As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know. ~D. Rumsfeld

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Finally he gave in to me :-)

Mr. Kingfisher (IJsvogel in Dutch and Shaldag in Hebrew) that is. He gave in after having teased me for weeks on no end with this penetratious tjilping sounds letting me know he was passing me by swift as lighting so hardly giving me a chance to see him, let alone take photos of him.

Today he suddenly came to sit close to me :p
Well, close enough to zoom in and take a photo (or rather tens and tens of photos - reducing the chance of failure). Twice he did this and I felt honored. So photos hereunder.

This post has more photos than usual (even more, I should say) because I lost my photos twice already in the last 2 years and this is the only way I am sure I can keep them.

Yesterday it was nice at the Nemaal and today was extra-ordinary because of Mr. Kingfisher. Also at the Yarkon bridge it was nicer today than it was yesterday. Momma Lapwing is still chasing all the birds away who even dare to come close to her area (also photos of, underneath) and she actually is very aggressive in that as well. What surprise me most of all is that all birds indeed seem afraid of her because soon as she lifts off in flight and starts her chase they quickly fly away. Even real large birds like Egrets.

The last photo looks like a cartoon to me but I totally agree with what the sign says (translation is "I am a beach, not a huge ashtray, OK?!)

Fairytalefish hasn't been around this week anymore. It was nice as long as it lasted...

29-8-2009-teasing-birds-tuki
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29-8-2009-flower-not-a-bad-way-to-cover-up-electricity-wires
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29-8-2009-fairytaletree-land-whoze-dat29-8-2009-fairytaletree-land-view-up2
29-8-2009-palestine-sunbird
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29-8-2009-huh-a-bath-who-me
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

we're older but not wiser

It was said when I was still very young and now it applies to me...

Saturday, August 22, 2009

hiding

I've personally been "invisible" on several accounts on the internet lately. It is not that I want to hide but rather not to be dragged into communications I am not up to lately. When I reached the Nemaal this morning I saw my very own fairytalefish is about to express the very same message as well. Hiding. Is it because we both aren't up to facing what is thrown at us? Who knows....

The photos following are of my walk this morning. Yesterday I never had the time to do the route. I'm OK with it but still....

Ms.Cat _ whom I see as my primary friend at the Nemaal:

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If only I'd let her she would be biting punch holes in the calves of my legs just out of affection. Does affection have to hurt?

Mr. Fairytalefish was there yet again. It is with some hesitance I approach that part of the Nemaal but it does me good to see this bright yellow fish is holding out and seems to be living of hiding underneath rubbish thrown at the waters of the Nemaal pond... There wasn't much rubbish driftning those waters this morning and strangely enough I am now wishing for rubbish to be thrown there. Strange world ain't it?
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At the worn down house where I saw a lizard last year on top of its roof - I now noticed a wind and/or direction 'cock'. The animal isn't showing the right direction at all (it's opposite) but I found it such a curiosity that after more then one-and-a-half year I saw this on top of one of the houses without noticing it before that I had to place it in this diary:
22-8-2009-up-in-d-skies-2day

At my mezah a slaughter had been going on the night before as it seemed... There were bits and pieces of fish head and body parts all over the puddle in the middle :(
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22-8-2009-decapitated-fish

Mr. Kingfisher was tsilping all around to make me hear him and twice came flying by like a thunderstorm as fast .... Managed to get him on photo from afar. No good photo though...
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Sneaky little rascal :(

I just HAVE TO note Mrs. Lapwing. She is such a great mother! Every, literally EVERY bird coming close to where her youngsters are was being chased away by her and Mr. Lapwing. That included huge Egrets and supersmall warbles - Oraviem and other Lapwings. They are such good parents!!!
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This is my Pinkie :( He stopped singing and I feel he is not happy lately. I wish he could talk and tell me what's bothering him :( He's sitting near me as I write these lines and I wish I could do something to cheer him up. Are it too many bars preventing him from tasting freedom?
22-8-2009-2many-bars

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Suspect of committing suicide...

A flower on a bush that I associate with "Seringen" though I am not sure they're called that way. "Op het weggetje bij de Seringen" is a song my mother used to sing for me....
15-8-2009-seringen-perhaps

I then was lucky enough to be attentive enough to pay attention to the birth of a new leaf. This can make my breath stop. It is sooo beautiful how nature works:
15-8-2009-birth-of-new-leaf

Walking towards the exit of Ramat-Gan I looked up and found the following sight above me. Tell me now, if you'd see something like this hovering over your head wouldn't that just make your day as well?
15-8-2009-cottonwooltree-flower

Then, when standing on one of the bridges over the Yarkon and being totally absorbed by the fact that I was right all along and Mrs. Lapwing indeed was breeding on her egg and a little baby Lapwing was there jumping along now, I heard a car behind me honk. I ignored it being that sometimes cars do honk and pretty much always it's about drivers offering me indecent propositions. But(!) this time it was the police O_O......... HUH?? "Everything alright?" he asked me O_O ------ I politely answered yes of course and he drove on but... what is this?? Am I suggesting I am not alright if I stand still to watch nature for a while?? What? Did he think I'd jump of the bridge or something?? Here's baby Lapwing and mom and dad.. Isn't "Junior" simply gorgeous?
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15-8-2009-baby-lapwing-mom-and-dad

