#house has a neat history and we have a vegetable garden

[monsterpageant]

any queer people looking for a cheap (under 600/mo plus utilities) room in se PDX? Message me, looking for someone by early September.

[iasmelaion]

Fun and/or delightful things said by my assorted tour guides during this trip to Lisbon:

After I asked if people study Spanish in school in Portugal: “No, it's too close to Portuguese. Of course, we all think we can speak Spanish, but we can't.”

During our food tour (with Devour btw, highly recommended in any of the cities they do tours in!), our half Italian, half Ethiopian tour guide who’s been living in Lisbon for a decade: “I don’t know why the Portuguese don’t eat vegetables. They have them. And yet on the menus it’s all meat and fish.”

(This dude also gave us the A++++ tips of: enter the Livraria Bertrand via the cafe entrance on the side, much less crowded, and visit the Estufia Fria, which was a truly lovely and surprisingly big botanical garden. A quiet and peaceful respite during the trip!)

(Also, this dude’s tragic backstory: half Italian, and allergic to tomatoes :( Though he did constantly shit talk Italian food for being too boring and set in its ways lol.)

When we got to the big market with fresh fruits and veggies: “See, they have vegetables!”

About all the explorers and colonizers etc: “You know, they say these guys did it all for the glory of Portugal, but come on! They did it for the money!” (Appreciated that this guy also mentioned, hey, we have all these monuments about the Age of Discovery, but none memorializing its evils and horrors.”)

Dueling opinions about the pasteis de nata: food tour guy said Manteigaria has the best (though he allowed that Castro’s were pretty good too), other guide said the originals in Belem are the best. First tour guide said forget about pasteis de nata, Sintra’s pastries are where it’s at.

Coolest sights:

Unfortunately, the major parks and sights in Sintra were closed due to wildfire risk. It was still neat to visit the town though!

Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point of continental Europe was a surprisingly neat stop on one of our tours. Super windy, but neat to say you’ve been there.

The Jeronimos Monastery. Should you ever go, I really recommend booking a tour if only to skip the longest line, because holy shit that line was enormous. Anyway, the Manueline architecture is gorgeous.

Igreja de Sao Domingo. Fascinating story and interior. We stopped in during our food tour, and it’s so interesting to see the building’s history of disaster and reconstruction written on it so plainly.

The enormous Time Out Market that houses curated restaurants in a food court setting one one side and a traditional market on the other is just super neat and it’s worth it just to take in the atmosphere.

The MAAT museum was fine, but tbh, the view of the Tagus River and statue of Christ Redeemer from their cafe was lovely. Worth eating a light meal or having a coffee here and just relaxing!

God I wish we had a culture of nice, big public squares with great architecture and plenty of cafes and benches in the US. I know there are some on the East Coast, but here on the West Coast, we just have the occasional little park :( Every single such square we saw in Lisbon was lovely.

The Estufia Fria, as mentioned above.

The National Tile Museum! Sounds boring, but it was both interesting and super impressive.

Gulbenkian Museum. Now this is how insanely rich dudes should spend their money: collecting massive amounts of art and then putting it all on display in a museum in perpetuity after their deaths. Great collection of Egyptian, Near Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, and European art, plus a stunning though small-ish Lalique collection.

Mostly though we just wandered around, which is honestly my favorite thing to do in a new to me city, and while the hills are punishing, Lisbon is a great city to wander in.

Most delicious things I ate:

Gotta agree with food tour guy, it was the Mantegiaria pasteis de nata for me.

Meat sushi??? It was cooked, but it still felt like a great sushi innovation.

Chocolate cake from Landeau. Life-ruiningly good. All other chocolate cakes will pale in comparison.

Some astonishingly good Indian/Nepalese food, somewhat surprisingly. Some of the best naan I’ve ever had, and their dishes were presented so beautifully. Like, I like Indian food just fine in America! It’s basically always tasty! But this was on another level, and still comparable in price to the nicer Indian restaurants in the States.

Some of the best roasted chicken I’ve ever had in my life. Very simply prepared, but so tender and tasty.

Ate at one (1) fine dining restaurant, and damn, okay, that’s what the prices are about. I had duck breast and the dish as a whole was just exceptional.

Some very good gelato at the packed and bustling Time Out Market. Such a cool spot, I honestly wish every city had a version of this. (I know LA kind of does, but I like that the Time Out Market is curated.)

At the other end of the spectrum, a suspiciously cheap restaurant near our hotel that nonetheless had phenomenal food. Straightforward Portuguese with a twist food, presented beautifully with pretty generous portion sizes. Seriously though, it was so cheap I actually felt kind of guilty about it. Also they were cash only?? And had weird hours?? So maybe it’s a front? But the hotel recommended it and they’ve been in business for 50 years! So whatever, if it is a front, thank you to whatever mob boss is supporting their relative’s culinary dreams. Anyway, best chocolate mousse and sangria I’ve had to date, and the mains were good too. Truly felt like we got away with something eating mains, drinks, and dessert for two for 36 euros.

Our hotel brought us fresh pastries for breakfast every morning, and the chocolate croissants were especially delicious.

Okay, I know ginjinha is traditional and all here, but. Listen. It tastes like especially alcoholic cough syrup. (The booze-soaked cherry included in the shot glass was good tho) The white wine port I had at the suspiciously cheap restaurant, on the other hand, was absolutely delicious.

[lawnstarterinc-blog]

The History of Lawn Care

For centuries, people have appreciated lawns, although not always for the same reasons we do today.

In medieval times, members of royalty would encourage open expanses of grasses around their castles, so as to better see approaching enemies.

Formal gardens, including grassy areas, have been cultivated for centuries in Europe, Japan and China. Europeans in the 12th and 13th centuries began to cultivate turfgrass as playground areas. One bowling green in England, the Southampton Old Bowling Green, has been in continuous use since 1299.

The word “lawn” itself originated from the word “launde” in Old French, meaning wooded district or heath. By the 1700s, the word had entered English and acquired the meaning of mowed, grassy area. The actual mowing, in those days, was accomplished by scythes for the wealthy, and grazing animals for everyone else.

Lawns for commoners got a huge boost on Aug. 31, 1830. On that day, machinist Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, in Gloucestershire, England, was granted patent 5990 for his invention: the first lawn mower. In his application, he described it as “a new combination and application of machinery for the purpose of cropping or shearing the vegetable surface of lawns, grass plats of pleasure grounds, constituting a machine which may be used with advantage instead of a scythe for that purpose.”

The first lawn mower using Budding’s design was manufactured in 1832.

The patented design proved to be a superior alternative to the scythe, especially for use on large sports fields and gardens. By 1902, the first gas-powered mower was invented, paving the way towards the creation the same rotary gas-powered mowers we use today. Modern-day yard and lawn culture began in the mid-20th century following World War II, coinciding with the boom in subdivisions (defined neighborhoods and suburban living) in the 1940s and 50s.

Much of the rapid proliferation of lawns in America that we see these days can be attributed to the growth in the residential subdivisions, chiefly by Abraham Levitt. Levitt built more than 17,000 homes from 1947 to 1951, each with its own yard, in Levittown, N.Y. On adding the lawns to each homestead Levitt stated, “No single feature of a suburban residential community contributes as much to the charm and beauty of the individual home and the locality as well-kept lawns".

American homeowners without large properties and farms had paid attention to maintaining a front lawn in the early parts of the 20th century, but the effects of the Great Depression in the 1930s saw a decline in individuals’ abilities to care for their grass and gardens. During World War II, Americans were encouraged to maintain a presentable front yard as a sign of support and strength for the war effort. When former servicemen returned home and were able to buy affordable housing using the GI Bill, an attractive lawn and front yard became a symbol of stability and prosperity.

Lawn care today requires extensive money and resources. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has stated that 1/3 of public water resources goes toward landscaping and as much as 70 percent of public water in the western states.

The Backyard

Rising land value prices in the 20th century caused residential developers to move houses closer together, forgoing land around the house for a defined front and back yard to preserve some feeling of open space for the homeowner.

For many people, the backyard has become an extension of their house. It is where they cook, eat and entertain. It’s also where they are able to do work, like tending a garden or working in a garage or shed. With careful architecture and landscaping the backyard can be turned into an outdoor oasis in the middle of a common neighborhood, fit with a water feature, playground, and/or cooking appliance.

Because of those recreational and practical features in the backyard, it has become a popular communal meeting place for many Americans. The backyard is the perfect place to entertain guests on a holiday or invite friends over to share the swimming pool or trampoline.

There has also been a recent rise in urban farming and backyard agriculture. Many people have not just built vegetable gardens in their backyards, but have taken to adding small livestock. There has been a surge in the popularity of homeowners raising chickens for eggs and meat or goats for milk.

There has even been a return to the old ways of mowing grass. Targeted grazing, in which grazing animals are set free on a specific lot of land, has been touted as a way to keep lawns neat without the need for machinery.

By Daniel Ray, Editor in Chief at LawnStarter.com

[turnertimeline]

First Clinic

Collection: Tim and Annie, Turner Family

Year: 1965

Characters: Annette Thompson, Shelagh Turner, Timothy Turner, Trixie Franklin

Content Warnings: none

Rating: T

Style: Prose

Summary: With everything going on, medical appointments hadn’t been in the front of Annette’s mind. But when your closest friend is the child of a doctor and midwife, that changes quickly.

Shelagh links her arms with Annette. "He'll come back with his pockets full of cake and several admonishments to brush his hair." She leads her into the Community Centre and waves to the nurses who are already in the hall setting up. "Hello, girls. Everything as it should be?" Trixie nods. "Everything present and accounted for! Barbara and the nuns are on their way. Apparently there was a scuffle in the street on the way over." She turns to Annette. "And hello, sweetie! My name is Beatrix, but most people call me Trixie." She offers her her hand. "Is everything alright?" "It's very nice to meet you Trixie." Annette smiles and shakes the offered hand. "It's great to finally put a face to the name. Tim has told me so much about you. And things are alright now." Shelagh slips away for a little to make sure the take-in desk is all set up and to get the proper forms to book Annette in. "Oh goodness, well I hope it was all good things he told you. Are you a friend of his from school?" Trixie is regarding her with a kind smile, and Annette can see that it's not the fake kindness she was used to seeing from her parents and their friends. "Yes. We met during orientation and became fast friends. I've been dealing with some.....personal difficulties...and he's been nothing but a wonderful friend." Annette's not sure how much she wants to tell, though she's sure Trixie probably knows why she's at the clinic.

