I honestly cannot wait for Keukenhof to open - this year it opens on March 18th, which is only a week from today, but it will be the middle of April until all the tulips appear in all their glory, so I still have about a month to wait. I’m just hoping that all this cold weather is not going to make me wait even longer for all the bulbs to bloom… But let’s be optimistic, the spring warmth is certainly just around the corner!
Yesterday another of my features appeared on TheHagueOnline.com – this time I gave in to my yearning for spring and wrote about the tulip phenomenon in the Netherlands. You can ready it here, and below is the full version of the photo gallery chosen to accompany this article. I honestly cannot wait for Keukenhof to open - this year it opens on March 18th, which is only a week from today, but it will be the middle of April until all the tulips appear in all their glory, so I still have about a month to wait. I’m just hoping that all this cold weather is not going to make me wait even longer for all the bulbs to bloom… But let’s be optimistic, the spring warmth is certainly just around the corner!
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Winter temperatures still prevail but we’re finally getting some sun. And sun means lots of good light, which in turn means I get to go out and play with my zoom lens :-) For quite some time now I was waiting for a chance to go hunt birds in flight – I’ve already taken so many photos of birds on the ground or in the water, but the real challenge is to manage a shot of a bird in-flight. It’s definitely not easy – both you and your camera need to be very, very fast, otherwise you either miss the bird or end up with a blurry image. This is why good light is so important here, so that you can have exposure times of 1/1000s or even faster. Below are the results of my first attempt at taking photos of flying birds. I spent almost an hour standing on the beach in the freeeeezing wind, but I think it was worth it! Still, there’s definitely room for improvement, so I’ll have to try again… Last week we had a look at some creative and original bathrooms with bathtubs (admittedly, some were a bit too original for me and while it’s certainly interesting to take a look at them, I’d definitely want to avoid having one at home). Now is the time to take a look at some exceptional and beautiful kitchens. My husband is currently in the process of looking for a new apartment and he knows that a nice kitchen is definitely one of my prerequisites. I like spending time in the kitchen (well, not all the time of course, and not on such mundane tasks as washing the dishes) – experimenting with a new dinner recipe, baking a cake with a tantalizing aroma on a rainy day, growing potted herbs on the windowsill. I think every country looks at kitchens in a different way. In Poland kitchens are important because a lot of people still cooks home-made meals and because they’re associated with family warmth. In the Netherlands kitchen interior design is a national passtime of sorts and those who can afford it remodel their kitchen every 2-3 years, even thoug they do not use it that much – there’s plenty of ready meals available. In UK and Ireland the most modern apartment buildings are currently built with no kitchen at all – only a tea/coffee corner and a microwave – the trend is towards eating-out or eating ready-made meals only. Can you imagine that? Browse the photos below for inspiration – they might be on the fancy side, but they sure are a pleasure to watch. The photos come from the galleries at http://www.housebeautiful.com and you can find more of them there. In Poland we celebrate today Women’s Day. It was the idea of the former communistic regime to introduce it as a special day on which women get appreciated both at home and in their workplace, and receive flowers as a sign of this appreciation. Well, a lot of people argued that this Day should be abolished; the politicians consider it an unwanted relict from the communistic times and the feminists argue that women should always be appreciated, not only on 8th March. All the rest of the Polish women though just takes a more practical and down-to-earth approach and expect to get flowers on this day – from their male bosses, their fathers, husbands, sons etc. There’s a very strong female logic behind it (with which I personally agree) that it’d be incredibly foolish to abolish a celebration (or question too strongly a reason behind it) during which you get lots of flowers just for being a woman. Let the others argue about it, while I arrange my lovely flowers in the vase and enjoy them – that seems to be the prevailing attitude ;-) Unfortunately here in the Netherlands there is no Women’s Day today so I won’t get any flowers. And it’s a real pity because of course nowhere else in Europe can you buy such a wide variety of beautuiful flowers this time of the year as here (even though it’s still winter here too – we had freezing temperatures throughout the entire weekend and right now there are fat snow flakes falling outside…) I went to a garden centre just last week and the spring flower arrangements were beautiful… I even took some photos for inspiration – see below! I hope all the Polish Women receive something equally lovely today – and all the best wishes to them! Another definite sign of spring could be observed - or shall I say heard - this weekend in Tha Hague: the duck mating season is on! It's easy to tell - every time you pass a canal, you can hear the loud quacking followed by the sounds of a water battle - the drakes are fighting for the attention of the beautiful lady ducks. And some spectacle it is! This is the love story which unfolded today on the canal in my neighbourhood park. Meet the beautiful Helen of Troy - or at least so I called the duck who was the very reason of all the preening and fighting going on today on the canal - no fewer than 5 drakes were competing for her attention! The fight for Helene starts with the contestants preparing themselves thoroughly: this includes meticulous cleaning with the beak, bathing - by executing a complecated series of shallow dives (looks a bit like doing push-ups, only in water...) and finally getting rid of the excess water from the wings by some energetic flapping. Once the drake-contestants are pimped-up and ready, the scoping out of the competition and the circling begins - it's probably the only chance to see so many drake-singles so close to each other. As long as all stays quiet, i.e. there is no sudden outburst of quacking, the drakes are still in the "seize up your competition" stage and will not attack, even though they get very close to each other. You can almost hear the duck version of "muscle flexing" and feel the testosterone sizzling. Then the loud quacking begins, a signal that one drake is about to attack. The fights are always in pairs and start by one drake starting to pursue another one - at a high pace - and trying to stab his drake-butt with the beak. And then the actual fight - or shall I say, skirmish - ensues with quite a bit of splashing and quacking. It seems that the beautiful Helene always stays near the action - but pretends not to look, feigning disinterest. Every skirmish is loud but short, and if there is no definite winner, the two figthers retreat to their respective corners and pretend they're the impressive winner by unfolding their wings and flapping them energetically - a perfomance for Helene to watch and admire. If one drake looses miserably, he retreats to the land and stays there for some time before re-joining the water arena (where the winner continues on with skirmishes with other drakes - always two-on-two). For good measure, the drake who was forced to retreat also flaps his wings to try to impress Helen and to signal he's not completely out of the game. Because the game is on until Helen makes her final choice. Once Helen makes her choice, she and her chosen mate retreat to a quiet corner where they stay and watch the next round of the water arena fights - there always seems to be another Helen to fight for. And so the fighting goes on and on... The newly "wedded" couple - now all settled and serious - feigns disinterest in what's happening after they left, but they stay close to the action... Have you noticed that in all this convoluted process it's the drakes doing all the work and Helen does nothing other than letting herself be entertained... Interesting, isn't it?
I’ve come across this – how shall I call it, a creative kitchen shelf? – on the website of a Scandinavian furniture/home decoration designer Måns Salomonsen (http://www.salomonsen.se) and decided it’s definitely creative enough to merit a place on my blog ;-)
According to the website it’s a cross between a shelf for fruits etc and a growing pot (there’s space for planting herbs). It seems to be both functional and decorative and at the same time quite inventive as it’s made from clay “which absorbs water from the cultivation - while the water evaporates the storage is cooled down.” Clever, isn’t it? We might have to move… It’s not the first time we do it, so I know very well what it all implies – piles of boxes, hours of cleaning, dragging heavy furniture down the stairs, organizing transport for all our stuff, extensive paperwork and so much more… But on the other hand I get a new playground to practice my interior decoration skills, which is the kind of creative challenge I really love. Not to mention that it’s a perfect excuse to do some home decorations shopping! ;-) We’re looking for an apartment, so I won’t have at my disposal the enormous spaces the designers in all the home magazines always seem to have available, nor will I have an unlimited budget, but there’s certainly no harm in browsing interior decoration magazines and websites in search of inspiration. This means that the Creative at Home category on my blog will certainly expand in the upcoming months, and I’m actually toying with the idea of adding a Creative Furniture category…There are some amazing furniture creations out there. So, let’s start with bathrooms, and specifically with bathrooms with a bathtub – a dream of mine since our current apartment only has a shower, and there are few things which I find more relaxing that a long bubbly and aromatic bath on a gloomy winter evening. Here are a few great designs I’ve found on the following websites – you’ll find even more possibilities there: http://www.housebeautiful.com http://www.rexadesign.it For more than 2 decades of my life yellow cheese was just cheese – something I liked to put on a sandwich but never gave much thought to. But then there is cheese, and there is Dutch cheese. I’m pretty sure that after eating the Dutch variety for the past two years I’m completely spoilt for any other kind and all the other cheeses in the world – maybe except the French ones – will taste bland to me. If you asked me to put the difference between the Dutch cheese and the e.g. the Polish one into words, I wouldn’t be able to. The Dutch yellow cheese tastes great, it’s as simple as that. Surprisingly, almost all foreigners who