Isn't it though? Gentle reminder that life is beautiful 😊

The photo is a closeup of a mass cluster of purple pansies in lighter and darker variants.

My purples will probably be mostly #bloomscrolling. I love all the shades, but it doesn't come up all that often in my life, outside of flowers. Curious, that.

Here are some friendly #pansies.

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekPforPurple

I hear you. I've been in dog/cat/other rescue in China for a while now, and I don't have any answers. I will say that the kids I teach now have different attitudes towards animals (and the environment generally) than the older people here. Here's hoping for a kinder world.

Not sure if this was rhetorical, but specifically, he is in Thailand. (Can unfortunately personally confirm similar and worse all over Asia.)(And the Balkans, fwiw.)

The photo is mostly of water and sky, with a thin line of grey-blue hills about half way up. The sky is low and troubled clouds, in various shades of grey. The water is troubled too, with small waves in shocking greens and aquas.

The photo is of startlingly turquoise water with the deck of a small wooden boat. The top edge of the boat has a pale orange metal strip, and a chain and some rope lies in the boat itself. The water shows a reflection of a cloud and some ripples around the top edge.

One of the oldest lakes in Europe - Lake Ohrid, 2-3 million years old - with the most spectacular water I've ever seen anywhere. Two moments: left, from a dock in Radozda before a storm; right, on a boat on a perfectly sunny day.

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekOforOld #Stunday #ECK #Photography #Nature

Post your favorite film from the year you turned 18

So many excellent ones, but it's not even close.

Looking up at two rows of square columns with broken lintels atop. The columns are plain, but the capitals are carved, showing different levels of weathering. The sky above is bright blue, with fluffy white clouds.

The edges of the top of the Baphuon Temple in Siem Reap, a couple of years after reconstruction was as complete as it was going to be. Thought to be mid-11th century.

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekOforOld #BlueSkyArtShow #Edge

And in case you want to hear a bit, or buy one and start to learn to play it, or maybe make your own: folkfluteworld.com/article_ulti...

The photo is of a bullet-shaped thing in a dark grey, against a wooden table. The item has six holes of varying sizes on the front, arranged where your pointer- through ring-fingers would fall when the item is held roughly vertical, with your pinkies supporting the bottom. There is a decoration of bamboo on the front of this one. On the back (obviously not visible) are two more holes for you thumbs. You play this instrument by blowing *across* the opening at the top, not into it. And no, I can't play it, well or otherwise. Amazon lists a few options to buy one, and YouTube has lessons.

More adventures in stretching definitions: this item is not old, but it is an ancient instrument; it's not rock, but it is made of a clay much rougher than it looks here.

It's called a xūn, and played well it has a deep, earthy, haunting sound.

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekOforOld #RockinTuesday #Music

The video is of five dogs on leashes, walking somewhat chaotically on a small trail in a lightly-wooded park. It is a sunny spring morning.

Happy #NationalPetAppreciation Day! I appreciate that they get me out of the house and moving every day - doubly so on lovely spring mornings, like a few days ago. ALT in comments.

I appreciate that the cats have no interest in joining these walks.

#DogsOfBluesky #Rescue #AdoptDontShop

Wasn't supposed to live past 35 and so played HARD. You'll be fine. Never too late to start drinking water and eating greens and wearing sunscreen. Two decades later I still play hard, just with, like, splurging on an air mattress for camping because joints aren't as forgiving as skin.

Just found that one of the dogs ate a new hole in a carpet, so maybe we're down to 2 of five dogs sick due to weather 🙃 Still, it was 10C to 29C and back today, so maybe he ate it for weather reasons.

The photo is all in grayscale. Above is a gray winter sky; below is white, snow-covered ground. In the middle is a dense, mixed forest, with mostly bare trees covered in snow.

The edge of a #Forest in northern Maine. Northern North American winters really are beautiful.

I'm kind of from New England, and I've been living in southern parts of Asia for a long time now, so those northern winter forests are a place of fantastical memories.

#ForestFriday #Photography #ECK

So far 😂 The wild temperature swings definitely throw things off, so we'll see after tomorrow's rainy 10C

Not in the UK, but it did suddenly get very hot and humid here, with bad air quality, and 3 of five dogs and 1 of two cats threw up while I was at work today 🤦 Happy Friday night to me!

