For unusual I’m going with the flower towers from beautiful Glacier Gardens of Juneau, Alaska. These are toppled trees that are planted upside down and turned into giant hanging flower baskets.
“Alaska itself is an unusual state.” — Fareed Zakaria
"Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment." --Jane Goodall
"One thing I had learned from watching chimpanzees with their infants is that having a child should be fun." — Jane Goodall
"Madagascar’s beloved ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) have all but disappeared from many of the island nation’s forests. According to two worrying new studies, the species’ population has fallen to between 2,000 and 2,400 animals — a shocking 95 percent decrease since the year 2000. To put that number in context, there are now fewer ring-tailed lemurs living in the wild than there are living in zoos around the world. Factors driving the decline include rapid habitat loss, hunting, and the illegal pet trade, according to a paper published last month in the journal Primate Conservation and a second paper published today in Folia Primatologica." -- Scientific American
"Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium.
There is no life without water." — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
THE FLAMINGOS.
Jardin des Plantes, Paris
By Rainer Maria Rilke
(translated by Len Krisak)
In Fragonard-reflections such as these,
one sees no more of true flamingo red
or white than if some messenger had said
about the image of his lover, “She’s
still soft with sleep.” For when they’ve walked green grass,
and stood together, lightly turned on pink
stalks—blooms in flower beds—they seem to think
themselves seductive; that their charms surpass
a Phryne’s . . . till they curl their necks to hide
pale eyes in softness all their own (inside,
there lie concealed both berry-red and black).
Then, through the bird-house: envy’s sudden scream.
But they have stretched the wings that were pinned back,
and stride, alone, into the world of dream.
“A bird is three things: Feathers, flight and song, And feathers are the least of these.”
— Marjorie Allen Seiffert
“Masks. – There are women who, however you may search them, prove to have no content but are purely masks. The man who associates with such almost spectral, necessarily unsatisfied beings is to be commiserated with, yet it is precisely they who are able to arouse the desire of the man most strongly: he seeks for her soul – and goes on seeking.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
“And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in a masquerade.” — Alexander Pope