Trixie smiles warmly and pets her hand. "He's a lovely boy. Let's find some tea for you, shall we?" Trixie doesn't push her into talking about why she's here; she has her suspicions, and is also sure that if she was here because of Tim, he and both parents would definitely be here. It's not her business beyond taking care of her and her baby. Shelagh joins them after making sure the take-in desk is set up, bringing the paperwork over to Annette. Trixie gives Shelagh a warm smile and a look to say to call her over if she needs anything and goes back to sorting out the beds. "Let's get these filled in, hmm? We can probably sneak you in before clinic opens properly, if you want." Annette fills in the paperwork, all her personal information, medical history. When she gets to the questions about the father, she feels it like a punch to the chest. She doesn't know how to answer anything other than his name. She doesn't know about his family, or his history. It's not that she wishes Kenneth was here for this, but she wishes that she was pregnant with the child of someone who cared. But she couldn't change that now. "Do you want me to do your exam?" Shelagh asks after Annette has finished filling out the paperwork. "Or I can ask Trixie if you'd rather someone else." Shelagh touches her back comfortingly when she notices her hesitance. "Don't worry. We won't ever have to contact him. I keep meaning to re-format them." Annette is quiet and thinks about it a bit. "Can Trixie, please?" She blushes a little bit and looks embarrassed. "Only..." Shelagh laughs a little. "Of course. You can be seen by whoever you like." She calls Trixie over to them. "Another patient for you, Nurse Franklin, when you're ready." "Are you ready sweetie? Let's get you checked out." Trixie leads Annette over to one of the curtained off areas. "Just hop up on the bed, pull your skirt down, and your shirt up." Annette does as she's told. Trixie begins the exam and talks to her throughout. And then moves onto the internal part which makes Annette feel more embarrassed than anything else has. "Well done sweetie. I know that's not the most fun, but imagine having it done by one of your colleagues. Shelagh and I have both been here for our own pregnancies." Trixie laughed. Annette resettles her clothes and giggles a little. "I couldn't ask Shelagh to do it. I've heard Tim talk about his studies too much - and they're so alike sometimes!" Trixie giggles with her too. "Shelagh was my midwife. It wasn't too bad but we did laugh a lot." Annette climbs down off the bed and Trixie helps her make sure her skirt is settled into place and she looks neat and tidy. "There we are. Shelagh will have your appointment dates all ready when you go out." Annette is feeling a little overwhelmed. She feels like she's been transplanted into an alternate dimension. Trixie was nothing but professional and helpful but she'd gotten used to her baby as something shameful, something people whispered about and sneered at, and almost something to ignore happening. Not this friendly examination and frankness and lots of smiles and a little booklet of dates and even some supplements. Annette puts everything she was given into her bag and leaves the little curtained area. The amount of women now in the waiting area is astounding. She hadn't been expecting it to be so busy. She heard Trixie call for her next patient and went up to the check in desk where Shelagh was sitting. "Everything alright?" Shelagh asks her as she hands the next woman in line the paperwork she needs. "Yes. Everything is right on track for being eleven weeks." Annette smiles, so pleased that so far her baby was healthy. Shelagh beams at her. "Oh! I'm so glad, Annette." She waves to some of the women as they come in and to the children who are sitting playing with the toys and things in the clinic. "Patrick came in while you were being seen, he said he's show you the way to Nonnatus if you want to go find Tim." "Thank you so much for everything Shelagh." Annette leans down and gives the older woman a hug. "You are very welcome. If there's anything you need, or you just want to talk I'm just a phone call away." Shelagh returns Annettes hug before having to book in another new patient. Annette looks around the packed clinic, looking for Patrick. He walks her to Nonnatus and they find Tim and Fred in the garden. Patrick leaves her on the corner with a smile. Tim stands up when he spots her. "Annie! All sorted?" He calls her over and smiles widely. "We were just looking to see what the vegetable garden was doing." Fred waves. "Hello, Miss. I'm Fred." "All sorted." She smiles at him as she approaches the garden. "Eleven weeks and right on track." It feels good, being able to be happy and even excited. "Hello Fred, I'm Annette." She turns to him and offers her hand. "Annette's a friend of mine from school, Fred. Only one in some of the classes that gives me a run for my money in debates." Tim brushes his hands on his pants and joins Annette at the fence. "Let's go inside and see if we can find some cake, if Sister Monica Joan hasn't snuck away with it all." Fred nods to them and goes back to his work. Annette follows Tim towards the front door and slows down as they get closer. It's slowly sinking in that this is Nonnatus, as in the convent. Tim talks about them all so much, and they always seemed so nice in his stories, but she's still a little nervous about being an unwed mother around a load of nuns. Tim notices her hesitance and touches her shoulder. "It's okay. Everyone is really friendly, and most people are at clinic anyway." He pushes the door open. "Sister Monica Joan? Hello?" Not seeing anyone in the entry hall, Tim pulls Annette inside. "Sister Monica Joan and Sister Julienne are probably the only ones here." Tim leads her into the convent and to the kitchen. In the kitchen they find Sister Julienne preparing lunch. "Tim! I didn't know you would be stopping by today. What a wonderful surprise." Sister Julienne walks over to give Tim a hug. "Shouldn't you be in class though young man?" Her tone mildly scolding but her eyes still alight in a smile. "I had some other things that took precedence today." Tim shrugged. He turned to Annette, "This is a friend of mine, Annette. Annette, this is Sister Julienne. She's the head of Nonnatus house." Annette waves a little awkwardly. "Hello, Sister, it's nice to meet you." She feels self conscious of the things in her bag and like Sister Julienne will be able to see them and know what she is. Sister Julienne. "Welcome to Nonnatus! Any friend of Tim's is a friend of ours. Come through, I'm sure we can find the two of you something to eat." She leaves them at the table to get some tea and cake and comes back to them with a smile. "How are your studies going?" she asks them both. "Have your parents seen you yet?" Tim pulls out chairs for both women, and they sit down to talk. "They are going well, we both have great marks so far, but it is only the end of first term. Exams are the week before Christmas. And yes, we've seen my parents. We were there last night, stayed over." Tim takes a big bite of his piece of cake, which prompts a giggle from Annette. "Yes, I met Dr. and Mrs. Turner last night, they are very kind. I can see where Tim gets it." Annette sips her tea. Sister Julienne smiles widely. "They would both be so pleased to hear that. I know they are very proud of you, Tim." They chat a little bit more about general things before Sister Julienne excuses herself to make sure the autoclave is set up for when everyone returns from clinic. "Mum said she was going to be by after clinic and that she'd take us back home while Dad does his surgery hours. Do you want to wait here, or go some place that's not going to be as crowded in a few minutes." Tim asks Annette. Not wanting Annette to be too overwhelmed by all of the nuns and nurses returning from Clinic. Annette smiles at him, he was always making sure she was comfortable with the people around her. Kenneth would have just let her stand around in a corner and gone to talk with people. Not bothering to even introduce her. "Let's go somewhere quiet," Annette says with a smile. That was a lot of new people for one day and she's feeling a little tired. "Is there a cafe or something?" Everyone she's met has been so lovely but it's a little much to keep feeling like she's on display, especially given how everyone seems to know who Tim is and wants to say hello. Tim nods. "of course. There's one just down the way. Shall we go?" Tim makes sure to tell Sister Julienne that they are leaving and asks her to tell his Mum that they'll be at the cafe down the street. "Will we be seeing more of Miss Annette?" Sister Julienne asks before Tim can leave. Tim grins, "Yes, but not in the way you're thinking Sister. She's just a friend." Sister Julienne fixes him with a stare that he doesn't want to admit to knowing the meaning behind. Meeting Annette back in the main hall, they slip out before the other Nonnatus residents can return.   "Do all the nurses live there?" Annette asks. She remembers seeing several nurses, and Trixie was married, but the convent definitely also felt like it was a house that was well lived in, even if it wasn't cluttered the way some houses she'd been to were. "No," Tim replies. "It's - a perk, I guess? You can take the room if you want but you don't have to. And of course the nuns live there." He's trying not to think about Sister Julienne's knowing look. They get seats in the window of the cafe and Tim orders and pays. “Trixie used to live there, but since she married Christopher, she no longer does. Same with Barbara." Tim joins her back at the table after paying. "And your mum." Annette adds. "Yes, and Mum. Though she didn't live there after she left the order. She rented a room until she and Dad got married." "Everyone here is so nice Tim. Trixie did my exam and she didn't even bat an eye that I'm not married. I've heard people talk about Poplar before, my parents mostly, and their friends at church. It was always talked about like it was the worst place in the world to live." Annette sighs and looks out through the window. "But no one I've met today has treated me or looked at me like I'm any less a person than they are." Tim reaches out and places his hand on Annette's. "People see what they want to see when it comes to places like Poplar, where people are poor, and at level of poverty that many can't even imagine, that something must be wrong with you. But I grew up here. And they take care of their own." Tim's not sure if what he's saying is making sense, but it seems like Annette understands. "I just wish that my parents could be as kind as they pretend to be." Annette looks down at the table, trying not to cry. He squeezes her hand gently. "Oh Annie... I'm sorry." He doesn't really know what else to say. "Mum gave you her number, right? So you can ring if you need?" Annette nods. "Yes. And their address. And she helped me work out what buses I needed to get..." Tim smiles warmly. "That's good. You have no excuse not to come for Christmas now," he says teasingly "Do you really want me to come for Christmas?" She asks, not believing that he really does. "Of course I do. Plus I don't think Angela will ever speak to me again if you don't." Tim teased and finally got a smile out of Annette. "Angela is adorable. She helped with her story last night, she's so bright!" Annette smiled fully now, the little girl had been such a breath of fresh air. They chat a little longer about the antics of little Angela and Teddy, and Tim told her more stories about the Nonnatus nurses and nuns. Shelagh comes and finds them eventually, after clinic has finished. Annette seems much happier and more at ease when she joins them at the table, laughing with Tim and talking with her hands. It's nice to see. "You two ready to go back?" Shelagh asks with a smile.

"I guess we probably should." Annette stands up, "Maybe I'll have time to stop by the library for a little to get information for an assignment."

"Always thinking about classes. Live a little Annie! You can't end a day of playing hooky with studying." Tim teases her and bumps his shoulder against hers.

"You would do well to follow her example young man." Shelagh jokingly scolds.

Annette shoots Tim a smug look. "See, ~Tim."

Tim just rolls his eyes at them both. "I do plenty of studying!" They climb back into the car and Annette and Tim bicker affectionate about how much they do/don't study. Shelagh is mostly quietly as she drives, apart form to grin at Tim in the rear view mirror occasionally, sharing the joke. It's nice to hear them being typical twenty year olds after how fraught the last couple of days have been. She pulls up outside Tim's building. "There you are. Home safe."

Shelagh parks and gets out to give Tim and Annette hugs before she heads back home.

"Thank you again for everything Shelagh." Annette hugs her tight.

"You are more than welcome dear. Please call me if you need anything." Shelagh gives her one last squeeze before moving to Tim.

"Be good, call if you need us." Shelagh hugs him close, standing up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I love you."

"Always. Love you too, Mum." He hugs her back.

Getting in the car, Shelagh gives them one last wave before heading home.

[123designsrq]

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Or that food travels for over 1500 miles on a median and has a sizeable carbon footprint? Also that the crop varieties in business farming are prioritized for shelf existence and not for vitamins, whilst we omit out on nearby, natural and heirloom kinds of plant types. Homegrown produce is rich in nutrients, specifically in phytochemicals, anti-oxidants, vitamin C, nutrition A and folates. There’s best the pleasure, delight and delightful intake with no chemical compounds, insecticides or GMO to fear approximately. Besides it’s a notable way to interact the complete circle of relatives- mainly kids, in an fun interest, even as connecting with nature. Click Here to Buy Now: $249 $399 ($one hundred fifty off). Hurry, Only 1/20 Left! alexa order items in cart, alexa shopping commands, alexa checkout cart, alexa order history, alexa empty shopping cart, how to prevent alexa from ordering, alexa won't order, alexa only adds to cart Read the full article

[williameshleman-blog]

The Caribbean and Mediterranean have some serious competition when it comes to romantic island holidays because Africa truly has it all.

From an archipelago that is 115 islands strong to a volcanic wonder waiting to be hiked and biked, an Indian Ocean island holiday off of Africa’s coastline is bound to put the spring back in your step, leave sand on your toes, and a sun-kissed blush on your cheeks. There are plenty to choose from, so we’ve compiled a list of our favourite romantic island holidays:

Quirumbus & Bazaruto Archipelagos, Mozambique

First on the list are the archipelagos off the coast of Mozambique, both offering the quintessential island experience but each with their own touch of charm.

The endangered dugong may very well be the unofficial symbol of the Bazaruto Archipelago. Africa’s largest population of this rare, manatee-like animal lives in the warm Indian Ocean waters surrounding the archipelago’s main island alongside dolphins, humpback whales, manta rays, and whale sharks. And the treasures of the deep don’t stop there. This collection of islands is superb for both a family holiday and a couples retreat.

After flying under the radar for far too long, the Quirimbas Archipelago is quickly turning into one of the most sought-after island destinations this side of the continent. More remote and (if possible) more romantic than the Bazaruto Archipelago, this is the place for honeymoon hideaways. In Quirimbas, you’ll be met by the unspoilt beauty of powder-white beaches, palm trees, and turquoise waters – minus the swarms of tourists.

Hop from one island to the next on a lazy dhow cruise or—if you’re feeling adventurous—go scuba diving or snorkelling among the coral reefs. The warm waters are home to turtles, dolphins, and whales. If game fishing is your sport, venture further out to sea in search of bonefish, marlin, mackerel, sailfish, and dogtooth tuna.

Image credit: Felix Lipov

Maldives

A picturesque chain of atolls in the Indian Ocean makes up the minute Republic of Maldives. Malé, its capital, is often touted as one of the most densely populated cities in the world – hardly surprising considering its diminutive size! This pint-sized hub is the thrumming core of the Maldivian island nation and acts as the gateway to utopian island resorts and paradise getaways.

The original inhabitants of the island were an ancient fishing community who settled on the nearby riverbanks. In the centuries that followed, the island was exposed to Buddhism, Islam, and was, among other things, a British protectorate and trading partner with the Portuguese. Its colourful history is reflected in the numerous mosques dotted around the island, in the Sultan’s Park and National Museum, and the nearby tomb of Muhammad Thakurufaanu.

Image Credit: Jantz Kurt

Malé’s narrow streets and vibrantly painted houses are best explored on foot considering the island’s size. However, there are roving taxis to be found. Affordable and frequent ferries run between neighbouring islands including Hulhulé, where the airport is located, and Villingili, an island known for its pristine beach and excellent diving and snorkelling.

Image credit: Dmitrijs Mihejevs

Réunion Island

We like to call the next one on the list the Hawaii of the Indian Ocean. With Réunion Island‘s dramatic scenery, verdant mountain peaks that touch the clouds, and one of the most active volcanoes in the world to match, it’s not hard to see why.

This landmass is significantly dwarfed by its much larger neighbour, Madagascar, while its volcano, Piton de la Fournaise, is perched on the south-east corner of the island where daredevils, outdoorsmen, and those generally intrigued, can hike into its caldera – when it isn’t erupting, that is. Otherwise, visitors will have to be satisfied with the magnificently fiery display from a distance. The remainder of the island is made up of streaming waterfalls, lush forests, mountainous landscapes, and contrasting beaches of white and black sand.

Neat streets lined with bistros, boulangeries, and brasseries, alongside trendy waterfront cafes, will have travellers to Réunion island’s capital, Saint-Denis, mistaking their location for a town somewhere in France. Yet beneath this small coastal city’s ostensibly French veneer, there is an undeniably creole core. Full of museums, colonial and religious buildings, and a host of other epicurean delights, a visit to Saint-Denis should be part of every Réunion itinerary.

Image credit: Vicente Villamón

Mauritius

Mauritius is often lauded as one of the most advanced and established island nations in Africa. With a thriving economy and business sector, superb transportation systems, and a great location a short flight away from Johannesburg, this is a great place to holiday if you’re in search of an island vacay with first-world amenities. As with most of Mauritius, it is a place of beautiful beaches and several excellent resorts.

The island is also dotted with tropical vegetation and a booming social scene. Take the plunge amid the rays and barracudas that call the surrounding waters home, or head out to the big blue to hook a marlin or tuna. Championship golf courses are also found on the island, offering an intricate challenge for even the most seasoned golfer.

Image credit: Brocken Inaglory

If that isn’t quite your cup of piña colada, there are other ways to enjoy the island and its waters containing prolific sea life. Hop on to one of the many glass-bottomed boats that depart daily for tours around, or float across to neighbouring islands, such as Île des Deux Cocos which comes complete with its own mysterious shipwreck.

