Latona at Versailles. Photo of the Week #131

A month ago I had a wonderful stroll in the gardens by Versailles where the fountains were flowing. Fascinating to see all the frogs of the Latona fountain spewing water. The fountain is by the brothers Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy and the motif is from Ovidius’ Metamorphosis where Leto or Latona, mother of Apollo and Diana, transforms the Lycian peasants into frogs because they deny her water. The fountain shows the different stages of transformation and I found it both amusing and somewhat erie.

The perfect soundtrack would be Rameau’s Platée…

/anna

Quiet summer evening by the sea. Photos of the Week #130

The weekend was not just hard work – we managed to go to the beach thrice in two days and one brave brother-in-law threw himself in those cold, jellyfish infested waters while the rest of us stayed on the beach enjoying the splendid June sun. And then there was the evening walk by the sea.

The wind was completely still and with a perfect sunset it was the most adorable evening. Too beautiful to choose just one photo from so here are the photos of the week.

/anna

Before and after. Painting my little house

I’ve bought and build a small house with the help of my family. This weekend my sisters and brother-in-law joined me in painting the whole thing black and white. I am very happy with the result.

House and team - ready for some serious paintwork - note my fancy grandfather's pants with string serving as a belt...

Team after the fact. Well done you guys!

The house was made by these guys and I found the windows by Gorm Byggnadsvård. The windows are about 60 years old and come from an inn in Kivik, Sweden. Now they reside in a Danish forest and I think they will be very happy there since they make the house so much prettier.

Next up – interior!

/anna

All alone. Together. Photo of the Week #129

There are so many nice reasons why I haven’t been posting much for a while. A trip to Paris, a visit from Italy, building a small house (just a small one), and a wedding. A grand wedding I should say. So grand that I was happy to see this shot on my camera roll when it was all over – the happy couple all alone on their way out into a new world.

The wedding took place on my birthday and I can only recommend to have someone put together a party like that on your birthday. No worries about being the centre of things, just happy people, great food and dancing.

And now that it’s all over I promise to pull myself together and get some posting done!

/anna

Simao the cat, sitting on a roof. Photo of the week #128

Too many things to do – like enjoying the Easter vacation, eating ice cream, and saying goodbye to my brother who will spend the next seven weeks in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand (grrr…). So I relaxed a bit too much on the posting.

Here is a photo from the Easter days spent at our summerhouse. Simao the cat has climbed to the roof where he just sits to overlook things for a while and think about life and death. His best friend Theo the cat died a couple of weeks ago, and Simao is still coming to terms with that. This image perfectly captures the melancholy of that little sad animal.

/anna

We’ll poison the pigeons in the park!

I know I need to be reminded of the fabulous Tom Lehrer every once in a while, don’t you? Of course you do! So here’s something to brighten your day. Springtime is here.

Preview. Photo of the Week #127

A couple of weeks ago I went to an opening of an exhibition North of Copenhagen. Beautiful place and a nice exhibition of contemporary ceramics. The atmosphere was a combination of the usual mingling and chatting of such occasions and then a tingling feeling of early spring. A preview of things to come in more than one sense.

In this picture one of the artists is explaining his project of plants communicating with computers while my friend seems to be in that other mood after having listened for a while.

After this we had fried plaice on the harbour. A very nice preview of summer that was too.

/anna

Aprilsnar, April Fools’ Day, Pesce d’aprile, Aprilscherz, Poisson d’avril…

Danish newspapers have been full of April Fools’ pranks all day. I especially liked the one that said Denmark had shrunk 30 km2 because of the earthquake in Japan…but also this one from the National Gallery in Copenhagen is nice. It is both a prank and a viral commercial about them digitizing the entire collection (which is true). Heehee.

/anna

Moon. Photo of the Week #126

Not that I’m the first to notice or anything but the moon really was huge last week. And beautiful. This was the view from the hill by the church in the Swedish village I go visit all the time because my family has a house there. Niceness.

/anna

Springtime Indecision. Photo of the Week #125

I think all of Copenhagen went into a collective sigh when snow started falling yesterday afternoon just as everybody was biking home from work, school, daycare. But we shall overcome! Just look at those tough winter aconites.

/anna