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Mountains.7

Since the last sequence celebrated the northern summer at its peak, I decided we’d give you a serious change of pace by celebrating snow-capped peaks in those lovely mountains of northern Iraq that we’ve been showing you. It might also provide a wee bit of mental coolness to anyone sweating through a lovely but hot long northern summer day :-). These won’t be your last views of those dramatic mountains in this series, but they’re just about all of them in which I could discern at least a dusting of snow somewhere in the frame of the photo. Ah, and one note: to put such large photo galleries up with an interesting layout, I use a different interface which the blog’s host has re-allowed us to use on occasion. However, if you’re viewing this on a small screen it’s quite likely your interface will mess it up pretty thoroughly, so if you’re only seeing one or two photos, try again when you’re back on a larger-sized computer screen if you’re interested. Enjoy.

Urban Garden.167

Last of our current ten-post special series from Amsterdam’s Open Garden Days, so we’ll get back to our regularly-scheduled, numbered entries from multiple series now :-). Hope you’ve enjoyed all these glimpses of gardens in Amsterdam. There are still about twenty photos left in this folder, from five gardens which I haven’t yet even shown you. So plenty more to come. Perhaps yet another special sequence after I work through another cycle of the various other series. Hmmmmmm….

Urban Garden.166

Same garden as the last two posts. I spent a lovely bit of time sitting on a shaded bench, watching others come and go, and considering angles from which to take all these photos I’ve been sharing with you. The house itself was fascinating and in undergoing some renovation. There was an interior doorway of which I also simply had to take a photo. We’ll see if I remember to tell you that it came from here, whenever its turn pops up in the Urban Entrances series 🙂

Urban Garden.164

These are from the same garden as our last lovely solo-photo post. Mirror selfie in both images below, though perhaps impossible for you to see it in the right-hand one.

Urban Garden.162

These images are all from the same garden, including the long corridor with doorways on both ends through which one accesses it from the street (you’ll see the green open-garden sign on the street-side door), and an extra door at the back of the garden, from which vantage point I took the shot above. Lovely layout 🙂

Urban Garden.157

So today on the summer solstice, in Amsterdam the sun will be above the horizon for 16 hours, 48 minutes and 28 seconds – meaning effectively about 18-1/2 hours of daylight or twilight in the sky. Long days mean lots of sun for the plants to grow fast and furious. We’ve just had (last weekend) Amsterdam’s Open Garden Days, showcasing some of that lovely growth. I visited this year for the first time (managing only about 10 of the 25 gardens), and assembled more than enough lovely photos to merit a special series which we’ll be sharing over the coming five days. These ten posts will share glimpses of what are truly Urban Gardens at their peak in the northern summer. This particular series began in May 2020, while I was on lockdown in Bangladesh without regularly-scheduled airline passenger service for many months, trying to walk and enjoy the covid-quieter city by way of outdoor and work-life balance. Mostly, I’ve shared in this series photos of parks, container gardens or plant vendors such as in that first post more than three years ago. But for the coming days, you’ll see true gardens, many of them private (like this one), some at museums, and all behind the houses and thus not visible to casual passersby. Enjoy 🙂

City Views.187

View of Abidjan’s Plateau Mosque, seen from the hotel 🙂

City Views.186

Winding down the photos I took on my short visit in Abidjan, end of April. Thought I’d already posted this — if you view it on a larger screen, or enlarge the image, you’ll see the daily dusk flight of the fruit bats going off to do their nightly foraging. I believe I recall once reading that fruit bats are among the most important pollinators for the world’s most popular fruit, the mango — several of which I greatly enjoyed while there, so, hey – thanks, fruit bats!