Zanzibar Archipelago, Tanzania

A land of spices, warm waters, pearly beaches, and rich marine life – it’s no surprise that the Zanzibar Archipelago is a tourist destination. The main island, Unguja, is a place where worlds collide in the capital city. One small creek separates the historical Stone Town (formerly the capital of the Zanzibar Sultanate) from the developed Ng’ambo, a settlement for African slaves in the mid-1800s and now home to developed office and apartment blocks.

Acknowledged as the historical and cultural core of the capital, Stone Town’s waterfront is dotted with architectural and traditional delights, from the Old Fort and House of Wonders—the former containing local markets and an arena for small shows while the latter’s terraced walls house a museum of Swahili and Zanzibar culture.

The stunning white walls and turquoise stuccos that adorn the balconies of the Old Dispensary are a visual pleasure, while at night the enticing Forodhani Gardens tempt visitors with its market of ethnic seafood.

The smaller satellite islands surrounding Zanzibar island offer a more secluded and less developed alternative to their larger neighbour. On Mafia Island and Pemba Island, visitors can dive with whale sharks, snorkel among colourful coral reefs and keep a keen eye out for the endearing pygmy hippo while cruising through mangrove forests.

Madagascar

In some places, rainforests of long-limbed succulents house leaping lemurs, while stout baobabs sport trunks branded with red-and-yellow swirls. Elsewhere, powder-white sands dissolve into cerulean waters, hiding tropical barrier reefs. This kaleidoscope of nature forms the fabric of Madagascar.

Image credit: Mathias Appel

With 250 islands, 450km of the barrier reef, and around 5,000km of coastline, the tropical island’s shores prove hard to resist. Divers are spoiled for choice – from underwater cathedrals to rusted shipwrecks – and share the deep waters with rays, whale sharks, and reef sharks.

Snorkel among curious fish, colourful coral, and graceful turtles. Those keen to keep their heads above water can watch the humpback whales breach, join a local fisher on a pirogue trip, or simply recline in their hammock.

Isalo National Park covers 81,500ha of Jurassic sandstone massif and is home to ringtail, brown, and sifaka lemurs, as well as sacred Bara burial sites. Delve into the island’s history, from the pirate cemetery strewn with palms, to the twelve sacred hills of Antananarivo. Madagascar is a cultural melting pot of intricate beliefs and ancestral rituals as well as ethnic spices and exotic cuisines.

Image credit: Larre

Seychelles

Far off the coast of East Africa, a chain of islands are the glittering jewels encrusting the necklace that is the Seychellois Archipelago. 115 islands and islets make up this small Indian Ocean island nation, home to some of the best beaches in the world.

This is the tropical paradise you thought only existed in movies. Spend your days discovering atolls and their beautiful beaches, and the larger islands blooming with colourful bougainvillaeas, frangipane trees, hibiscuses and palm trees. The crystal-clear waters of the Saint Anne Marine Park are comprised of six small islands surrounded by an abundance of sea life whose delicate ecosystem is fiercely protected and a sight to behold.

Are you ready to embark on your African island adventure? Get in touch today or browse through our scintillating selection of Indian Ocean Island Tours for more inspiration.

The post The Most Romantic Island Holidays in Africa appeared first on Rhino Africa Blog.

[tshanman]

Takayama’s Rustic Charm

Takayama, a city of about 60,000, lies on the side of Japan’s Central Alps in the Hida region.  It’s a town that has maintained its traditional touch with a beautifully preserved old town dating from the Edo period, which spanned the 17th & 18th centuries.

(By the way, I need to inject a brief apology here.  Halfway through our time in Japan I discovered that my primary camera lens is not working correctly, and the exposure is off on many of my pictures.)

Honjin Hiranoya Bekka, our home for three days, is a traditional ryokan next to the Miya-Gowa river that flows through town.

This was the most traditional ryokan of our entire trip. Our space consists of one room made up of 10 or 12 Tatami mats.  We sleep on futons on the floor, which, during the day are replaced with a low table where, at dinner-time, we eat our traditional kaiseke multi-course dinner.

Directly across the river from Honjin Hiranoya Bekka, old town Takayama has narrow streets and wood lattice buildings that are hundreds of years old, but perfectly maintained—homes, small shops, restaurants and saki breweries.

Even though the area is ancient by our standards, and a busy tourist destination, everything is neat, clean and cared for with loving attention.

Saki breweries are always marked with a large ball of cedar leaves above the door.

Another thing we learned is that the strips of fabric hanging in a doorway—called noren—are more than decorative…

…businesses hang their noren out as a welcome mat.  The hangings shows they are open for business.

And even in the back of the smallest shop, you’ll often discover a  lovely garden area.

There are two things noticeably absent from the streets of Takayama and many other Japanese towns and cities—litter, as well as any place to throw litter away.  Apparently they used to have a litter problem.  Their solution was literally to eliminate any place to throw trash out, and make it clear that littering was a serious infraction. I’m sure it says something about the Japanese culture that this was successful—or, more importantly, something about our own culture that we can’t imagine it working in the U.S.

One of our favorite discoveries in Takayama was the Kusakabe Heritage House, unmentioned in either of our guidebooks, and a significant oversight in our estimation.

The Kusakabe family members were merchants who thrived during the reign of the Tokugawa clan which began in 1692.  When the Tokugawa shogunate governed here, the samurai left.  So this is the home of wealthy “commoners.”  The original store and house burned down in 1875 and was rebuilt in 1879 by Jisuke Kawajiri, the most skilled architect and craftsman of his time.  Rockefeller reportedly wanted to purchase the home, but was turned down.  In 1966, the Kusakabe home was designated a “national important cultural asset.”

This “common house” of the edo period is constructed of Japanese cypress.  The beam and pillar construction is especially sturdy.  The dark brown paint is made from soot.

The open hearth in the center of the home was for both heating and cooking.

The home is built around an interior garden.

And as is common in traditional homes, rooms can be reconfigured with sliding shoji screens as larger public gathering spaces, or smaller intimate private areas—all with a view of the garden.

The Kusakabe family crest.

The Kusakabe Heritage House houses a folk art museum or Mingei Kan.  In 1966, the 11th head of the Kusakabe family supported the goals of the Mingei folk art movement of the time, which, much like the arts and crafts movement in the U.S., focused on beautiful objects created to be used by common people.

These hibachis were used to keep warm during the severe cold of Takayama’s winters.

Women would use this metal “pillow” to perfume their hair by burning incense while they slept.

The traditional methods of making pottery perfected long ago with these unique glazing techniques are still used by ten potteries still operating in Takayama today.

This is a prototype of the “butterfly stool” designed in 1954 by Sori Yanagi, a leading product designer in postwar Japan.  It has been exhibited at the Louvre and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

This ancient palanquin seems impossibly small given it’s designed to carry a passenger from place to place.

When we arrived at Kusakabe, they had just opened, and ours were the first pairs of shoes left near the entrance.  By the time we’d left, the place was packed.

We also discovered this wonderful shop where the owner wove wall hangings using the silk from antique kimonos.

Each morning, merchants set up their kiosks at the outdoor market, which borders the river for two blocks.

This vendor offered calligraphy.

This woman was baking fresh fish-shaped gluten cakes.

This store offered various types of miso, fermenting in barrels at the front of the store.

There were lots of vegetables.

This is wild daichon--what we know as radish.

Giant stone slabs placed along the river offer a convenient place to rest and snack.

And large carp windsocks strung across the river create a festive air.

In the center of town, adjacent to our ryokan, is Takayama Jinya, a branch office of the shogunate government from the late 1600s to 1868, when the shogun returned power to the emperor.

The shogun sent his people here to collect taxes, sit as judges, act as police, and, most importantly, manage the surrounding forests, since timber in the mountains around Takayama was highly prized and formed the base of the economy.  These were the government’s administrative offices.

It was also the living quarters for the administrators, and for the shogun when he came to visit. Here, our wonderful guide Tomi shows us how to adjust the height of the cooking pot.

The buildings center around the garden.

Tax payments to the shogun were made in the form of rice—each bag of rice weighed about 130 lbs. The oldest building in the complex, seen here on the far side of the garden, is the rice storage building, which dates from 1600.  

In the late 1700s, the area peasants rioted over the increased tax burden—twice unsuccessfully. The local administrators used this room to elicit confessions.  Prisoners were forced to kneel on the wood planks in the center, while stacks of heavy flat stones were placed on their legs.

On a more civilized note, there was also a room for the traditional Japanese tea ceremony.  You can tell this is a tea ceremony room by the design of the tatami mats with the half tatami in the center.

Nearby, the main gate to Sakurayama Hachiman Shrine makes an imposing statement...

…and a somewhat less imposing, but no less impressive, inner gate welcomes visitors to the shrine.

This Shinto shrine is said to date from the 4th century, although there’s no way to know for sure since Japan’s written history only dates back to the 7th century.

This purification font is carved from a single rock.

Before praying at the shrine, worshippers drink the purifying water.

In the Japanese Shinto tradition, prayer requests are written and then neatly tied throughout the shrine complex.

Takayama was a delight and, for me, one of the highlights of our time in Japan.

[superchicalonelyviking]

Blog post number 3

Hello!

So it’s been two weeks since our last post and in that time we’ve finished the trip across Western Russia and Siberia and made it across the Sea of Japan to (guess where) Japan! This might be quite a long post but will try not to go on too much!

So to pick up from where Mat left off, he eventually did get that game of chess out of the bear guide but we didn’t go for dinner in the end after finding some mystery baked goods at a station- on the platforms there are usually ladies with boxes of food to sell, with everything from ice cream to salads, from cucumbers to a kind of ravioli with potato or cabbage inside which seems to be a popular Russian dish. I think it’s called Vareniki. There are lots of these savoury donut - type things with sausages or other meat or cheese inside. At one point there were lots of ladies carrying armfuls of smoked / dried fish which everyone on the train seemed to love! Of course everyone also brings instant noodles as there is a samovar of hot water in each carriage so you can make a hot meal in a few minutes.

We were third class on the train which meant sleeping in the open car with around 50 other people, but everyone has their own bed and a place underneath for belongings, and the atmosphere on the train was much friendlier and more relaxed than I expected. It’s an interesting mix of people- some very old, some very young - on the first night a toddler was wandering up and down the train getting bits of food off different people, there were a group of young men on what sounded like a ‘lads lads lads’ type trip to Moscow being kept in check by an elderly lady (wearing a crocheted white cap- nana if you’re reading this, it reminded me of your sofa protectors!) sleeping beside them and later drunkenly advising us on how not to book a taxi in Irkutsk whilst also playing games with the kids in our ‘bit’ .

The train route passes through a lot of thick forest and by some small towns as you head out toward the Ural Mountains which mark the edge of 'European Russia’ and the beginning of Siberia. There are many vast modern cities with huge blocks of flats- apparently 85% of Russians live in the city now- and in between are very traditional-looking villages with usually one storey wooden buildings, often painted in turquoise, green or yellow, with a vegetable garden outside.

A lot of time is spent just gazing out of the window. It’s amazing how long you travel for before reaching anywhere - it really makes you appreciate how huge the country is and how isolated some of the places would have been before the railway was built at the end of the 19th century.

After 4 nights on the train we were glad to arrive in Irkutsk, near to Lake Baikal- Irkutsk was traditionally a trading/tax post for furs and other goods from Siberia, and is now a modern university city. An event which contributed to the development of Irkutsk was the arrival of some of the Decemberists - a group of very well educated Revolutionaries from Moscow who failed their attempted coup in 1825 and some of whom were exiled to Siberia, and here helped develop local education and living standards.

Irkutsk has lots of beautiful buildings, some of the traditional Siberian wooden style and other more grand stone buildings, many of which came with the development of the area at the time of the gold rush. We stayed with a host family in a large modern apartment block by the Angara River, they had both lived in this part of Siberia for most of their lives and had a very cute 1 year old daughter- they’d asked for an English children’s book so we took the Alfie and Annie Rose story book. One night we made them a Toad in the Hole and some Cairney scones which went down very well!

We arranged a trip to Lake Baikal from Irkutsk- Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world, and contains roughly a quarter of the entire planet’s freshwater. To be perfectly honest I wasn’t hugely excited about Baikal because I’ve seen plenty of lakes before (I mean come on, you can’t beat Windermere!) but it is truly breathtaking- the sheer vastness of the lake hits you as soon as you lay eyes upon it, with the snowy mountain peaks beyond, and very little in the way of anything on the shores aside from several small villages. That day we decided to hike up the Great Baikal Trail - a project set up by volunteers to make a path around the entire lake , yet to be completed - walk round to a beach on the other side of a hill overlooking the lake and back again (expecting this would take around 3 hours). 2 hours in we’d only just reached the top of the first hill , and our provisions consisted of an empty water bottle and a small bag of pine nuts so at this stage we decided to give up and go back, though we did get a fantastic view of the lake from the top, and it was a beautiful walk through thick, untouched woodland with nothing but a few Siberian style houses down by the lake. Back by Baikal we found some of the local food which is smoked fish from the lake in a kind of bread roll, and some shashlyk, I decided to go for a “swim” (it was extremely cold, after putting my ankles in I decided to abort the plan but the combination of peer pressure from some people watching from the beach and a particularly slippy rock was too much) and we walked back along the path by the lake , past the houses with people smoking fish on a fire outside. It was a very sunny and warm day, and very peaceful- it’s true what they say that Baikal does have a magical sense to it. I would love to go back one day.

