Colored Earth

There are, so it seems, quite a few places around the globe with a wide variety of colored soils. This village is one of those. You can do a lot with soil (except photographing it) but one of the things my wife Yvonne is presently undertaking and the beginning is very promising. She found a way of binding and fixating soil particles in a natural way with plant material. She shapes it and combined with sterling silver and Swarovsky gems a new range of jewelry is since recently for sale in The Little Gem in Hermanus. This trial she needs for marketing purposes. This kind of jewelry is new and there is no market reference. The Little Gem attracts people of all nationalities and walks of life which makes it an excellent place for this trial. Besides this all are the owners of this shop very knowledgable. Until so far we learned that South Africans are not interested (seemingly) in products made in their own country but people from overseas seems to love it. In 4 to 6 months Yvonne hopes to have a good impression of the market and can she start with online sales via different channels.

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Happy Birthday card

I maintain 3 Facebook pages; there is the Green Cathedral of South Africa; the second one is Stanford, South Africa and there is one of me and my wife Yvonne which is the personal page. Via our personal page we see every day who of our FB-friends celebrate their birthdays and than we send a birthday card to their page. All flowers and rocks are from our own garden. The wine barrels are ‘borrowed’ from the Robert Stanford Estate and the church tower and telecom tower are from somewhere in our village.

Here it is (BTW next posting will be Monday or Tuesday) and you are this time free to download for your own use.

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Doors of Perception

Last week I re-read the book ‘Doors of Perception’ of Aldous Huxley who experimented with hallucinating substances of the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) and later LSD. We do have peyote in our garden but never tried it but in 1970 somebody dropped LSD in my drink at a pop festival in Wychen in The Netherlands of all places and that experience I can still recall. There is no limit to your perceptions anymore; in my sub-conciousness doors kept opening to a world beyond the world we normally see, hear and feel.

After my photo-session with the angels last week it came all back to me and I also remember the angels I imagined 42 years ago while Ozzy Osbourne and The Dream (than a known Dutch pop group) were on stage.

I don’t know what you make of it but I made this imaginary:

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A slightly modified vineyard

This is the original picture:

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It’s the vineyard of Sir Robert Stanford Estate in our village but adding a few elements such as in the top the neighbouring Weltevreden Estate, two gates (at the right) and local people (left and right bottom) gives the original image more ‘vuma’.

Well … that’s what I think….

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'Watching Angels' and 'Guardian Angels'

Both imaginaries are inspired by this recent blog posting.  The first, ‘Watching Angels’ is the pre-amble of the second ‘Guardian Angels’ and does not need any comment. On first sight I’m very fond of ‘Guardian Angels’, partly because of the symbols here and there in this imaginary, i.e. the dove as symbol for ‘peace’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ and the stork for new life to mention a few. On my way to the photo session with the angels I passed a fully neglected cemetery. Fully, not entirely for only one ‘poor man’s grave’ is regularly foreseen with fresh flowers… Respect for burial places is something I’m born with and to honour the past what else could I do than passing the message to the angels?

Watching-AngelsWEBGuardian-AngelsWEB

‘Watching Angels’ and ‘Guardian Angels’

Both imaginaries are inspired by this recent blog posting.  The first, ‘Watching Angels’ is the pre-amble of the second ‘Guardian Angels’ and does not need any comment. On first sight I’m very fond of ‘Guardian Angels’, partly because of the symbols here and there in this imaginary, i.e. the dove as symbol for ‘peace’ and ‘Holy Spirit’ and the stork for new life to mention a few. On my way to the photo session with the angels I passed a fully neglected cemetery. Fully, not entirely for only one ‘poor man’s grave’ is regularly foreseen with fresh flowers… Respect for burial places is something I’m born with and to honour the past what else could I do than passing the message to the angels?

Watching-AngelsWEBGuardian-AngelsWEB