Tag: a photo a week

Criss-cross

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28 crossed a

A pure – if boring – crossed line.  But seldom have I seen such a perfect right angle in the sky.

28 crossed b

No comment necessary.

28 crossed c

It’s not a collage.  I took the picture because I liked the sign with the playing kids but it ended up looking like a deliberate patchwork.

28 crossed d

The ultimate in crossed lines, of course, is a half-timbered house.  This one stands in Lorsch, Germany. It is typical for the area with the wooden structure resting on a stone walls forming the ground floor.

For more on the A Photo a Week challenge with the subject crossed lines click here.

 

Romping (grand)dad

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Komm Papa hol dir deine

I saw this billboard and changed it a bit – “Come on, dad, get your recognition!” (It was for shoes originally.)

27 dad a27 dad b

I didn’t take the first picture – obviously, since it shows my dad and me.  I haven’t managed to digitalise (or will I ever?) the photos of my husband as dad when the boys were still cute, so the second one is him as granddad.

This is for A Photo A Week, dedicated to all the dads out there – for more dads click here.

Through the dancing poppy stole a breeze

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25 treasure

How hidden this field of poppies was to locals, I don’t know.  But I had walked hours and hours before I came upon it, quite unexpectedly stepping out of the woods.

The full quote by John Keats is thus: “Through the dancing poppies stole a breeze most softly lulling to my soul.”

More hidden treasures for the A Photo a Week Challenge can be found here.

Press them to ripeness

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The ripe grapes, soon to be made into wine, embody autumn for me.  The first sweet grape must is being sold in open bottles (since the bottles would explode if they were firmely corked), soon to turn cloudy when fermentation sets in.  I love it at all the different stages before it is left to mature under the watchful eye of vintners.  The German term for harvesting grapes is actually “herbsten” which is related to “Herbst”, meaning autumn or fall.

The title is taken from one of the most famous poems about autumn in German, by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein. 

Command the last fruits to be ripe;
Grant them another two more southern days,
Press them to ripeness, and with power
Drive final sweetness to the heavy grape.

for the A Photo a Week Challenge: Signs of fall

A Photo a Week Challenge: Signs of Fall

Year after year

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Sommertagszug_Elke_Woll_1

Wrong season – but it’s a craft that is practiced every year in our region.  There is a parade in many towns on the mid-lent Sunday to welcome spring and burn an effigy of winter.  The children carry self-made “Sommertagsstecken”, sticks decorated with loops of colourful paper, a sweet “Bretzel” and a blown egg topped off with a twig of evergreen boxwood.  The sticks are made in schools by the children themselves or by the parents at meetings in the days prior to the parade.

A Photo a Week Challenge: Made by Hand

I’d rather be reading

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paw 19a

I loved this sculpture in front of the public library in Ladenburg since I first saw it.  It’s a reference to reading itself – whatever kind of books you like.

paw 19b

And while we are in Ladenburg (a small town in the southwest of Germany) have a look at this medieval tower,  I could happily see it standing in Ankh-Morpork, maybe the tower of the Unseen University before the vice-chancellors got eccentric and went for the Babylonian style of architecture (I am referring to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, of course).

paw 19c

This tower stands about 10 kilometres to the northeast in Weinheim.  It’s part of the local castle and since I was little I noticed its turrets and bay windows and dormer windows – and imagined myself a Disney princess when I was there.

paw 19d

And can’t you see the reference to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea?

A Photo a Week Challenge: Literary Reference