The following day was the next leg of our trans Siberian trip- our host very kindly gave us a lift to the station, the family was going to their Dacha which is a kind of large allotment, usually with a summer house, which is a very popular thing in Russia for city dwellers. We had bought a second class ticket for this train as it wasn’t much more expensive and meant we got our own room. Our compartment was very nice and felt like true luxury after third class! I did some watercolour painting(thanks Shing!), we both read a lot, mat wrote a song, it was a nice few days. The scenery changed quite spectacularly from the dense forest and 'taiga’ of the more western parts and there were now huge purple mountains - we think on the border to Mongolia and China - with forest, small lakes and rivers and grasslands in the foreground.

After 3 days we reached Vladivostok, the end of the trans Siberian railway. It was very misty and grey the morning we arrived at the grand station, but we soon had a warm welcome from our host who picked us up and drove us over to their flat. Their place was at the top of a large block of flats overlooking the city and they made a really nice breakfast of tea, pine nuts, honey, aubergine pate and home made bread. They were really friendly and really into jigsaw puzzles ! In the evening Mat helped their 6 year old daughter (who apparently makes friends with guests by using them as a human climbing frame) complete one whilst I made the third Yorkshire pudding of our trip so far which is fast becoming a Yorkshire pudding tour of the world !

Vladivostok has been an important military base for centuries and was closed until the 90’s, so it’s a fascinating place to pass through! We stayed just one night and the next day left Russia for Japan, this time by sea!

The ferry to Japan was also a lot of fun, with its own night club, sauna and karaoke! There were lots of merry Japanese people partying and later sitting around on the floor playing a kind of game which we never quite understood. We met a great German couple from Berlin who were doing a similar trip to us but with bikes, and whilst the ferry stopped in South Korea we found a Korean restaurant and had an amazing lunch of a kind of ramen style dish, rice and lots of small dishes with different vegetables. South Korea was very beautiful with an extremely neat and tidy port town with lots of very clean looking factories and slick blocks of flats interspersed with farming fields, and lush mountains beyond. It was a baking hot day and the whole feel of the place was a world apart from Vladivostok ! There was a beautiful sunset from the deck of the boat that night, and just a few hours later we were in Japan which is a whole other story for another day- I’ll let Mat tell you about this place!

So all in all it’s been a fascinating trip across Russia to Japan, it’s been really interesting to learn about Russian history - which is helpful for understanding the rest of Europe and Asia- whilst travelling across it! We’re really looking forward to exploring more of Japan, China and Mongolia before beginning the journey back home through Russia once more.

Really missing you all back home and enjoying the updates!

Love Libby and Mat

PS haven’t included names of people we met as I wasn’t sure whether you’d want that - if you don’t mind, let me know !

[thearnoldtully]

UK: Class War Breaks Out in London Rhubarb Patch

Guerrilla gardeners take on aristocratic family that wants to build houses where they tend vegetables

By Alistair MacDonald Wall Street Journal July 21, 2019

LONDON—Ralph George Algernon Percy, the 12th Duke of Northumberland, comes from a storied English aristocratic family that deposed a king, repelled invasions and raided France.

Meet the House of Percy’s latest adversary: Annie Aloysius, a London health worker who likes rhubarb.

Ms. Aloysius’ desire to grow rhubarb, peas, carrots and other vegetables has brought her into conflict with the current duke, on whose land she and around 20 other locals rent small allotments to grow produce.

A century ago, the Percy family leased out a small slice of their 200-plus-acre London estate to be used by World War I veterans and other locals to grow fresh vegetables. That lease is up, and the Percys, who own a castle that was used in the hit TV series Downton Abbey, want to build houses. Allotment users on the contested land are digging in. One has written to Prince Charles, and some are asking a local council to buy the West London plots. Meanwhile, guerrilla gardeners are occupying some of the Percy land that was abandoned in expectation of the housing development. “Fighting for your own little piece of England is important, particularly in the face of what the duke has—thousands and thousands of acres of it,” said Ms. Aloysius, a children’s speech therapist.

The battle over rhubarb is the latest in an age-old British class rivalry between those born with land and those who weren’t.

Allotments—essentially subsidized community-based gardening plots—are baked into modern England’s psychology. That’s partly due to a long history of urbanization and partly due to a popular 1970s sitcom, “The Good Life,” about a burnt-out Londoner trying to be self-sufficient. Jeremy Corbyn, the head of Britain’s left-wing opposition Labour Party, attended a meeting of his allotment association on the day members of his party launched an attempt to topple him.

In March, Northumberland Estates, the company that manages the Percy family businesses, sent a letter to plot holders saying they were moving ahead with redevelopment proposals and would close the allotments in a year. “We have an ongoing discussion with various parties about finding a way forward,” said a spokesman.

A group of green-thumbed rebels named the Park Road Allotment Society has landed its own blows. After hearing the society’s protests, a local council ruled in 2017 that the development plans would lead to the loss of open space and impinge on a conservation area. The council, which can block development but hasn’t revealed plans to contest eviction, rejected an appeal by the family last November.

The Northumberland Estates spokesman said it hasn’t tried to evict allotment holders.

Meeting regularly amid pints of English bitter at the Town Wharf pub, the gardeners want the local government to order the duke to sell the plots at a fixed price. Some group members agree that’s a long shot.

In the meantime, some plotters are supporting the uprising by taking over allotments left idle by previous users who have quit in anticipation of the duke’s bulldozers.

Carmela Staltari emigrated from Italy to London in 2003. Three years ago, she saw an abandoned allotment and took it over. The once weed-strewn patch on the Percy land is now a flourishing space of carrots, runner beans and sunflowers.

Ms. Staltari eventually took over the lease. The plot offers an outdoor space for her, her partner and two children, who live in a two-bedroom apartment in a nearby building.

“It’s a chance for them to play with insects, with worms, with bees,” said Ms. Staltari, who works for a hotel company. The duke “should show some respect to the lower classes,” she said. The duke divides his time between a Scottish estate, Alnwick Castle, which the family has owned for 700 years, and Syon House, a London mansion and a more recent family acquisition, from 400 years ago.

Alnwick made a cameo in Downton Abbey when the show’s aristocratic Crawley family gathered there for a party. The contested allotments sit on about 3 acres of the Syon House estate.

A forebear of the Percy family was immortalized in William Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1.” The current duke owns about 100,000 acres of land, making him the U.K.’s fifth largest individual landowner, according to Tatler magazine, the bible of Britain’s upper crust. That’s behind four other dukes, including the Duke of Cornwall, better known as Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne.

The duke is no stranger to garden-variety controversy. In 2007, the family was criticized for demolishing a popular public butterfly house on the grounds of Syon House and replacing it with a hotel. The spokesman said the move was “warmly welcomed.”

At the Town Wharf on a recent weekday, the Park Road Allotment Society discussed its next move. Lynne McEvoy has written a letter to the duke and to Prince Charles. She wants to send another to Prince Harry, the queen’s grandson.

Anthony Agius was skeptical as he tucked into a plate of liver and bacon. Prince Harry has been known to mix with the younger Percys.

Afterward, Ms. Aloysius, 47, pointed to the various vegetables on her plot.

“Cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, beetroot, artichokes,” she said, with evident pride. “Do watch the strawberries,” she warned a stumbling reporter.

Her allotment is surrounded by abandoned patches, with long grass and blackberry bushes growing up over once neat plots.

“A few of us haven’t yet stopped fighting,” she said.

from Gardening http://cityfarmer.info/uk-class-war-breaks-out-in-london-rhubarb-patch/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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The Most Romantic Island Holidays in Africa

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The Most Romantic Island Holidays in Africa

The Caribbean and Mediterranean have some serious rivalry when it is necessary to romantic island holidays because Africa genuinely has it all.

From an archipelago that is 115 islands strong to a volcanic wonder waiting to be hiked and biked, an Indian Ocean island holiday off of Africa’s coastline is bound to set the spring back in your step, leave sand on your toes, and a sun-kissed blush on your cheek. There are plenty to choose from, so we’ve compiled a list of our favourite romantic island vacations :P TAGEND

Quirumbus& Bazaruto Archipelagos, Mozambique

First on the list are the archipelagos off the coast of Mozambique, both offering the quintessential island experience but each with their own touch of charm.

The threatened dugong may very well be the unofficial emblem of the Bazaruto Archipelago. Africa’s largest population of this rare, manatee-like animal lives in the warm Indian Ocean waters surrounding the archipelago’s main island alongside dolphins, humpback whales, manta rays, and whale sharks. And the treasures of the deep don’t stop there. This collecting of islands is superb for both a family vacation and a couples retreat.

After flying under the radar for far too long, the Quirimbas Archipelago is rapidly turning into one of the most sought-after island destinations this side of the continent. More remote and( if possible) more romantic than the Bazaruto Archipelago, this is the place for honeymoon hideaways. In Quirimbas, you’ll be met by the unspoilt beauty of powder-white beaches, palm trees, and turquoise water- minus the swarms of tourists.

Hop from one island to the next on a lazy dhow cruise or–if you’re feeling adventurous–go scuba diving or snorkelling among the coral reefs. The warm waters are home to turtles, dolphins, and whales. If game fishing is your sport, venture further out to sea in search of bonefish, marlin, mackerel, sailfish, and dogtooth tuna.

Image credit: Felix Lipov

Maldives

A picturesque chain of atolls in the Indian Ocean attains up the minute Republic of Maldives. Male, its capital, is often touted as one of the most densely populated cities in the world- hardly surprising considering its diminutive size! This pint-sized hub is the thrumming core of the Maldivian island nation and acts as the gateway to utopian island resorts and paradise getaways.

The original inhabitants of the island were an ancient fishing activities who settled on the nearby riverbanks. In the centuries that followed, the island was exposed to Buddhism, Islam, and was , among other things, a British protectorate and trading partner with the Portuguese. Its colourful history is reflected in the numerous mosques dotted around the island, in the Sultan’s Park and National Museum, and the nearby mausoleum of Muhammad Thakurufaanu.

Image Credit: Jantz Kurt

Male’s narrow streets and vibrantly painted homes are best explored on foot considering the island’s sizing. However, there are roving taxis to be found. Affordable and frequent ferries operate between neighbouring islands including Hulhule, where the airport is located, and Villingili, an island known for its pristine beach and excellent diving and snorkelling.

Image credit: Dmitrijs Mihejevs

Reunion Island

We like to call the next one on the list the Hawaii of the Indian Ocean. With Reunion Island‘s dramatic scenery, verdant mountain peaks that touch the clouds, and one of the most active volcanoes in the world to match, it’s not hard to see why.

This landmass is significantly dwarfed by its much larger neighbour, Madagascar, while its volcano, Piton de la Fournaise, is perched on the south-east corner of the island where daredevils, outdoorsmen, and those generally intrigued, can hike into its caldera- when it isn’t erupting, that is. Otherwise, visitors will have to be satisfied with the splendidly fiery showing from a distance. The remainder of the island is made up of streaming waterfalls, lush forests, mountainous landscapes, and contrasting beaches of white and black sand.

Neat streets lined with bistros, boulangeries, and brasseries, alongside trendy waterfront coffeehouse, will have travellers to Reunion island’s capital, Saint-Denis, mistaking their locating for a town somewhere in France. Yet beneath this small coastal city’s ostensibly French veneer, there is an undeniably creole core. Full of museums, colonial and religious builds, and a host of other epicurean delights, a visit to Saint-Denis should be part of every Reunion itinerary.

Image credit: Vicente Villamon

Mauritius

Mauritius is often lauded as one of the most advanced and established island nations in Africa. With a thriving economy and business sector, superb transportation systems, and a great place a short flight away from Johannesburg, this is a great place to holiday if you’re in search of an island vacay with first-world amenities. As with most of Mauritius, it is a place of beautiful beaches and several excellent resorts.

The island is also dotted with tropical vegetation and a booming social scene. Take the plunge amid the rays and barracudas that call the surrounding water home, or head out to the big blue to hook a marlin or tuna. Championship golf courses are also found on the island, offering an intricate challenge for even the most seasoned golfer.

Image credit: Brocken Inaglory

If that isn’t quite your beaker of pina colada, there are other ways to enjoy the island and its water containing prolific sea life. Hop on to one of the many glass-bottomed boats that depart daily for tours around, or float across to neighbouring islands, such as Ile des Deux Cocos which comes complete with its own mysterious shipwreck.

Zanzibar Archipelago, Tanzania

A land of spices, warm water, pearly beaches, and rich marine life- it’s no surprise that the Zanzibar Archipelago is a tourist destination. The main island, Unguja, is a place where worlds collide in the capital. One small creek separates the historical Stone Town( formerly the capital of the Zanzibar Sultanate) from the developed Ng’ambo, a settlement for African slaves in the mid-1 800 s and now home to developed office and apartment blocks.

Acknowledged as the historical and cultural core of the capital, Stone Town’s waterfront is dotted with architectural and traditional pleasures, from the Old Fort and House of Wonders–the former containing local marketplaces and an arena for small presents while the latter’s terraced walls house a museum of Swahili and Zanzibar culture.

The stunning white walls and turquoise stuccos that adorn the balconies of the Old Dispensary are a visual pleasure, while at night the seducing Forodhani Gardens tempt visitors with its market of ethnic seafood.

The smaller satellite islands surrounding Zanzibar island offer a more secluded and less developed alternative to their larger neighbour. On Mafia Island and Pemba Island, guests can dive with whale sharks, snorkel among colorful coral reef and maintain a keen eye out for the endearing pygmy hippo while cruising through mangrove forests.

