Yellow man walking

Unfortunately in the shadow, I saw this sculpture in Santiago, Chile. Not sure what it represents, but it is surely an eye-catcher. Life-size and dangerously stepping on what it seems to be stalagmites. 

luna

Mellow Yellow - Blue Monday

The supermoon as seen last Satuday, it was the best show in town. Straight out of the camera.

Did you watch the perigean moon? The moon was at its closest point to Earth since March 

1993 . (Blogger is acting funny today...)

a touch of yellow and a touch of blue

Mellow Yellow Monday   ☂  Blue Monday

I recently came back from the Southern Hemisphere, a trip I planned to spend quality time with family and friends. I was seldom alone, I seldom looked for a chance to photograph subjects other than smiling faces. One morning, however, while at a friends' condo facing the Pacific Ocean, I took a short walk along the garden and found these blooms. And some other beauties which will be the subject of future posts.

soft

Mellow Yellow Monday 

Alpine cotton grass, a  pic from my archives. This post was inspired by yesterday's pic of the day. I see a tiny bit of yellow here !

message in a bottle

MacroMonday ~  ~     Mellow Yellow Monday  ~  ~     Blue Monday

This is a tiny bottle, which contains shells and sand from Hawaii, together with a wonderful message of friendship through blogging! You see the little bottle below in the middle of that t-shirt.

Yes, look, look, look what came with the mail: our wonderful  Quilly and Thom hosted the 12 days of Xmas, Island Style  last December and yours truly was one of the lucky winners !! Thanks so much for the goodies, Thom,  love every single item, the sticky notes are already in my purse, the clip magnet on my fridge, we haven't eaten the nuts nor the dried mango (yet!). It was Xmas in January for the first time in my life! 

Fall decoration

Mellow Yellow Monday ¸.•*¨*•☆☆•*¨*•.¸ Macro Monday

Seen at the market place. Update:  It's a Leucospermum glabrum, just learned this through blog-hopping! Thanks, Xavi!

she came in through the bathroom window

And had a terrible time finding her way out...so Mr Mar got a ladder to pick the bird up, the poor little thing was exhausted and thirsty. But recovered very fast and left us, without even leaving a name...at least I had a second to have her picture taken, 

Mellow Yellow Monday    ۞    ۞  Blue Monday

mandalas on a door

Mellow Yellow Monday

From my archives, I might have posted this door before, it leads to the kitchen of a small restaurant at a tiny French village. It is our lunch stop when we head to the mountains.                                            Participants

winning colors

Busy times  make it difficult to sit down to blog, that's why this picture is my entry for all of this:

Mellow Yellow Monday, Macro Monday, and Ruby Tuesday

This is one of my two red hibiscus which came with the house ( built in the early 60's), the afternoon sun gives the yellow touches. Red and yellow are the colors of the Spanish flag.  In case you haven't heard (haven't you??) Spain won the World Cup yesterday,  celebrations will continue today as the team returns to Madrid and I imagine the ones from Barcelona arrive here on Tuesday, so there is still soccer fever in the air.

rooting for the home teams

Detail of a  lei with the colors of the German flag: red, black and yellow.
 Red and yellow are the colors of the  Spanish flag.

Quick picture for MacroMonday and Mellow Yellow Monday

The World Cup has kept me busy and  away from blogging. Besides that, my home turned into a youth hostel for the past 10 days hosting college backpackers (either friends' college kids or else friends' kids' friends...), but two at a time at the most. Fun times keeping me away from the computer . On top of all that, the local telephone company reported a major issue which left us without phones and internet for two whole days!  I  was not amused... The World Cup continues but there are only 3 matches left. I am rooting for Germany and Spain, so I will have a tough day on Wednesday when the two teams face each other...more tv days. Did you watch Rafael Nadal win Wimbledon yesterday?? And when the world cup is over, there is still the Tour de France to watch!

front yard beauty

Macro Monday *** Mellow Yellow Monday

Back from Hamburg, where I was greeted in the morning by these two beauties in a pot (name the pink flower, pls!). From the land of palm trees and succulent plants, Northern Germany always amazes me with its colorful and amazing display of beautiful flowers. The rhododendron were all in bloom and all over, it was fantastic.

bit of yellow, bit of blue, big puppy

This is Puppy, a 43-ft /13 m tall floral sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy -executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure, with an internal irrigation system- by Jeff Koons , which I photographed  in front of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, two years ago. More about Puppy here.  I love this flower sculpture from my archives, it always makes me smile and that's why it is posted here again.

