Port City Project

I posted my comments on this a few months back.   This cartoon from the newspapers last week captures it well :

Land-filling 450 acres of ocean  will sink Sri Lanka in more ways than one.   Fiscal … there is a chance of recovery – generations for the next few centuries can pay the debt.

Destruction of the environment – IRREVERSIBLE.

Nature’s parachutes

hbhatnagar‘s picture of a seed pod last week, reminding me of a similar capture of mine -the same week ! – of a pod of a Stephanotis plant on my balcony.

Enter a caption

The parachute-like seeds are natures strategy for dispersal.  They float in the wind, land on soft ground and take root.   Man-made parachutes and most of man’s inventions – even the air-plane, have  all their design inspiration from nature.

Hope you enjoy these pictures.  I could not get the angles I wanted because the seeds kept spilling out each time I moved the plant for a better view.

Close up – Stephanotis pod and Nature’s parachute.

Posting in response to Jithin’s Mundane Monday challenge to find beauty in the mundane .. and  ..to make the mundane beautiful.

Posted for Mudane Monday Challenge hosted by Jithin.

Earth’s crammed with heaven

Woke up on a mundane Monday morning to the most awesome sight.  The tree outside my balcony had burst into bloom.

The sight that met my eyes !

I could just gaze and gaze and gaze at it for hours.

I looked up again and noticed the moon was still out .. perhaps hating to leave the scene of such beauty 🙂

Even the moon refused to move away 🙂

Delicate, paper thin, shadowy pink flowers so ephemeral they  would bruise to the touch. Some were floating down and I stretched out my hand for them to land on. The ground beneath was a carpet of pink.

The sight leaves you dazzled … wanting to burst into laughter,  scoop up the flowers, embrace the tree for giving you such a vision.

The tree which is just outside my front door poses a serious threat to my boundary wall and roof. You can see how close it is in this picture.

That’s the  roof jutting out on top left. Too close for safety ?

Many have advised me to cut it and yet I can’t bring myself to do this and and lose the glory of this sight when it blooms – once, sometimes twice, a year.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning must have been referring to such a vision when she wrote :

Earth’s crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God, 
….. But only he who sees takes off his shoes. 

Eventually, I tore my gaze away and looked across on the other side of the balcony.  There stood another tree that I really admire, a lone sentinel rising above its neighbours, in majestic competition with my flowering cherry blossom tree.                  

A solid and stable sentinel every day, unlike the ephemeral blossoming tree, I have to recognise this tree too or it will feel left out 🙂

Sharing with Mundane Monday challenge of Jithin though this is ‘cheating’ for it is anything by mundane. At least it was taken on a mundane Monday 🙂   and also sharing with Jacqueline’s Echoes of my Neighbourhood challenge which brings so many many places to your doorstep.

Quiet time

“Rest is not idleness,

and to lie sometimes on the grass, under trees on a summers day, 

Listening to the murmur of the water, or watching clouds float across the sky, 

is by no means a waste of time.”   John Luddoc

But is a great way to start  – or wind down  a Mundane Monday   🙂   And it gets better when you have company  ….

        

So quiet time for two 🙂