Madagascar

In some places, rainforests of long-limbed succulents home leaping lemurs, while stout baobabs sport trunks branded with red-and-yellow vortices. Elsewhere, powder-white sand dissolve into cerulean waters, hiding tropical obstacle reefs. This kaleidoscope of nature kinds the fabric of Madagascar.

Image credit: Mathias Appel

With 250 islands, 450 km of the barrier reef, and around 5,000 km of coastline, the tropical island’s shores prove hard to resist. Divers are spoiled for option- from underwater cathedrals to rusted shipwrecks- and share the deep waters with rays, whale sharks, and reef sharks.

Snorkel among curious fish, colourful coral, and graceful turtles. Those keen to keep their heads above water can watch the humpback whales breach, join a local fisher on a pirogue trip-up, or simply recline in their hammock.

Isalo National Park covers 81,500 ha of Jurassic sandstone massif and is home to ringtail, brown, and sifaka lemurs, as well as sacred Bara burial sites. Delve into the island’s history, from the pirate cemetery strewn with palms, to the twelve sacred hills of Antananarivo. Madagascar is a culture melting pot of intricate beliefs and ancestral rites as well as ethnic spices and exotic cuisines.

Image credit: Larre

Seychelles

Far off the coast of East Africa, a chain of islands are the glittering pearls encrusting the necklace that is the Seychellois Archipelago. 115 islands and islets make up this small Indian Ocean island nation, home to some of the best beaches in the world.

This is the tropical paradise you thought only existed in movies. Spend your days discovering atolls and their beautiful beaches, and the larger islands blooming with colorful bougainvillaeas, frangipane trees, hibiscuses and palm trees. The crystal-clear water of the Saint Anne Marine Park are comprised of six small islands surrounded by an abundance of sea life whose delicate ecosystem is fiercely protected and a sight to behold.

Are you ready to embark on your African island escapade? Get in touch today or browse through our scintillating selection of Indian Ocean Island Tours for more inspiration.

The post The Most Romantic Island Holidays in Africa appeared first on Rhino Africa Blog.

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Good life in Ghana

Smart-travelling through Accra, Ghana’s capital city requires a know-how

Musa Jibril

While growing up, there used to be a popular Yoruba saying with regard to Ghanaians: Kos’arugbo n’Ghana––to wit, “There is no unfashionable person in Ghana.” The statement still rings true today. I won’t explain any further. Find out yourself.

Ghana hardly changes. There is not going to be much gap between the experience of someone who lived in the country in the 1960s and that of someone who lived there in the new Millennium. They are not easily amenable to change, the Ghanaians. Even the physical layouts of their cities are still as identifiable as the days of Nkrumah.

Accra, the capital city, is still a melting pot it was during Nkrumah’s time when it was the epicentre of pan-Africanism. Half a century after the Alien Compliance Order sent other nationalities out of the country, today’s Accra has a mélange of foreign nationals: Nigerians, Burkinabes, Togolese, Ivorians, Sierra Leoneans, Liberians and Guineans. This diversity adds colour and zing to the everyday life in Accra. It engenders a cosmopolitan culture that imbues the foreigners with a sense of belonging.

There are many facets to the Ghanaian life and the briefest of stay in the capital leaves you with indelible impressions. A Nigerian staying beyond a few days will need to make some adjustments, though. Truth is, we are different in many ways, the Ghanaians and us. They are not loud. They don’t like loud music. They don’t brag. This is especially important if you are a Lagosian.

I love their sense of enjoyment. Ghanaians abhor stress. They make an effort not to complicate their lives. Unlike Nigerians who work nonstop, Ghanaians, if they work in an office, strictly observed the one-hour midday break. In the evening, they take time off to enjoy. On holidays, they stay indoors. It took me awhile to get used to it.

If you are doing Accra as a tourist, you need to have a head for the good time and a taste for good music. Remember, Ghanaians have a claim to being the exponents of highlife music before Nigerians usurped it and turned into something bigger. Ghana still has a hold on live band music, and +233 Jazz Bar and Grill is the place to have a taste of the real thing, especially whenever Gyedu-Blay Ambolley comes to town. Ambolley has a jazz ensemble that included a terrific horn player that is a Nigerian. The Ghanaian jazz-highlife maestro usually caps his performance with a rendition of one or two of Fela’s song.

Still on music, activities at the Alliance Francaise every month bring a cocktail of cosmopolitan melodies and performance from Francophone countries and other faraway places. The Ghanaians maintained a modicum of the European entertainment culture that will appeal to the bourgeoisie in you. Once in a while, a stage play comes up at the national theatre by seasoned playwrights such as Ebo Whyte or versatile entertainers like the musician Okyeame Kwame whose repertoire includes opera-like plays. Downtown Accra, at Nkrumah Circle, Vienna City, a bar-club-restaurant outfit that is the centre of gravity for fun seekers, sizzles in the evening.

The city has no shortage of clubs––from Hotgossip Night Club to Django Bar to Club Onyx––they are as good as they come. Neat, not seedy; organised and upscale, and good places for a nice evening timeout. There is no negative ring about clubbing in Accra.

If you have a day or two to spare, it will be a great idea to familiarise yourself with the popular sights of the city. Start with Mokola market at Accra Central. It is a sprawling market where you buy anything and everything, and tarry at Tudu, the neighbourhood of moneychangers that has a whiff of Lagos’ Idumota and a slice of Tudun Wada in Kaduna. Nearby Jamestown, with its lighthouse and its famous Wesley church where Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe tied the marital knots on April 4, 1936, is another place to visit. One of Ghana’s oldest town, it is peopled by the Ga whose cultural practices are related in some respect to the Yoruba. Nearby is Bukom, the centre of Ghana boxing culture.

Beach bums will find the Labadi Beach okay, but I have to tell you this: the best beaches are not in Accra. If you are the “jolly good fellow” type who treasures a timeout in a bar over a bottle of beer or two, Ghana is your nirvana. There is a bar every one kilometre on the street. And beer is plenty and cheap and comes in varieties, from rice beer to cassava beer and Alomo to Akpetesi.

Bars, especially those on the road sell from tanks into tankards. If you are a teetotaller, ask for Alvaro or Club’s soft drinks, and soak in the fizzy aura of the bar.

You might have a little difficulty with food. Nigerians and Ghanaians are a world apart in their cuisines. Coming from a Nigerian background where there are varieties of local foods, you might have to make some adjustments to the ‘limited’ culinary options. Not every Nigerian will find Waakye or Kenkey and Banku good substitutes for Apu, Gari or Amala.

Whereas you are used to Egusi, Ogbono, Ewedu and Afang, what Ghanaians offer is okro soup, groundnut soup, palm nut soup and light soup. I love Ga Kenkey––because I was used to it in Nigeria. I lived on it. I love Waakye too, perhaps because both are served with Shito. Those days, whenever we were driven to appease our palate with Nigerian cuisine, House of Ovations Restaurant, owned by Otunba Dele Momodu, was the place to grab a plate of Gari or Semo and vegetable soup.

In general, life moves at a lazy tempo, quite unlike the turbo-charged living of Lagos. I guess that is why Ghanaians live up to 100 years. In Ghana, funeral is fun. The city empties at the weekend as they burrow into the hinterland for funeral ceremonies that easily become an assembly for Old Money families and the nouveau riches, whereby you get the Who’s Who of Ghana in one gathering. Nana Acheampong, my editor, took me to a few. The most memorable was in Ada. Those days, we would to travel with the boot of his Toyota Camry loaded with hundreds of copies of Weekend Sun, which we sold at the events. The strategy was to get the people hooked on the obit pages and subsequently increases next week’s copy sales in those remote areas. We took off early on Saturday morning and on the evening of Sunday, we’d be back in Accra. That way, I got to know a lot of Ghanaian cities and towns across the Western and Central regions. You can never be lost in the crowd in Accra if you are a Nigerian. Nigeria has a significant population in the city, the elite in East Legon, the masses in Kasoa.

There is no shortage of activities in the Nigerian communities. The Igbos maintained a strong presence numerically, commercially and culturally. I attended a few Igbo occasions, especially those organised by the Eze Igbo Ghana, and witnessed the riveting enactment of the tradition of breaking Kolanuts and the ‘rite of the garden eggs and groundnut.’ Good friends make Ghana groovy. I made lots of friends, but most of my friends were in Cape Coast. It is easier to make friends of Fanti, my opinion anyway. My friends were many. A few deserved mentioning––Edith de Vos, a German who runs the Baobab Home, she had lived in Nigeria, but didn’t really like the Lagos life and consequently swapped it for the serenity of Cape Coast; Augustine Addison, 70-year-old boxing buff and a Muhammad Ali fan, we became good friends and he gave me access to his mini-museum and library; James Biney, the newspaperman who all his life lived of selling dailies. There was David ‘Kalusha’ Abban, who became like a brother, and Stephen Forson, a father raising his two daughters singlehandedly; Forson, while studying in Germany, refused to take German history course because of Hitler. In Accra, I lived in Kokoase, North Kaneshie. My neighbours––Jerry, Portia and Esenam––all young and single at the time; living among them was the easiest way to attune my ears to the Twi language.

You don’t have to miss church services if you are visiting Accra. A few Nigerian churches have made an in-road into the capital. While Ghanaians are largely Presbyterian, a slew of Pentecostal varieties, similar in character to those in Nigeria, are all over the city.

I have to tell you this: you have got to be comfortable with seeing signposts advertising the services of witchdoctors. Kwaku Bonsam, the most famous of them all is a celebrity of sorts, and he lends his voice to national issues. Consider him like Nigeria’s Sat Guru Maharaji, but he is more vocal. He talks about everything that is a burning issue. He even offered to help the Black Stars during the last World Cup, when he claimed to have bewitched Portugal ace, Cristiano Ronaldo, to stop him from scoring against Ghana in their group stage match.

You have to be aware of this: Ghana doesn’t treat crime with kid’s glove. It is a society of rights, built on efficient rule of law. And their criminal justice is as effective. Drink driving attracts six months imprisonment. Rape is not bailable. Operating a brothel or soliciting for sex is a grave offence. Smoking wee, a common vice, is unforgivable.

Let me also add: Accra might seem like a paradise, it has its hell as well. As a reporter, I had seen the underbelly of Accra. It’s not nice. It is as unkind as you can get in any mass society. Young girls who ran from home, especially from the northern region, lured by the attractions of the big city, ended up as Kaya yoo (porters), homeless, sleeping in the open. You would find them and other misfits in such slums like Sodom and Gomorrah (before its demolition) or Agbogboloshie, both digital dumping grounds, that make Lagos’ Ajegunle look like a mini London.

The teenagers are vulnerable and some in a year or two joined the teenage mothers’ brigade. I remember a girl of 19 we interviewed. She was from Yendi. She came to Accra to become a porter so she could raise money to pay her dowry. Let me tell you the story of Louisa Weah. She was 19 at the time we met her while investigating teenage prostitution. She had a one-year-old daughter, Daniella. She kept her with a nanny whom she paid one cedi every evening when she went about the city selling sex. She returned home in the wee hours of the morning with about 30 cedis. She was a runaway kid from Cape Coast. Eight months later after the story, I ran into her at Circle. She was heavily pregnant.

“Who impregnated you again?”

She and her friends laughed.

“Oh, he is Nigerian,” said one of her friends.

“In Ghana, you don’t ask a young girl who is responsible for the pregnancy,” I was schooled.

Accra swarms with battalions of such ‘kids’ who ran away from home.

If you are in Accra in September, make it a duty to attend Chale Wote. It is Ghana’s annual street art festival, a cocktail of art, music, dance and performance on the streets. You are likely to mingle with local and international artists and patrons. It is an opportunity to immerse in a kaleidoscope of visual delights that include street painting, graffiti murals and photography. Other activities, including live street performances, extreme sports, film shows, a fashion parade, a music block party and recyclable design workshops have made Chale Wote irresistible in recent years.

On a day you feel bored, a stroll through Oxford Street in Osu will make your day. And if you are missing the bustle of Lagos, go to Nkrumah Circle and get lost in the stream of humanity milling about aimlessly.

My last visit wasn’t my best. I was locked indoors for 11 days, my head buried in transcribing and writing.

But I did have one memorable moment. A day before I returned to Lagos, I spent the evening with Acheampong in his house at Dansoman. Nana Acheampong is a literary encyclopedia, a creative dynamo––a writer, an academic, a music critic, a humourist, more American than Ghanaian in attitude. We spent three hours in his recording studio and thereafter sat in a bar by the sea.

The breeze was cool. The air tangy. I was filled with contentment, a feeling I have come to associate with Ghana. Once you are content, that’s the good life, man.

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Making a Garden That Welcomes the Birds (Published 2020)@|how to get birds in your garden@|https://ift.tt/3E6smRi

IN THE GARDEN

Using native plant species helps, but there are two other things you can do to make birds feel at home — and they don’t involve any planting at all.

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A young rose-breasted grosbeak spent part of a summer afternoon on a leaf in the back garden.Credit…Margaret Roach

June 17, 2020

In this most isolated of springs, birds have kept me company. I’ve watched their mating games and turf wars, listened to their serenades and tagged along as they shopped for just the right piece of garden real estate (as long as I was very quiet; no kibitzing, Margaret). Some even let me meet their newborns when the big moment came.

All the things I cannot do with my people so much lately, we’ve been doing as usual; the birds remained in my bubble all along. I cannot imagine life without the 70 or so species that visit or reside in the garden each year. As I often say (and write): The birds taught me to garden — or at least to do it smarter.

When I first came as a weekender decades ago from New York City to the rural spot where I now live full time, there were unfamiliar voices and flashes of color in the surrounding shrubs and trees as I hacked through multiflora rose and wild blackberry to make vegetable and flower beds.

