Interesting fact: one of the steps she took to become immortal was eating ground mica.
Chinese people call her a fairy. She is the only one of the eight immortals who is a woman, He Xiangu. In this statue she holds peonies instead of her traditional lotus flower (this statue is in a peony garden).
The tall, new apartment buildings are reducing her dramatic presence. It was hard to get an angle where she and the steps really stood out.
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Steps
Wordless Wednesday
Ah yesterday. Last night I tried to write a post about it and fell asleep. Jet lag plus busy day does not equal cogent prose.
Today’s RDP: Color brought a couple of things from yesterday to mind, so here goes again:
The day before yesterday there was rain and that resulted in a clear blue sky. These things don’t last: today is already hazy. Yesterday I rolled off the bed early, intending to enjoy the walk by the Mihe River in clear morning light. It was beautiful.
Walking back along a near-by road I saw this art studio painted in vibrant primary colors:
Later in the day I was walking back to my son’s apartment from his place of work, I had some time to kill so I decided to take a longer path, one that ran along a fun park/trail they had made from an abandoned railroad through town. It starts near where he works with a train station art installation:
As I started to wander up the line a man came over and introduced himself. After a bit of almost communication (I finally called my son and had him talk to the guy and translate back to me), I wound up going with him and another gentleman to a huge rose garden, 250 thousand square meters, along the Mihe, well to the south of the stretch I had wandered in the morning. They worked at this garden on the structures.
They wanted to let me take pictures of their garden. You could tell they were rose buffs and also very proud of the garden as a whole…and rightly so. I’ve been to a few rose gardens here and there in the world, and this one is wonderful by any standard.
Quite a few roses were blooming and the weather was perfect. Sadly my SD card filled up and my extra hadn’t made my backpack.
As we were leaving the man at the gate came out with clippers and went around, in conference with the two I had come with and sent me home with this colorful sampling from their garden.
Interesting and dramatic, Chicago is a modern city with modern architecture, where you get a crick in your neck looking up at all the really tall buildings. I spent about twenty three hours there last summer on a train trip (our train arrived one hour after the connecting train left). I doubt we’ll ever go back.
My favorite “looking up picture is one I posted before:
This is York Minster, a photo taken in June of this year.
All these were taken in Japan, in 2007, with a not new at the time Canon A510. It was a long time ago but I believe that the three above are Shinto shrines in Nikko. The Shinto shrines contrast with the very famous, very ornate, World Heritage Bhuddist Temples. The header image is from Nara.
For Wordless Wednesday
This delicate flower lives in very tough conditions.
Posted for Nancy Merrill’s Photo a Week Challenge
Flower photos and the mind
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