The photo is of the fossil skeleton of a platybelodon, an elephant-type animal with an enormous, shovel-shaped lower jaw. It is displayed in a diorama, with artist representations painted on the curved wall behind the scene.

Happy birthday! I don't have my favorite fossil with me, but I was amused running into this guy in Hohhot.

Same, and some are photos I'm actually proud of. To date my most liked was a low-quality photo of a small piece of rock that looks like bacon, so I guess it is about food 🤷

For rice cookers too - even if you're just steaming something, you still have to add water in the pot.

The photo is a closeup of a brilliantly red bird with long red legs and a long, curved, black beak. The very tips of its wings are also black. It has a slight white lid on its eye that makes it look like it is giving me a side eye. It is standing on a low beige rock on beige dirt. Small round seeds or fruits a strewn on the ground. The sun is extremely bright, casting some stark shadows in addition to making some of the feathers very, very red.

More like #Red&Black, with a Scarlet Ibis for #BirdOfTheDay #Black&Red.

Pretty sure this is at the World of Birds Wildlife Sanctuary and Monkey Park in Cape Town - hope to someday see one in the wild.

#Birds #Ibis #TravelMemories

The photo shows the hood of a white car with a huge Pikachu face filling it - winking eye, round red cheeks, tiny heart-shaped nose, and a huge wide open laughing smile.

Happy car!

(Pikachu is running all over the sides and back.)

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekNforNonsense

Thanks, and good - I'm never sure whether these kinds of things fit into the spirit of bird of the day 😊

The photo is a closeup of five feathers from different birds on a white background. From left to right: grayish brown, with a soft left edge and a white edge on the lower right; reddish-brown, with a light blue shaft; half white and half grayish-brown vertically, with a white tip separated from the vertical blocks by a black strip; pure white, and only the shaft and very slight details are discernible; brown and white speckled, beginning with white from the bottom and getting gradually darker toward the top.

Horse Feathers, 1932

Also, not quite a #BirdOfTheDay but they are #Feathers and I thought they were pretty... Picked up around a pond in a big park in Johannesburg, so from whatever birds were there.

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekMforMovies #MarxBrothers

Thank you - I hope yours was lovely too!

Thank you - at times I miss New England forests...

The photo is of trees in a snowfall, and snow already covers the ground and many of the branches of the trees. It appears there is a trail leading into a narrow twisting path through a forest, although it quickly becomes hard to follow.

Into the Woods, 2014

(I heard the stage production was better, but I didn't see either, so...)

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekMforMovies #ForestFriday #Scape #ECK

The photo is of a brilliant, vibrantly pinkish-purple flower against a blurred green background. The flower has an intensely yellow center of pistils and stamens; the petals have lighter streaks emanating from that center.

I avoid politics because of where I am now and my passport (as a naturalized citizen); but, man, I hope the US gets a sharp blow or ten that sparks an epiphany. Here's a pretty flower as a counterweight to my thoughts on the matter.

The photo is a closeup of a huge Tyrannosaurus Rex foot crushing a ruined and rusted red open-top jeep, with torn netting strewn about and rotting for good measure. It's from a display outside of a defunct kids' fun / experience / play center. I never saw the center open, but what you can see outside and through the main doors is really colorful and visually confusing and overwhelming.

Jurassic Park, 1993

(I think only the first one had a car-crushing T Rex?)

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekMforMovies #Dinosaurs

The photo is of five dogs behind a baby gate in a doorway. Four small dogs are huddled in one corner, while one much bigger dog is standing with his front paws on the baby gate. He has a huge grin on his face; the small dogs look skeptical of the whole situation.

Big, 1988

(also starring the cast of The Usual Suspects, 1995, posted maybe a year ago)

#AlphabetChallenge #WeekMforMovies #Rescue #AdoptDontShop

The photo is about two-thirds of a field of wildflowers. The top third is a bit of pale blue sky and the tops of low hills on the other side of a river valley.

Happy #BlueSkyArtShow! Here's a field of flowers with hills beyond on a happy sunny day. From a day hike near Donji Milanovac, Serbia.

#BackGround #Nature #Bloomscrolling