I got a field guide and learned their names: scarlet tanager, indigo bunting, American redstart, rose-breasted grosbeak. In the same way that my beginning-gardener self coveted every plant in her first garden catalogs, I imagined attracting every bird in that book.

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The characteristic nest of a red-eyed vireo, fashioned of twigs, plant fibers and birch bark and lined with pine needles, hangs in the fork of a branch of one of the winterberry hollies at the garden’s edge. Some vireo nests have wasp-nest paper, too.Credit…Margaret Roach

Like most beginners, I sought the answer in fancy feeders and every manner of well-designed birdhouse — designed from a human aesthetic, that is, although not necessarily meeting bird specifications. Eventually I came to visualize this place as their refuge: shelter and water within a giant, living bird feeder that offers appropriate sustenance for breeding season, to fuel migration’s big energy demands or to survive the coldest months for those who choose to spend them with me.

Studying my growing collection of field guides on the life histories and diets of birds that I’d see — the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds site and its online courses are good resources, as well — I reduced lawn areas to make room for native plants and to support more insects and, in turn, birds. Nearly every organism in the food web eats insects or eats someone who eats them — or benefits from the pollination services that insects provide.

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Two in-ground water gardens like the one in the foreground attract all manner of wildlife to my land — including many birds — year-round. Uphill, islands that were once lawn are now unmown, and native grasses and forbs like little bluestem, goldenrods and asters are gradually laying claim, sustaining insects and, therefore, birds.Credit…Margaret Roach

Thinking of plant choices not as just ornament but as ecological workhorses is not where I began. But it’s where I came to — to think in terms of habitat.

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Something I heard the ornithologist Pete Dunne say has stuck: “Birds are almost always where they are supposed to be.” Mr. Dunne, a longtime leader in New Jersey Audubon and the author of many books, was offering a tip about bird-watching: The habitat where you spot a bird is an important clue to its identification. But his insight is also key to setting realistic expectations and planning what to do to enhance your site.

Reality check: No matter what I do, waterfowl or grassland birds won’t favor my garden — although both pass time nearby. I am on a steep uphill site, surrounded by second-growth forest. Forest birds, including migrant songbirds looking for breeding ground, plus lots and lots of woodpeckers, think it looks just swell and are among those I need to think about.

In addition to mowing less, I have adopted two particular actions on behalf of the birds — on behalf of habitat — that involve no planting at all.

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A very old twin-trunk birch was losing large pieces of its crown and dying back. It was transformed into a snag, or wildlife tree, where it will continue to contribute to the habitat and food web for many years.Credit…Margaret Roach

No. 1: Leave Dying Trees Alone

These days, I never take down a dead or dying tree lower than the level required for safety.

A friend texted a photo recently of a declining, massive old oak in a prominent spot in her suburban backyard. She had consulted an arborist who suggested removal and grinding out the stump, standard practice in residential environments.

“I guess trees have a life, and unfortunately this beauty is at the end,” she wrote.

I begged to differ, and quickly shot back photos of an old birch that had been dropping big pieces of its canopy out back years ago, and a massive maple by the driveway that had been doing likewise recently. My arborist had helped me stabilize and transition them to wildlife trees, or snags — a critical part of habitat that we homeowners too often erase in the name of neatness.

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It didn’t take long for woodpeckers to begin to excavate the birch snag enthusiastically.Credit…Margaret Roach

As long as they pose no danger to people, power lines or structures, dead and dying trees have an afterlife as a place for wildlife to nest or den; a lookout perch for a raptor seeking dinner; a food source for insects (who, in turn, feed the masses). Lichen, fungi and mosses grow on them, providing food and shelter.

Removing their tons of biomass deprives the food web of all of that life-giving potential. According to the National Wildlife Federation, the removal of dead material from forests can mean a loss of habitat for up to a fifth of the animals in the ecosystem, and more than 1,000 species of wildlife nationwide use snags. That includes woodpeckers, whose excavating efforts in dead trees help not just their own species.

“More than 40 bird species in North America depend on woodpecker carpentry for their nest and roost cavities,” writes Stephen Shunk in “Peterson Reference Guide to Woodpeckers of North America.” These secondary nesters — among them, tree swallows, bluebirds, titmice, wrens, flycatchers and some owls and ducks — cannot create cavities, but quickly adopt abandoned holes.

“Having a more healthy woodpecker population buys you more than just woodpeckers,” John Marzluff, an ornithologist and urban ecologist at the University of Washington, told me in an interview a few years ago on the publication of “Welcome to Subirdia,” his book about rich habitat opportunities in developed areas. “But they need dead trees.”

Too-tidy landscapes offer no invitation to the woodpeckers, keystone species or facilitators others rely on. Besides nest cavities, some woodpeckers create sap wells where hummingbirds and butterflies, like the red-spotted purple, like to drink. Migrating ruby-throated hummingbirds follow yellow-bellied sapsuckers to ensure an early food source before many plants are providing nectar.

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I was able to salvage a candelabra-like arrangement of branch stubs in addition to the entire main trunk of the declining maple by my driveway, which is better from the wildlife point of view than merely topping the tree.Credit…Margaret Roach

The bigger the snag, the better for wildlife, but safety must be considered. The safe height in my open, rural garden exceeds what works elsewhere, which may be less than 10 feet (where my friend’s oak, rescued from destruction, now registers). Big pieces of the upper carcass of each of my snags lie near where they once stood, mimicking how they would fall and decompose in a forest — which, again, might not work in some yards.

Some twiggy parts could form an out-of-the-way brush pile, though, another wildlife attractor. Even a high stump can support a lot of life, compared to a ground-level cut or ground-out one.

Yes, there can be birdhouses — but not the models I started with. Choose them not for cuteness, but according to the specifications preferred by local cavity nesters. Cornell’s NestWatch site, with its All About Bird Houses section, will guide you to your area’s cavity-nesting species, ranked in order of urgency of need for more nest sites, with downloadable plans for boxes and nesting shelves. Build one or have it built, or use the dimensions to buy the right box.

Be a good landlord, siting the proper unit in the location that the instructions indicate. Secure the birdhouse against predators, by adding a stovepipe baffle on the pole mount, for instance, in the case of bluebird boxes. (More on bluebirds is at Sialis.org.) Clean nest boxes in late winter to offer a fresh start.

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No. 2: Provide a Water Supply

Maybe my biggest non-planting contribution of all: I provide water 12 months a year.

For entirely selfish reasons — to create the sound of running water — I dug two in-ground pools lined with thick rubber sheeting early in my weekender days. I had no idea the effect they would have on wildlife, particularly because I keep a hole in the ice all winter with an electric floating de-icer, a contraption adapted from cattle-tank defrosters used so livestock can have drinking water in winter. The smallest versions will keep a birdbath open for business.

I calculated the required device wattage with help from a water-garden specialty supply company, by considering the severity of the winter temperatures where I live, plus the total surface area of each pool, and installed weather-resistant GFCI outlets adjacent to each pool. (An important safety note: De-icers cannot run on extension cords.) The idea is not to heat the water or keep the entire surface open, but merely to keep a drinking hole open in the ice.

The warbler called Louisiana waterthrush is a regular customer, bobbing the back of its body up and down to some unheard dance beat as it forages for insects. One winter, the bigger pool (and the fruit of a group of crab apple trees just above) drew a flock of irruptive pine grosbeaks visiting from Canada, who spent some weeks there.

I can look up from my desk at any time of day, any time of year, and there is hardly a moment when someone — feathered, fur-bearing, amphibian or otherwise, including a diversity of summer dragonflies — is not partaking.

So much so that when people ask me what my favorite “bird plant” is, I often reply, “Water.” (The real answer: One of the many native flowering-then-fruiting winterberry holly shrubs massed around the perimeter, which bring in winter flocks of cedar waxwings and robins. Your most effective bird-supporting native plants can be found in a ZIP code-based search on the Audubon Society website.)

The only other place in the garden that competes with the little pools for such nonstop activity? The older snag, that birch, where even as I write this, a pileated woodpecker is having at it.

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A young robin finds itself in the backyard on a tentative first adventure out of the nest one spring.Credit…Margaret Roach

Bird Safety: A Few Tips

If you provide bird feeders, as I do in winter, when resident black bear are not active, keep them clean and consistently well stocked.

And mitigate the two most serious dangers to birds in our human environments: cats and window glass.

The American Bird Conservancy urges us to help reduce window strikes, which kill up to a billion birds a year in the United States. Exterior screens, netting and certain decals, and even retrofitting with new patterned glass, are among the recommended options.

To reduce the danger of high-speed impacts, place feeders and birdbaths closer than three feet to a window or farther than 30 feet away.

Domestic and feral cats kill some 2.4 billion birds annually in the United States, according to the American Bird Conservancy — “the largest human-caused mortality to birds.” There is only one solution: Keep pet cats indoors.

For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.

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source https://livingcorner.com.au/making-a-garden-that-welcomes-the-birds-published-2020how-to-get-birds-in-your-gardenhttps-static01-nyt-com-images-2020-06-21-realestate-17garden-birds1-17garden-birds1-facebookjumbo-v2-j/

[sockssux]

There\'s No Point Doing paving products If You\'re Not Doing It Right.

These supplies cure in 24 hours, and might normally be sealed and mild visitors allowed inside 36 hours after application. The one most necessary issue with any stampable overlay utility is floor preparation. The surface needs to have sufficient profile (be rough sufficient) so that the overlay material can bond both chemically and mechanically. I always recommend a mechanical grinding or profiling of the floor, as this may at all times provide better profile versus an acid etch or different means of chemical floor profiling. If you are looking for a three-dimensional textured flooring covering that resembles most any natural materials (stone, tile, wood, and many others.) consider a stampable overlay in your subsequent mission. Thin Section / Microtoppings are thinner versions of their cousins the stampable overlay. They make the most of "beefed up" polymers that enable the fabric to go down very thin and yet maintain strength, durability and abrasion resistance. From the south to the north, east to the west. Simply look at our images. Yet we work laborious to keep our prices down. In fact we assure you is not going to discover related high quality for a decrease price. We make every kind of shed you possibly can imagine, widespread examples embrace; dutch barn garden sheds (simply click the up coming internet site), apex garden sheds, pent garden sheds, backyard workshops, garden summer time houses, potting sheds, canine kennels and lots of different backyard storage options. Our lads have delivered, prepared bases and erected garden sheds, dutch barns and garden workshops throughout the UK. From the south to the north, east to the west. Whenever you order a backyard shed from us we be sure to get the shed you want, and agree the best date to deliver/erect. Probiotics are bacteria that co-exist in the colon with so-called "bad" colon bacteria. About one hundred trillion microorganisms populate a wholesome bowel. Probiotics balance the pathogen (dangerous microorganisms) rely, help digestion and nutrient absorption, and facilitate immune perform. If the variety of probiotics drops significantly- attributable to acne antibiotic utilization- other well being issues like diarrhea and irritable bowel syndrome may consequence. You may restore probiotic stability after a series of acne antibiotics in three steps. Gary Huffnagle, PhD, of the College of Michigan Health System, is a pioneering researcher into the world of probiotics. Huffnagle recommends supporting probiotic growth by growing the quantity of cultured dairy products you eat, reminiscent of cheeses and yogurt. Presser explains that FOS are sugars found in fruits, vegetables and grains. Lowering your stress stage while utilizing probiotic therapy will enable the useful micro organism to flourish whereas preempting acne outbreaks. Pharmacist and complementary medicine advocate Dr. Author Presser says the essential intestinal bacteria embody Bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus (L.) Acidophilus, L. Rhamnosus, L. Plantrarum, L. Bulgaricus, Streptococcus Faecium and Streptococcus Thermophilus. Presser recommends taking supplements that include all seven bacteria. Presser explains that FOS are sugars present in fruits, vegetables and grains. Microflora metabolize and multiply on fructooligosacchrides both in the intestine and in the pill. The beneficial doses range from 1 billion to 10 billion colony-forming items (CFU)-the amount contained in a capsule or two-a number of days per week.

Check their portfolio and assess the quality of their earlier jobs and work places

Tips on how to Benefit from The Small Spaces

The right way to Sq. The Walls And Ground

Easy operation drived by electric

Recycled Rubber

Have they got in-depth data of the current technologies and strategies

Use a solvent based acrylic sealer you probably have the money, the time, don't thoughts the scent and don't mind a slight color change. They're an incredible choice to forestall put on and tear, prevent efflorescence and lichen or moss progress. Water based mostly Acrylic: To stop dirt and grime build-up and to cease put on and tear this is your best choice. To realize any decent penetration with a water primarily based acrylic you might want to water it down and aggressively brush it in. A remaining heavier, or neat topcoat will present the barrier to dirt and grime. Water Based Acrylic that incorporates a Silane. These are maybe the best at preventing Efflorescence, Dirt and Grime construct-up and supply decent protection towards wear and tear. They'll usually be extra water resistant than a straight acrylic and can thus remove moss growth. That is your greatest total alternative for a Concrete Paver Sealer. Much just like the water based mostly acrylic, you might want to water it down and aggressively brush it in. A closing heavier, or neat topcoat will present the barrier to dirt and grime. Build your individual storage shed! Do not contemplate adding a shed straight onto the grass. Whereas this may seem obvious people will do it ! It's important that the wooden shed should not be contact with the bottom to keep away from the wooden rotting. One other various is to put the shed on timbers. The kind of shed is the necessary choice. Regardless of the construction in your garden these are the three basic supplies used and the traits stay the identical for each. Wooden provides the classical look, plastic is cheaper and metal is stronger. At the end of day, if the shed is usually view then wooden is the popular solution. Construct your individual storage shed! The price of them has gone out of my price vary, so I built my very own. If you would like one made of steel framing, there are some things it's essential to consider. First, you have to a technique to cut the steel studs and monitor. I used a Chop Saw that is made for chopping steel. In case you are using a lighter gauge steel, you may lower it with an excellent pair of aviation snips. Next, you should have a place to put your building that's out of the way. Image the scene your backyard has instruments everywhere in the place,the lawnmower is in a corner somewhere, the kids toys are everywhere and now your associate is asking for someplace to arrange a load of flower pots. that site What's the reply? A shed, sheds may be expensive and you cannot all the time get the actual type you are on the lookout for. Perhaps it is a undertaking you would consider building yourself. Before you go dashing out let me explain the place to seek out nice shed designs in your shed building undertaking. DIY magazines could have a lot of ideas however you will be restricted to whatever they've determined to publish that month. You could possibly end up shopping for the journal for a 12 months earlier than finding the precise design you're after, in which time the mess will multiply and you'll be in a worse situation than before.

