Symbolik?

 

Händer just nu. Den blommar alltså ikväll och imorgon kväll. Enbart.

Sommarplåga

 

Just nu är det nog bättre att vara en jäkla näckros än en människa. Apropå (den påstådda?) vattenkrisen i Mälardalen...

A summer to remember

 

Some completely disjointed observations...

Huge piles of uprooted water lilies around a birdlake I sometimes stroll around. Apparently, the hot and humid summer made the water lilies proliferate so much, that the park authority had to start removing them. Few birds at the birdlake, though. Did the birds go elsewhere to feed?

Another birdlake: the lake is almost invisible to strollers, since a thick "green wall" of enormous reeds and weeds have grown up around it. It looks like the setting of some weird apocalyptic road movie. The jogging trail around the lake is flooded, probably by recent torrential rain falls.

In Slovakia and Hungary, the water in the river Danube stands so low, that "famine stones" from the 10th century have become visible. They have been under water for 1,000 years! Yes, a "famine stone" is a memorial marker showing where the waterline was during a literal famine...

In France, the drought has created problems for the nuclear power industry, since there isn´t enough water to cool the reactors.

Probably just another Milankovich cycle. Right?   

High as a pyramid

 

Bright Insight sounds more stoned than usual here, but his speculations are actually quite interesting. Many ancient civilizations used psychedelic drugs to connect to higher realities...

Terror at Swan Lake

This is a romantic picture of two swans (so-called mute swans, to be exact) and a whole bunch of water lilies of uncertain species. Probably perfect...that is, if you never encountered a swan, or visited a lake overgrown by water lilies!

About two years ago, I was strolling peacefully around one of the lakes in Stockholm. At one point, I stood close to the lakeside, peacefully eating candy (the jelly nukis reviewed by me elsewhere). Suddenly I saw, at quite a distance, an ENORMOUS flock of ducks, geese and swans coming my way. I didn't reflect on it at first until this multi-species flock (of obvious interest to the local bird-watching club) came closer...and...closer...and...closer??!!

Finally, the goddamned birds CAME RIGHT OUT OF THE WATER, MORE OR LESS CHASING ME, COMMANDEERED BY TWO REALLY AGGRESSIVE SWANS!!!!

Apparently, the "romantic" swans down at the Black Lagoon are used to be fed by humans on a semi-regular basis and just won't take no for an answer. Clearly, these swans have been brainwashed by the Swedish socialists into believing that pork-barrel programs are forever, and that idleness really does pay. Or is it the right-wing libertarian, cornucopian idea of unlimited economic growth which has reached our distant lake shores, creating a "crisis of expectations" among the denizens of the local avifauna?

Clearly, some kind of eco-fascist preaching is in order here. Please dispatch Dave Foreman to my bird lake stat!

As for water lilies, the noxious stench and weed-like explosions of these plants make my stomach turn, and it seems the swans feel the same way - they just leave! Besides, most of the time the actual lilies aren't visible, you just see the leaves, lots of 'em. Well, at least I don't have to worry about big birds trying to steal my candy as long as the lilies are in season...

Now, do you see how awfully *illogical* this art print really is???

That being said, I don't deny that this exquisite little poster looks gorgeously beautiful.

Next week: the Black Swan and its implications for Afro-centrist discourse.

Manly stuff

“The Private Life of Plants” isn't as spectacular as David Attenborough's later foray into the kingdom of Plantae and Fungi, “Kingdom of Plants 3D”, but that's mostly a function of the camera technology. Otherwise, all the bizarre stuff is here: 500 year old strangler figs, the Venus fly trap, the pitcher plant, the giant water lily, or the perfectly ordinary bramble – ordinary, that is, until you film it with time-lapse photography, revealing that the bramble bush is about as aggressive as an expansive human empire…

Somehow, I got even more paranoid about the houseplants surrounding me as we speak, after watching clips from this six-part series! As a kid, I assumed that plants were boring and somehow “girlie”, but it seems they are just as cool as sharks or mountain lions, ha ha.

Wind in the willows

This is the book version of David Attenborough's TV series “The Private Life of Plants”. Books like these were indispensable in the good ol' days before the World Wide Web. All the highlights of the show are here: bristlecone pines (one of these trees is 5000 years old?!), strangler figs (only 500 years old – tssk, tssk), an underground orchid in West Australia, the giant water lily of the Amazon, carrion flowers (guess what they smell like), the Venus fly trap, plants fooling insects into “mating” with them, etc etc. Some fungi have been thrown in for good measure, too, although fungi aren't really plants (well, not anymore). Good if you like plants, including the slightly absurd varieties. Probably a total waste of time otherwise…