
Not easy to photograph only sky when you’re on the ground in a big city. But it’s a bit of blue and bit of clouds and it looks a lot warmer than it actually was.
pictures imperfect blog 