"Truly staggering to me that we park in the driveway and drive on the parkway" — 🏴Rilèy͡s͢ ͝El͘drit͏ch ̀Cla̶m͏ ͘Tha͝nks̡gi̷ving🏴 (@played_straight) November 28, 2017

The backyard fountains are usually placed outdoors in motels, resorts, places of work, mansions and residential homes. The first recorded use of garden fountains and wall fountains in history comes from the historical Center East. Diagrams on the partitions of historical Egyptian tombs additionally present the use of backyard fountains inside the enclosed courtyards of dramatic houses. Sometimes, they would take the form of a rectangular fish pond, with a formidable row of decorative and fruit-bearing timber lining the edges. The Mesopotamians used fountains extensively of their formal gardens, bringing a lush landscape to the harsh highlands, highlighted with backyard fountains. Shade timber irrigated by the fountains provided respite from the new summer time sun.

[peter-horrocks]

Normandy Mont Saint Michel & Eisenhower's bedroom

Overlooking the sea and the Mont Saint Michel is noteworthy enough yet the holiday rental house or I should say chateau that I visited recently on the Normandy coast had more far more to it than that. General Eisenhower stayed there whilst he commanded the liberation of northern France. It was built by a family which made their fortune from taps, the wooden columns in the living room once supported the deck of a sailing galleon and the grand piano can play a scroll of music all by itself using pedal power.

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The view of the Mont Saint Michel from the garden is very special

Like many owners of large properties, the proprietors of this one had originally embarked on the concept of "chambre d'hote" which is a kind of bed and breakfast but it is very restricting in terms of owner lifestyle and enthusiasm for the concept tends to wane over time. They had approached Villas du Monde / Villas Worldwide this year with a view to offering weekly rentals for the whole property. I was in the area passing by so I dropped in to see what they had there and to offer advice as to how they could make the conversion.

The large house which is classed as a chateau.

After walking around the garden area which was being prepared for a wedding the following day we entered the main living and dining room which had old wooden pillars which looked rather like ancient ships masts. I asked if that is what they were. No, actually they are the wooden posts which once supported the main deck of a ship. This led from one query to another and as the bright young owner answered my incessant questions he stopped at one point and said "you have an interesting job don't you?" to which I could only respond "nothing like as interesting as your house".

I liked the fact that the original owners made their fortune out of taps and bathroom fittings in the early nineteen hundreds. Their brand was KULA Paris. 

Kula tap in one of the bathrooms

There are still beautiful original twin sinks bearing the family brand name in the house which the owner was struggling to preserve as they are so rare now and repairs are difficult. Good on him he wasn't going to take the easy route and simply replace them.

Beautiful original twin sinks

There are also a couple of charming old copper baths too, now on display in the upper hallways, museum pieces really.

An old bath displayed on the upper corridor

I am always intrigued when there is a piano in a property as over the years Villas du Monde has attracted a number of clients requiring this facility. Often just so their children can practice but sometimes there are more specific requirements from professional musicians, including composers, Jazz bands and professional concert pianists. The make of piano can be important in these instances so I enquired what brand it was. This prompted the owner to demonstrate his grand piano's secret. He lifted up a panel above the keyboard to reveal a scroll feed then opened another below and there were two pedals which were the drive for the automatic play system. It was quite a unique piece, I was intrigued to view it.

The self-playing piano

One of the most important questions to resolve was working out how the owners could live in a section of the house without inconveniencing holiday makers, discretion is paramount. We found a neat solution via a rear access path through the woods, closing off a bedroom and sound insulating the corridor. When people rent the whole place for a holiday they don't want to see or hear the owners however charming they might be.  

The owner explained how the location of the property is enhanced by the microclimate of the Bay and the protection from the wind afforded by the cliff and hill behind. The lush, tropical vegetation, particularly by the pool was clear evidence that the weather is special here. It was this which prompted the original owners to build this house and to go on and invest in numerous others in the village, it certainly is a very pretty place.

Lush vegetation by the heated pool

The ancient canon by the nearby beach is a testament to the battles this area has witnessed over the years and indeed the D-day landing beach memorials in Normandy are among the most visited sites in France. So the significance of General Eisenhower basing himself in this house in the aftermath of the allies landing, effectively initiating the beginning of the end of the second world war, was not lost on me, it is a subject I have read much about.

The old canon on the beach with the Mont Saint Michel in the background

The owner showed me Ike's bedroom which had been specially decorated for him, in a rather Italianate fashion I couldn't help noticing. From the window, I could clearly see the Mont Saint Michel and the sea and couldn't help wondering what his thoughts must have been as he surveyed this tranquil paradise and contemplated his next strategic manoeuvre of the one hundred and fifty thousand troops at his command.

I departed feeling lucky to be able to witness once again the splendours of this beautiful region of France and to have walked in the steps of those who forged its history.

Best wishes Peter H. Copyright © 2017 Peter Horrocks, all rights reserved

[clubofinfo]

Expert: You say that you want facts – facts and more facts – before you can commit. Before you finally decide to become part of something: a political party, a movement or another human being. You already have plenty of them: an avalanche, a tsunami of facts. “In fact”, your life is overflowing with facts. Most of them are brought directly to your living room or bedroom, or to your office; they shine from the liquid crystals of your computer monitors, and from increasingly flat and sleek television screens. There is really no need to travel, is there? There is no need to “get dirty”. Without leaving your chair or couch, you can even get some basic science of Newton, Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci. You can experience, second-hand, of course, but in the safety and comfort of your home, the most extreme misery of Haitian or Jamaican slums. You can be shown a battleground, you can see the most exotic and most ‘forbidden’ women being made love to by someone else, and you can get inside royal palaces. It is all there, at your fingertips: formulas and definitions, music and porn, history and even some poetry, if poetry is what you are really searching for. There is no reason to step outside. Of course, many people have to go out, at least from Monday to Friday, to attend to their typically monotonous jobs. From time to time they have to buy some groceries, although groceries can be ordered online or using the phone, and some jobs these days do not even require the personal presence of employees. ***** While individualism (egoism) is what increasingly defines most of the cultures in the West, true individuality (uniqueness) has almost vanished. Although the internet is overflowing with information, data and “facts”, although there are now hundreds of channels available from the menus of television cable providers, the living room – computer or living room – television set combinations are producing increasingly monotonous results: people are more and more phlegmatic, their way of thinking is uniformed, and they are not willing to take almost any risks: intellectually, emotionally or physically. Passivity is being constantly rationalized, defended. On the surface, reasons given to justify lack of commitment are logical, ‘sensible’, and sometimes even righteous. Passivity has become ‘calm’, and so have despair, desolation and gloom. Instead of encouraging violent rebellious outbursts of anguish as something natural, positive and even essential (should one not be fighting with all his or her might against all the forces which are making life pointless and useless?), almost everything that is defined by society as “negative emotions” gets subdued and controlled by medication and therapy. This way, medical “science” becomes a culprit, murders many healthy reactions, and in the end, kills life itself. It is rarely pronounced, but it is essential to realize: A person who feels violently sick because he or she is surrounded by a thoroughly unhealthy, even insane environment (political system, family, work, sets of constantly repeated lies) is actually reacting in a vigorous and healthy way. It is like when the body is fighting against severe infection. Only in this case, the battle is mental. People are expected to be “normal”, while standards defining “normalcy” have roots in mental illnesses from which entire society is clearly suffering. Not only immigrants; now everyone is obliged to “conform”. What does it really mean, to conform? Is it: to become atomized, apathetic and therefore alone and vulnerable? Life then flows slowly, calmly, coldly and emotionlessly. A person grows up, matures, ages and dies. Society slowly deteriorates. Planet Earth is getting gradually ruined. Surrounded by uniformed and perpetual misery, passivity and amnesia, one is not aware of his or her suffering. The screen in front of people shines late into the night. Everything is reduced to short barks and uniformed symbols pre-programmed into mobile phones. Something has gone missing. There seems to be an urgent lack of something very essential, a gaping deficit. In such an environment, love cannot thrive, and revolution can never take place. In sterility and surrounded by emotional emptiness, human beings can live a little bit longer, but can such an existence be really called life? ***** Reality is “authentic” only if experienced holistically and first-hand. This is the conclusion at which I arrived, after witnessing hundreds of conflicts all over the world, but also after observing so many glorious moments, so many great human achievements, in virtually all corners of the globe. A computer monitor only offers extremely filtered, even “censored” images of reality (no matter how high-definition it might be), as well as some basic sound. Even our imperfect and limited human senses are capable of capturing, registering and processing incomparably much more than that. When relying exclusively on processed and filtered reality (images and sound), a great part of our mind gets dormant, it begins to deteriorate (even degenerate), and eventually the process becomes irreversible. It is as if you only had use of your right hand for almost your entire life, no legs and no left hand: the situation would most definitely lead to the weakening of muscles and to fatal physical deformities. The same happens with the human mind, with the brain, if it is prevented from performing all of its natural functions on a regular basis. I insist that “knowledge” and “understanding of reality” has to consist of a “complete approach”, in which, at least most of our senses, are involved. Practically: to ‘truly comprehend’ requires “being there”. ***** Let me give you one example, just one, although there are, of course, thousands of paradigms that I could provide: You can sit all your life in Berlin, London or Boston, and watch news on your television screen, you can mull over countless “facts” provided by your best friends (internet and smart phone) but you would never, ever come close to understanding what has been happening during the last two decades in Latin America, or what is happening in Syria right now. To understand, you’d have to roll up your sleeves, stop vegetating and begin living.  You’d have to experience, with all your senses, what the dampness coming from the walls in tropical slums some fifteen or twenty years ago felt like; you’d have to observe from miserable and over-populated hills those obnoxiously expensive condominiums on the horizon; you’d have to smell bad breath of young women who couldn’t afford dental care while the country was awash with petrodollars. You’d have to see young people dance, on Friday nights, so desperately and hopelessly. One evening you’d have to walk down some narrow alley, alone, and see two men with guns walking straight towards you. You’d have to smell the cheap perfume of a woman approaching you at two in the morning in a dive frequented by local journalists, grabbing you by the shoulders, beginning to sob, confessing that now she is a prostitute, but just one year ago she was an elementary school teacher and wanted to live in a little house with a neat and colorful garden. You’d have to know how stale the air used to be in rooms stuffed with bodies in some godforsaken public hospital where poor people were dying from cancer. You’d have to see and feel and smell more, much more, in order to understand why those of us who were there then, are still where we are now, fully determined and loyal, working and living for the Revolution. Ernesto Che Guevara had to leave his provincial bubble of family, which consisted of doctors enjoying their upper middle-class life; he had to hit the road. In a way, he never returned. Che had to see and smell and feel, in order to get engaged, to take sides, to become committed; he had to understand what misery is, what leprosy is, what hunger and despair are, but also, he had to face all that tremendous glory of his continent, of South America. It all goes hand in hand: in order to fight, to commit, to risk your life, you have to love, or at least you have to know how to love. In order to love, first you have to be alive! During his endless motorcycle journey through the continent, what Che experienced was not necessarily something “factual”, or even “rational”. What Venezuelan revolutionaries based their actions on a few decades later was mainly deeply emotional. Their feelings eventually got rationalized, leading to the pledge to liberate the continent. The next step was to take several determined actions. Facts were employed, too, but they were harvested strictly for the Cause, for the Revolution. It was not, and it was never meant to be, the other way around. Revolution is an highly emotional event, and so is love, so is life. There is no life and there is no love without rebellion, without “private revolution”, without commitment. To live and to love requires courage and personal freedom, but it also requires full dedication and loyalty, self-sacrifice and determination. During the Revolution, as well as when one is in love, all senses are involved. One is fighting for humanity. One is fighting for happiness of his or her other half. No matter what obstacles are blocking the way, no matter how hard the journey is, while loving or struggling, but especially while loving and struggling, a person is fully alive. Then and only then, his or her life gains meaning. Revolution can be totally stripped of religion; it could be, and it often is, completely secular. But it always relies, significantly, on three brilliant Muses, three sisters, that are never far away from anything great that is moving our human race forward. Their names are Faith, Love and Hope. Faith can be never based on facts. Love can be never based on facts. Hope is not based on facts. The three sisters cannot be ‘studied’, and not much can be learned about them from the internet. They could never be fully understood with logic. All three of them simply represent Life. Life that is increasingly absent from societies that are controlling the world; societies which are more and more limiting the natural range of human senses, while herding men and women into dark and narrow pre-fabricated tunnels that lead only into perverse meaninglessness. Such societies have already managed to create a new horrible religion, a new breed of extreme fanaticism, based on cold, emotionless, and nonsensical “rationalism”, on dehumanized “science”, and on a pre-selected medley of “facts”. Such societies have already choked to death both poetry and the human ability to dream. They have ended up raping the world, inseminating it with passivity and depression, forcing humanity to reject faith, love, and hope, to spit at commitments, at loyalty, at courage, at constructive and positive actions, at Life itself. ***** “Fact-based” virtual analyses of the world lead mostly to dark pessimism and negativism. It is not only because the prolonged staring at computer and television screens is depressing and unhealthy, but also since such analyses are to a great extent, “unreal” and deceiving. The analogy to ‘“facts”-based virtual experience’ versus ‘beneficial human knowledge’ would be:  ‘pornography’ versus ‘love’. To a poet, to a revolutionary, to a dreamer, to a humanist, such knowledge that consists exclusively of ‘hard facts’ (spiced with countless formulas and test results) would appear as cold, absurd and as empty as ‘hard porn’. Love is not just the physical friction of two sexual organs, but also of great tenderness, compassion, honesty, and the disappearance of all fears accumulated throughout one’s entire life. It is genuine liberation and great adventure, a “private revolution”, a process through which the entire world, in fact, the entire universe is re-discovered and re-defined, thoroughly and from the beginning, by two people, together. True and big loves, like those loves that people used to experience and then write about in the past, (but so rarely now), were never easy, as people are not some simple beings, and two of them can hardly ever “perfectly match”. There were almost always some big dramas and temporary breakouts, then passionate reunions; there were misunderstandings and even severe pain. It always required great determination and willpower for two strong individuals to remain together, to survive as a couple, as one unit. It is always easier to give up, to leave, as is done these days. It is all down to those “facts” stripped of passion, depth and courage, isn’t it? Take a woman you think you fell in love with, and look at the facts – analyze her. Go ahead – try. Do it the way everything is done these days: coldly and rationally. Is she “good for you”? Is living with her going to “improve your life”? Aren’t her buttocks too wide or legs a bit too short? Isn’t she a bit “complicated”, in fact, “isn’t she too complicated?” And, “doesn’t she come with too much baggage?” Isn’t being with her going to “jeopardize your career?” “Is it going to strain the relationship with your family?” Such thoughts would have been considered grotesque in the past. But they are acceptable, even normal, now. And the conclusions are usually predictable: “if it is not easy, leave! Just go…” Do you remember the greatest novel written by Hemingway: “For Whom The Bell Tolls”? A man, a middle-class American teacher goes to Spain. He volunteers; he wants to fight on the side of socialism, on the side of Republican Spain, against fascism. His name is Robert Jordan. He meets a girl; her name is Maria. Maria’s head was shaved, before she was brutally raped by fascist troops. From the beginning, it appears to be an absolutely impossible love, but to hell with it: it is love, and both Robert Jordan and Maria know it, they feel it, and they don’t even attempt to be rational about it. Against all odds, suddenly but fully, two people from two faraway countries do give their lives to each other, and then they make love, and ‘the earth moves’, as it moves only once in a lifetime. And Maria dies, and Robert Jordan does not leave; he stays by the side of the road, in a futile but heroic gesture, waiting for a fascist column to approach, so he could do what he pledged to do, to her and to himself: to fight and most likely to die in this foreign land, to die honestly, for Maria’s country. Well, this is how people used to write, and this is how they used to live… and this is how they used to love. This is what used to be normal, and what used to be admired and treasured. And this is still how I write and live and love, and I don’t give a damn whether it is in vogue or not. I know when I write well, no matter what others say. I know when I fight bravely and honestly, even if, at the end, I lose. One knows these things, as one perhaps also knows when he or she lives like a coward, or when he or she betrays. I also know when ‘the earth moves’, and if it does, even if the other one does something insane and ‘unforgiveable’, no matter what I declare, I will stay. In today’s world, Maria and women like Maria would be seen as a very ‘bad match’. An injured, traumatized woman with ‘terrible baggage’ carried on her shoulders. No ‘sane man’ would take her hand. No one would embrace her; no one would fight and die for her. (Although somewhere deep inside I know: I would… I am… even now.) Pornography, or some secret encounter with a bimbo in a love hotel, would be much ‘safer’, much ‘simpler’ for today’s ‘sensible’ Western men. That is why, I’m convinced, in such an environment, with such a state of mind, no true revolution is possible anymore! ***** Every great love is confusing and often painful. True revolutions are never tidy, never easy, and never faultless. It is because both human love and human passion for progress and change consists of a set of complex emotions and instincts, sometimes clashing, often co-existing somehow inharmoniously, but always creating a great whirlpool of passions, which actually makes life worth living. By definition, love can never be ‘sterile’, and the same can be said about true revolution. True love and true revolution are always raw, full of fluids, of boiling blood, of tears. They consist of hope, of pain, but also of great joy. Pornography is totally sterile, and sterile is that self-righteous universe of detachment, of cold ‘impartial’ observation of the world, as well as electronically transmitted “facts”. Sterile is also the refusal to get ‘engaged’, to get ‘dirty’, to get involved, and to take sides. Sterile is not to fight and not to be ready to die for one’s ideals. Sterile is when one is desiring absolute purity: “I cannot get involved, because I’m not ready to fully support this ideal, this ideology, this revolution.” When I hear this, I immediately imagine those bodies of women, created by fashion and advertisement agencies: “perfect”, smooth, slim, and tall… but absolutely lacking life and individuality. I’m not attracted to such bodies, and I’m not attracted to ‘perfect’, tidy and ‘inoffensive’, ‘harmless’ ideologies. I’d never want to be with a woman whom I wouldn’t want to murder, at least once. I’d never fight for perfection, only for human beings, and those are never thoroughly (and luckily) faultless. During a revolution and also when one loves and is loved madly, one can easily burn to ashes, but that’s life and it is better to go this way, than vanishing from influenza, old age or in a car accident. One can also fall, disappear, while searching for true knowledge, because knowledge is often hidden in the most peculiar, dangerous and unsavory places. You have to come close, damn close, if you want to truly comprehend. Sometimes, if you come too close, you die. But that is life, too. That’s how it is and that’s how it should be. Without tremendous effort, without true courage, stamina, passion, without taking risks, life is never worth living. http://clubof.info/

