Dy(e)ing Yellow

Click on photo to view it in different sizes on my Flickr account

This yellow flower was standing beside my monitor for almost three weeks smiling at me all day long. Now its time is over and the yellow color is about to die.
I hope the flower knows that its life was more than valuable because it did an amazing job in cheering me up.

Lucky you if you can claim such a valuable life for yourself, too.

This photo is my contribution to the task "The Yellow Week" of my Flickr group "Project: Glimpse".
The task was to make a photo of the "yellow-aspect" of my week.
See the group's page for more photos and infos about its weekly tasks.

Bildung und Streben

...

Doch die Sonne duldet kein Weißes

Überall regt sich Bildung und Streben

Alles will sie mit Farben beleben

Doch an Blumen fehlt's im Revier

sie nimmt geputzte Menschen dafür

...

I thought that my awakening from winter hibernation was already last week. I was wrong.
Today it had 16°C and that's more than unusual for February. The meadows and forests were full of people enjoying the sun.
One wasn't able to stay inside - at least not me.
Today was the first day to drive with an open canopy top, my iPod played "Beautiful World" [listen...] from Colin Hay and I was singing along very loud and very false. All the people I saw were smiling - not because my singing (I hope) but because of the warm air and the sun.

No all-year-long sunshine like in California can substitute such a day. No way.

Oh - just in case you missed it: Colin Hay is right, it IS a beautiful world.

Junk Drawer

Click on photo to view it in different sizes on my Flickr account

Do you have a drawer for storing all the things that flood your daily life but can't be thrown away for some obvious or strange reason?
My life is full with such things or situations or memories or thoughts.
You put it in your drawer and probably you don't look at it the next years.
One should really get rid of not needed stuff instead of locking it in a drawer. But how to distinguish between valuable and junk?

I created some notes that describe the items in my junk drawer. Please click on the photo to see them.

The first photo is my contribution to the task "Show me your Junk" of my Flickr group "Project: Glimpse".
The challenge was to make a photo of the personal junk drawer.
See the group's page for more photos and infos about its weekly tasks.

A Sunset and a Castle in the Forest

On Saturday I ended my winter. I did it simply by having a walk in the sun. Although I only catched the last beams of that day it was like an awakening after months of sleeping in a dark cave.
My target was the big forest called Reichswald very close to Nuremberg. In the times of the last German Emperor and during the 3rd Reich the forest was a forbidden place because of a military training area.
In the middle of the forest are the remains of an old shooting range for tanks with an artificial hill for catching stray projectils.
From the top of that Kugelfangwall (bullet-hill) one has a beautiful view above thousands of trees and towards Nuremberg.
A great place for feeling the silence - especially on a Saturday afternoon in February when no one is around.

I was standing on top of the hill watching the sunset and for 5 minutes the light was yellow like the skin of an orange.
The hour in the forest brought back my lust for nature and I'm looking forward to long hikes in the spring.

 

I played around with my big 400mm zoom lens and it turned out that the lens can teleport the Emperor's Castle of Nuremberg into the middle of the Forest although it's several kilometres behind the trees.

Hidden Flowers

Today was one of these flower days. Although I don't like it if the calendar tells me to do something just because it's a special day I like Valentine's Day for some reason. Probably because I like flowers in general.

A few days ago I found a red rose hidden in the root of a big tree (actually the tree from my previous posting).
Obviously there was a story behind that flower. Obviously love was involved. Obviously I wasn't able to find out more.

 

Is it more likely that a couple spent some romantic time under that tree or was the flower thrown away because of some love pain? Well, because I don't know the truth I'm allowed to invent my own story and it definitely has a happy end.

 

By the way: Happy Valentine's Day!

MVP (Most Valuable Places), Part 2

Last Sunday, I visited one of my favorite places again. It's the park of a small castle called "Fantaisie" near the city of Bayreuth. I have strong connections to this place and especially to a big old tree standing in the middle of a meadow.
I could literally feel how my internal batteries recharged while sitting under the tree in the mild sun chatting (or staying quiet) with a very good friend.

 

This couple celebrated the mild winter weather really dedicated. A few minutes later the shadow caught them.

One more of my MVPs can be seen [here...]

Messages from Chaplain Tappman

 

One of my favorite books is "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller. It's main character, Yossarian, is a officer of the U.S. Army during WW2. One of his duties is to censor the letters the men of his squadron writes to their families. He gets bored by this stupid work and invents some ideas to make censoring more interesting to him. He starts by blackening all adverbs or adjectives in the letters he has to process. On the next day he censors all text but "ae", "an" and "the". Finally he perfects censoring by making all text black but "Dear Mary". On the border of the letter he adds the words:

"I yearn for you desperately. A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army

A.T. Tappman was the name of the squadrons priest, a humble man who runs into some slight turbulences by this letter.

I love this chapter of the book very much.
A few days ago I saw a row of letterboxes in a house and suddenly it was clear to me that this could be a job for Yossarian.
I wrote the message mentioned above on a piece of paper and looked for a appropriate letter box. There was one that  obviously didn't belong to the apartment of a woman or a couple but to the one of a single man. Of course I had no idea who this man was.
A few second later the man had a message von chaplain Tappman in his mailbox.
The friend that was with me yelled at me telling me that I'm nuts but I didn't care much.
Call me an 12-year old kid having very childish ideas but I really like the imagination of the man thinking about this strange message from the chaplain that yearns for him.
I left the house smiling.

Yossarian did a lot more stupid things in "Catch 22" and I already have a few more little projects in mind.

Thank you Yossarian - you rule!