Nature Studies

From Stuefugle I Farver

Nature seems to be so alive at the moment here, even though we are moving into Autumn. Keeping this in mind, I made a good find at the op-shop today - Butterflies and Moths from The How and Why Wonder Books series. Printed in the 1960s, I adored these books when I was a child. I read Our Earth and Ancient Egypt religiously. The illustration below is from Butterflies and Moths. Buying this book, I was reminded of two little books I bought in Denmark. Stuefugle I Farver (Pet Birds in Colour - I am guessing here, having used a Google translation) and Insekter I Farver (Insects in Colour). Printed in the 1950s, I spotted them languishing on a trestle table at an outdoor junk market in Ribe on Denmark's west coast. One even has a little old Christmas card tucked into it, to Sinna from Søren (don't you love finding things like that in old books?)

From Insekter I Farver

A little sprig of tansy that I've put in water on the bathroom windowsill

Pretty little flowers on the windowsill - possibly weeds? - but lovely all the same

...& warm wishes to you for Easter

Of Pressed Flowers, Windswept Butterflies and Raspberry Cake

I am loving collecting framed, pressed flowers from op-shops. I was a bit down on them until quite recently, when I regarded them as a short footstep away from sticking googly-eyes on gumnuts. But I now realise they're actually really beautiful. I love pressed flowers actually - isn't it wonderful when one falls out of a book and you're reminded of a moment you would otherwise have forgotten.

When we were in Ribe (Denmark), we drove to the coast and visited the Wadden Sea nature centre. It was chock-full of schoolkids but, despite this, it was really interesting. The landscape in the area quite flat and stark as you look out to sea, and the colours muted. We wanted to take one of the buses which goes across the sea when the tide is low to one of the islands just off the coast but we had missed the last one for the day and took a walk instead. Was it windy! Oh my. But somehow this plucky little butterfly was hanging on. Local Danish artist Lars Bollerslev has done lots of wonderful paintings of the area. I bought some postcard reproductions of them at the nature centre and have just now put them up on our living room wall. His website - http://www.larsbollerslev.dk/ - is well worth a look.

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Friday is rapidly becoming cake day. Today I will attempt Raspberry Cake from New Australian Cookery for dinner with my parents tonight.

Have a lovely weekend.

To Ribe

The Norns, the weavers of fate, greeted us at the entrance.

The great Lord and Lady in the atmospheric half-light of the long house.

"Yeah, yeah. I do a lap of the field and then I come back to you. I get it."

A view from one of the huts onto a herb garden.

One of the beautifully painted walls in the long house.

One of the sweet little huts. I could move right in, but how would I blog??

Goosey, Goosey Gander, where shall I wander?

A quiet, simple moment in the long house. It was so peaceful and again made me wonder what we have really gained in modern life...

Next stop in Denmark was Ribe, in Southern Jutland. It's Denmark's oldest town and there is much made of the Viking past here. Having read up on Norse mythology before we left Australia, this was more than fine with me. The Ribe Viking Centre, slightly out of the town itself, was absolutely great and as an open-air museum, it did really give me a sense of what life in a Viking village may have been like (until we got to the cafe and the gift shop, of course!) Seriously, the traditional long house was wonderfully atmospheric to walk through and we absolutely loved wandering amongst all the farm animals pottering around! I was amused, though, when we went to the falconry display and the falcon...left. He taunted the falconer for a while, flying in great sweeping loops around our heads and then he was off into the forest!