[marquisderad]

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New Orleans | January 2017 | 5 Days in 1 Minute

Day 1

Central Business District

·         SAN to MSY | Direct flight. Stop-overs are unfun. Uber or cab, don’t shuttle.

·         Hyatt Regency - Check out the spots in the hotel. Chef John Besh has eatery Borgne in the lobby.  Woke up to the sight of the Superdome. Didn’t see Drew Brees.

·         It’s a small city. Uber it. Or walk everywhere, but not at night…as suggested by one of our Uber drivers, Ayesha – “Tis daaangerous!”

Warehouse District

·         Cochon Restaurant – Lots of eateries established from abandoned warehouses. Fancy-ish pork-centric food by Chef Donald Link. Vague [hip] menu descriptions.

o   Fried gator

o   Rabbit & dumplings

o   Porchetta w/ slaw

Day 2

French Quarter

·         Jackson Square – Music everywhere. Stop & listen to all the performers even for just a little bit. Hip hop brass, country blues, old skool jazz, 10 year old kids playing drums on plastic tubs w/ the cadence of pros 3 times their age.

·         Café Du Monde | Beignets & café au laits…b/c you have to. Grab it to-go & eat on a bench next to the Mississippi River.

·         The Presbytere | Louisiana State Museum – The horrors of Hurricane Katrina & the resolve of the people of NOLA. The history of Mardi Gras, carnivals & interesting costumes – some like whoa & some absolutely frightening. Fats Domino’s piano is there as well.

·         Walk around the Quarter. Take in the architecture. See all the street performers. Notice all the ‘buzzed’ people. You can walk the streets w/ an open container of alcohol. Bars serve drinks in plastic cups. Horses. Tours on horse carriages - if that’s your thing.

·         Laffite’s Blacksmith Shop | 200 year old blacksmith shop that is now a bar. Get a pint. Do not get a ‘Cup of Cherries’…cherries soaked in everclear.

·         Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo | Souvenirs & stuff.

·         Doreen Ketchens aka Queen Clarinet | She plays w/ her band on the street. Rad.

·         Carousel Lounge at the Hotel Monteleone | The bar seriously is a ‘carousel’ that spins. Or grab a posh lounge chair or couch w/ your significant other. Order a New Orleans classic – The Sazerac.

·         The Faulkner House | Author William Faulkner wrote his 1st book ‘Soldiers Pay’ in this house. Now it is a bookstore. Neat.

Warehouse District

·         Emeril’s | Chef ‘BAM!!!’ Lagasse’s original resto. Hospitality was excellent. So was the boar.

o   House made andouille & boudin sausages – braised collard greens, turbodog onions, whole grain mustard, house worcestershire sauce

o   Andouille crusted gulf drum – grilled veggies, shoestring potatoes, glazed pecans, creole meuniere

o   Local wild boar – fettuccine verde, cocoa tomato sauce, pumpkin, holy trinity salsa

o   Emeril’s banana cream pie – graham cracker crust, caramel sauce, chocolate shavings

Frenchmen Street

·         Frenchmen Art Market | Street art, vendors, twinkle lights. Jazz clubs & bars surrounding.

·         The Spotted Cat Music Club | Fun jazz club in a dive bar setting. Way rad.

Bourbon Street

·         Hidden within the Erin Rose Irish Pub is the tiny sammich counter Killer Po-Boys. Grab a pint & a late nite pork belly po-boy.

Day 3

Central Business District

·         Mother’s Restaurant –  A walk from the hotel. Stand in line at this old skool NOLA staple for non-fussy creole eats served by happy peeps.

o   The Famous Ferdi Special Po-Boy – ham, roast beef, the original debris w/ au jus gravy.

o   Shrimp + Oyster Po-Boy – cabbage, pickle, mayo, creole & yellow mustard, tartar & hot cocktail sauce on the side.

o   Grits

Arts District of New Orleans

·         The National World War II Museum – See everything. Spend a few hours. Amazing museum.

·         Walk around the Arts District. Museums and galleries. Rad graffiti. The General Lee statue. Walk into Louisiana’s own Rouses Grocery & check out the produce & meats. Pick up some seasoning spices as souvenirs.

Warehouse District

·         Restaurant August | Chef John Besh’s fine dining flagship restaurant. Order a la carte…OR SPLURGE and get both the tasting menus. See & taste what the best chefs in NOLA can do.

o   Tasting of Farmers Market Vegetables

o   The Restaurant August Degustation Menu

Day 4

Garden District

·         The Lafayette Cemetery – Search for the undead or re-enact scenes from the action comedy “Double Jeopardy” starring Ashley Judd which was filmed here.

·         Commander’s Palace| A NOLA institution since 1880. Old skool, elegant, kinda gaudy but fun. There was a Travel Channel camera crew filming when we had lunch. Our server said that they film so much in here that he doesn’t bother to ask “for what” anymore.

o   Plaquemine satsuma citrus salad

o   Creole gumbo du jour – Andouille & chicken gumbo, scratch stocks, dark roux, holy trinity & rum barrel hot sauce

o   Cornbread crusted Des Allemands catfish – sauté of Cajun andouille, Vidalia onions, red beans, roasted tomato, tomato red butter & smoked corn grits

o   Sugarcane lacquered south Texas quail – charred chili & popcorn rice boudin w/ tasso braised cabbage, sugarcane-rum vinegar glaze & Crystal hot sauce pepper jelly

o   Ponchatoula strawberry shortcake – strawberries macerated w/ cane sugar, warm buttermilk biscuit & Chantilly whipped cream

o   25 cent martinis. A tradition & a must [limit 3 per person – you won’t need any more].

·         Garden District Houses – Stroll around & check out the 19th century homes & try to burn off some of the butter, cream & calories you’ve eaten so far on this trip. Can’t believe the amount of butter that everyone serves just w/ the bread starter down here.

·         Garden District Book Shop – Neat little shop. Signed copies of everything. Guest author events all the time. Also…Anne Rice everything…everything.

Magazine Street

·         La Petite Grocery | Another James Beard Award hype resto [like all the places in this list – minus Mother’s] by Chef Justin Devillier housed in a building that used to be an 1800s grocery store. Made from scratch elevated classics.

o   Fried green tomatoes

o   Pickle jar

o   Snapper special

o   Seafood stew

French Quarter

·         Preservation Hall – Stand in line & wait to watch & listen to the legendary Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Mos def a highlight on this trip. Amazing 1 hour set of up-tempo New Orleans style jazz.

o   They only let 100 people in per show. People watch while in line– it’s the best. We saw Satan trying to get into the Pat O’Brien Pub next door.  There was also a dude selling beers from a cooler in the front of the line at the entrance of the building. “They don’t sell beer up in there, get it here!” People did. The hall did not stop him at all – good business trade.

Day 5

Central Business District

·         Willa Jean | A bakery & restaurant by Chef John Besh. He has like 12 restaurants.

o   Roasted beet salad – arugula, pistachio, citrus, goat cheese vinaigrette [by this point in this trip, our stomachs were screaming for salads, salt & acid to cut thru all the butter]

o   Smoked salmon tartine – fresh cheese, capers, red onion, hardboiled egg, marbled rye

o   Fried chicken sammich – serrano slaw, Hawaiian roll

o   Cold brew coffee

o   The WJ bloody mary

·         MSY to SAN | Direct flight. Stop-overs are super lame. Sleep on the plane. Or watch ‘Deadpool’ on your iPhone.