come to visit the Netherlands expect to find many kinds of cheeses here. This in turn is not surprising – e.g. in Poland you can get at least 10 different kinds in every shop. But the truth is that 95% of Dutch cheese is actually of one type only – Gouda, or more precisely Gouda-like. But even though almost all the cheeses here belong to one family, they come in dozens of varieties. First, there is the basic distinction between the young (jong), mature (belegen) and old (oud) cheeses, the first being the softest and the last being the hardest. The really old cheeses are hard enough to use as a hammer and are only suitable for grating, but they possess an incredible, slightly spicy taste and aroma. Next, your Guoda cheese comes with a variety of additives. You can buy it with herbs, with sweet pepper, with chili (very spicy), with cumin, cloves (yes, cloves, it tastes quite interesting), pepper and many others. On top of that, you have various regional varieties, straight-from-the-farm cheeses, cheeses produced in an environmentally-friendly way and so on and so forth. One thing all those Gouda cheeses have in common is the fact that they have almost no holes. In the Netherlands good quality yellow cheese is not allowed to have holes. If a quality inspection reveals that a given cheese batch has holes, the batch is rejected and… in most cases shipped to France (I’m not kidding). While the French (to the surprise of the Dutch) do not mind the holes in their cheese, to the Dutch mentality the holes are offensive – after all they are a waste of space and why should they pay for a cube of cheese which has air inside instead of cheese?! ;-) No wonder that with so many varieties and with the important role of cheese in the Dutch daily diet the Cheese Shops can be found around every second corner. What I find surprising is that the Dutch take their cheese for granted, and assume that every other country in the world also has its own Cheese Shops on every second corner… Below are my shots of “cheese arrangements” from a cheese market stall and from the display in a Cheese Shop – have you ever seen that much cheese?! Spring seems to be a recurring topic on my blog lately… but then it’s not a surprise – I’m desperate for some sun and warmth, especially after the mega-lousy weather last weekend. It’s worse than that – some power up there seems intent on tormenting us and come Monday morning the sun appeared and it’s still out there. Even though I’m grateful for it, a big part of me cannot help being frustrated that we get the nice weather during the working week, when I’m confined to the office, and not on a weekend when I can enjoy it… Well, at least I got a remainder how sun looks like ;-) It seems that it took only 2 days of sunny weather for the first signs of spring to appear here. I guess that’s another perk of living in the Netherlands – people are obsessed with decorating even the smallest patch of soil available with flowers. Yesterday on my way to work I spotted what I can officially call first signs of spring – crocuses in bloom, snowdrops, daffodil, narcissus and tulip stems sticking up in groups from the soil. I guess it wouldn’t be possible in many of the other European cities, would it? I was so happy (and, yes, desperate for spring) that I took a few photos to document this major event – see below ;-) YES, SPRING IS FINALLY COMING!!! And we’ve just had another weekend of absolutely awful weather L. My restlessness keeps growing exponentially… I want to go on a trip, I want to see something new, I want to take new photos…and I can’t. So I’m left with browsing the photos I took in those times long past when it was actually warm and sunny outside (remember those?!). And while browsing, I came across the file with photos from our weekend in Paris and decided it definitely deserves a photo gallery or two on my blog. From among the European capitals Paris is certainly considered to be one of the most beautiful and romantic ones. But somehow even though I visited many other major European cities in the last decade or so, I’d never had a chance to visit Paris – until 2008 when we moved to the Netherlands. With Thalys – the Dutch fast rail system – it takes only 3 hours to get to Paris and the train journey is actually quite pleasant, much more so than fighting your way through busy airports. So we jumped at the opportunity and spent an amazing long weekend in Paris to celebrate our anniversary. I loved Paris, even though it has not jumped to the 1st place on the list of my favourite European capitals – this spot is still occupied by Budapest. The city is full of amazing architecture, sprawling beautiful parks, hidden squares and romantic restaurants. Since every time we go somewhere I turn into a bit of a “Sightseeing-Nazi,” our 3 days were packed with places I wanted to see. The result was that yes, we’ve seen a lot and I took some great pictures, but on the last day our legs simply refused to cooperate anymore – if it’s possible to overdose walking, I think we did. So if you have a chance, go to Paris for a great city break – just remember to take comfortable shoes. I have uploaded two new photo galleries – Paris Weekend Gallery I and Paris Weekend Gallery II – to my website. Check them out to see all the major Parisian sights – from EiffelTower to Versailles to less know but equally charming places, and feel inspired to plan a trip. |
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August 2012
AuthorA fiery red head, a writer and a photographer in love with beautiful design and all things creative |