As I have kept bonsai for many years and actually shape plants in my garden I thought I would share this photo.
Believe me the amount of work and time needed to create these shapes is incredible.
Levens Hall Gardens
Cumbria, England
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Hope you enjoyed and it provides inspiration.
The Minack Theatre is an open-air theatre, constructed above a gully with a rocky granite outcrop jutting into the sea. The theatre is located near Porthcurno, 4 miles (6.4 km) from Land’s End in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.
History
The theatre was the brainchild of Rowena Cade (2 August 1893 – 1983), who moved to Cornwall after the First World War and built a house for herself and her mother on land at Minack Point for £100. In 1929, a local village group of players had staged Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a nearby meadow at Crean, repeating the production the next year. They decided that their next production would be The Tempest and Miss Cade offered the garden of her house as a suitable location, as it was beside the sea. Miss Cade and her gardener made a terrace and rough seating, hauling materials down from the house or up via the winding path from the beach below. In 1932, The Tempest was performed with the sea as a dramatic backdrop, to great success. Miss Cade resolved to improve the theatre, toiling hard over the course of the winter months each year throughout her life (with the help of Billy Rawlings and Charles Angove) so that others might perform each summer.
In 1944, the theatre was used as a location for the Gainsborough Studios film Love Story, starring Stewart Granger and Margaret Lockwood but inclement weather forced them to retreat to a studio mock-up. In 1955, the first dressing rooms were built. Since 1976 the theatre has been registered as a Charitable Trust and is now run by a local management team. Rowena Cade died on 26 March 1983, at the age of 89.
Nowadays, the theatre is used from June to September for a full summer season of 17 plays, produced by companies from all over the UK and visiting companies from the USA. The theatre is open for visitors throughout the rest of the year. The 75th Anniversary of Minack was celebrated with a production of The Tempest in August 2007, directed by Simon Taylor and performed by the Winchester College Players. Wikipedia
Go to their website for more. Hope you enjoy.
Prince Charles decided to take up walking every day.
At the same street corner he passed a hooker standing there every day.
He learned to brace himself as he approached her for what was almost certain to follow.
“One hundred and fifty pounds!” she’d shout.
“No! Five pounds!” He said from the side of His mouth, just to shut her up.
This ritual between him and the hooker became a daily occurrence. She’d yell, “One hundred and Fifty pounds!”
He’d yell back, “Five pounds!”
One day, Camilla decided to accompany her ‘husband’.
As the couple neared the hooker’s corner, Prince Charles realised she’d bark her £150 offer and Camilla would wonder what he’d really been doing on all his past outings.
He figured he’d better have a good explanation for his Wife As they neared the hooker’s corner he became even more apprehensive than usual.
Sure enough, there she stood. He tried to avoid eye contact as she watched the pair pass.
Then, the hooker yelled:
“See what you get for five pounds, you tight bastard!”
GREEN OFFICE NOTE: THIS MESSAGE WAS CREATED USING RECYCLED LETTERS FROM DELETED EMAILS
Source: Email chain.
“Vivian Dorothea Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American amateur street photographer, who was born in New York City but grew up in France, and after returning to the US, worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago. During those years she took about 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes most often in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide.
Her photographs remained unknown and mostly undeveloped and unprinted until they were discovered by a local Chicago historian and collector, John Maloof, in 2007. Following Maier’s death, her work began to receive critical acclaim. Her photographs have been exhibited in the US, England, Germany, Denmark, and Norway, and have appeared in newspapers and magazines in the US, England, Germany, Italy, France and other countries. A book of her photography titled Vivian Maier: Street Photographer was published in 2011.” Wikipedia
Love the photography click here for more images.
Hope you enjoy.
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrybə(n)s]; 28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640), was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.
In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England. Wikipedia
Early life
Rubens was born in Siegen, Germany, to Jan Rubens and Maria Pypelincks. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the legal advisor (and lover) of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange, and settled at her court in Siegen in 1570. Following Jan Rubens’s imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577. The family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his father’s death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, where he was raised as a Catholic. Religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting (he had said “My passion comes from the heavens, not from earthly musings”).
In Antwerp, Rubens received a humanist education, studying Latin and classical literature. By fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the city’s leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort and Otto van Veen. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier artists’ works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger and Marcantonio Raimondi’s engravings after Raphael. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at which time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master.
Samples of his work
Please click an image to view slide show …
Hope you enjoyed and it has prompted you to view more of his work.
I came across this picture and had to share it. So beautiful.
I did a Google image search and it is pointing me to it being a Shire horse. A great page is The Ostler Carriage Company who apparently use these horses for drawing their carriages for hire in England.
Wikipedia page:
“The Shire horse is a breed of draught horse (BrE) or draft horse (AmE). The breed comes in many colours, including black, bay and grey. They are a tall breed, with mares standing 16 hands (64 inches, 163 cm) and over and stallions standing 17 hands (68 inches, 173 cm) and over. The breed has an enormous capacity for weight pulling, and Shires have held the world records for both largest overall horse and tallest horse at various times. Throughout its history, the breed has been popular for pulling brewery wagons that delivered ale to customers. This practice continues today, with the breed also being used for forestry, leisure and promotional pursuits.
In 1884, the organization now known as the British Shire Horse Society was created, with the American Shire Horse Association beginning in 1885. The breed was exported from Britain to the United States in large numbers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but popularity fell with the advent of mechanization, reaching a low point in the 1950s and 60s. Popularity began to increase again in the 1970s and after. However, population numbers are still considered to be at critical levels by both the UK-based Rare Breeds Survival Trust and the US-based American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.”
I love the picture and if it is not a Shire horse please let me know.
I bet old Winston didn’t win over too many ladies with this one.