Mr. Fairytalefish was there again today. It is really weird how he sticks to the junk floating in the waters of the pond. How can this behavior be explained?
15-8-2009-fairytalefish-AGAIN

As I walked down the boardwalk near the pond I saw one fisherman I know for a long time already pull up his lines and have a .......... crab on it :-(
Yesterday I returned a crab he had caught to the water after I saw it laying on the boardwalk and still moving. Today he couldn't do much more than release the hook (which cost the crab its leg, unfortunately) and throw the miserable and beautiful creature back in the pond as well... (because I didn't leave him much of a choice, grrrrrrrr)
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Friday, August 14, 2009

About fairytalefish and a different life time

Didn't leave at 05:00 a.m. as I had planned (but feared due to it still being dark and me having to cross a place a woman was found butchered in a rubbish bin this week) but at 06:00.

The first thing I paid attention to was that the caterpillar down the stairs wasn't 'trapped' at all as I thought but probably is popping into a butterfly. This is soooooooo interesting to follow.

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Then, I was attacked in the middle of the road by a school of flies. Have no idea what happened but I stood still to take a photo and a swarm of flies landed on my body. Over and over again. Can't they just accept I'm not in love with them? :D :D

I don't know how long it has been since I have seen Ms.Cat last. I was getting more and more worried each week that passed by and she wouldn't turn up on my "psssssst". That's why I am so terribly happy when, after initially not seeing her, she was there right up further down the wavebreaker from where she usually is present this morning. I could feel tears well up in my eyes when I saw her. We have a special relationship. I know it isn't "normal" and I am just paralleling reality probably but that's my world. To love and leave in freedom without claiming possession isn't something I am usually very good at but with this special cat it comes to me naturally:

14-8-2009-ms-cat

Then, to my HUGE surprise I saw the gorgeous yellow fish that clung to a Rose last week in the waters of the pond in the Nemaal again. This time it seemed like he wanted to court each and every item of rubbish people had thrown in the waters there (and I wish I could strangle those people, selfish creeps). I was so surprised he survived a whole week with eager fishermen tempting food to him and the polluted waters of the pond... I now have a Fairytaletree and a Fairytalefish (though I think the Fairytalefish won't live as long as my Fairytaletree hopefully will).

Here he's showing that he's totally in fashion with cigarettes and a can of XL (Redbull substitute):

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It was only much, much later while being on route to the moniot sherut home and passing the hotel I had my "honeymoon" (with "husband" 'checking out' from time to time to meet his friends to gamble with) in that I remembered today, August 14th, is my anniversary. While standing still in front of this hotel my parents (having come over for the occasion of my marriage then) also stayed in that time, that I was a bit overcome by the cruelty of not understanding (those days) that 'my world' wasn't that of someone else and that someone else could and did everything to destroy it...


Saturday, August 8, 2009

curiosities

Left the house late. I think it was 09:00 a.m. it was already quite hot.

The first thing I met on my way that caught my attention was right downstairs in my apartment building and I think it's a caterpillar (a hairy one) that got trapped in a spiders web:
8-8-2009-trapped-caterpillar

The next creature that put a smile on my face was "Moustache Sally" (the crooked ear cat in the next street)
8-8-2009-moustache-sally

On Abba-Hillel street I saw a remarkable phenomenon: christmastree branches growing on a non-christmastree. I have no idea what kind of a tree this is but all of his other branches don't look one bit like the pine ones that grew at the center:
8-8-2009--christmastreebranches-on-nonchristmastree

While being puzzled why I cannot ever seem to remember to look up the words of a song my mother used to sing for me when I was little about "Seringen" that I remember when passing flowers like in the following photo, a very curious Bulbul came to check things out - I bet he wanted to know why I am photographing these flowers, haha
8-8-2009-curious-bulbul

It can't be seen how terribly tiny this Hibiscus bud is in the photo but it was soooooooo sweet standing up there as if declaring independence:
8-8-2009-tiny-new-hibiscus-bud2

At Fairytaletree the Graceful Prinias and the Palestine Sunbirds were teasing me again as usual by loudly pronouncing their presence and showing off their gorgeousness before me while flying away fast soon as I had my camera ready. I managed to get a Graceful Prinia on photo next to one of (the many) Fairytaletree flowers but he looks a bit vague... The photo underneath it is of a new fruit growing along new buds on my favorite tree:
8-8-2009-graceful-prinia-near-fairytaletreeflower
8-8-2009-fairytaletree-new-fruit-and-buds

And then I arrived at the Nemaal. Sooooooooo strange, so weird, so inexplicable (to me) but there was this bright (and in my eyes beautiful) yellow fish who seemed totally in love with a Red Rose that was drifting on the Pond's waters surface. He kept being stuck to it. At first I thought he was dead but he was very much alive. At times he would swim away from the Rose but he would quickly return to float underneath its celophane packaging. It was really, really weird. Like this fish was looking for romance, hahahahhaa.... At times the sea would push up his waves high and the fish and Rose would touch my feet who were dangling into the water, the fish didn't seem to be afraid of that at all. Also... no one, absolute no one of the people passing by noticed the fish... It's like he was there for my eyes only.... The photos are of the Rose and fish and one of the fish by himself.
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