Blue Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday

flower clock

Mellow Yellow Monday

Many tourists were queueing in front of Geneva's flower clock to have their picture taken and I didn't want to wait, that explains my side shot...it looked very beautiful anyways. It was a fantastic Spring day (last Tuesday).

here we go again...!

Mellow Yellow Monday**** Macro Monday

During a 3-week hiatus I kept myself busy with mundane things, like shopping. I bought some pottery and here is the picture of the tag, delicately decorated with a tiny rose glued to it. The owner of the shop was a delightful lady who took care of every little detail, unfortunately she lives miles and miles away.... I also went skiing with much snow and sunshine. That was a also delightful. I had time so I  played around with my nicknames- American friends call me Marcy, some Spanish-speaking friends call me Marce and came up with the one I am using now. I needed a remake of some sort!

It feels good to be back, despite the rain which is keeping me inside and the fact that I am still using the old laptop, hope to have some news from my pc today, good (pictures rescued)or bad, I am ready for everything!  I missed the blogging world so I used my reader a couple of times, thanks to you all: the ones with full feeds ;)

cactus flower

Macro Monday  ♫♫  Mellow Yellow Monday

Not the typical Chilean flower but beautiful nonetheless! seen in Valparaiso, the harbor. A taste of  Chilean summer just for you.

these feet are made for dancing

Ball de bastons (Catalan for "stick dance") is the name of a ritual weapon dance spread throughout Europe and the rest of the Iberian area. English and Welsh Morris dances are well-known relatives to these traditions.  In the most common set, two opposite rows of dancers - who carry one or two sticks (bastons) , about 40-50 cm long and 5 cm thick- elaborate some patterns of stick-clashing. Info from the net. It all requires much coordination!! Find short videos ( 50 secs) of this kind of dance posted in the net here and here.

The occasion was last Tuesday's festival in my village.   I particularly like the ornaments, the little bells make an angel sound when the dancers move... and they are constantly moving, so getting the picture below was not an easy task! The canvas shoes are espadrilles.

Blue Monday              Mellow Yellow Monday

sunflower

Macro Monday*** Mellow Yellow Monday

yummy yellow Monday

Mellow Yellow Monday

A quick post - but delicious, nonetheless - with a shot from last week's short visit to Lisbon.

Pastel de Nata or Pastel de Belém is a small cream tart found throughout Portugal’s pastry shops or cafés. Casa Pastéis de Belém in Lisbon was the birthplace of this creamy dessert, and there they’re called Pastel de Belém, after the name of this Lisbon’s area. Since 1837, locals have come here to get them warm out of the oven and sprinkle them with cinnamon and powdered sugar...

What the wiki says about them can be found here. And I found one recipe here

from the street gallery

Blue Monday * Mellow Yellow Monday

"Peace to every living being on earth, look after everything which needs life ".  Painted for Lorenz, Luca, Livio, and for all children of the world, according to the bottom line. Excuse my free and unprofessional  translation, poetic words are not my strength!! This is one painting  - from  about 100 - from the East Side Gallery in Berlin, probably the largest open air gallery of the world :  After the Wall came down in 1989, hundreds of artists from all over the world gathered and transformed the eastside of the Wall that had been untouchable up to now, with their paintings, giving the Wall a new face in a new time. 

It is a fascinating place and an international memorial for freedom. More on the gallery here.  More images can be seen  here.

Day 3: the Moselle river

Day 3 of our 10-day Germany trip in September with a rental black M*ini (it wasn't pink, Horsoon!) found us  in Longuich, right by the Moselle river . This is the  first picture I took of the river (click to enlarge, see the sign?? Mosel) , from the bridge  during our short walk after breakfast, with vinyards in the background. And a nice statue, which I forgot to photograph more closely...

On our way to Bernkastel-Kues (next post!) we just had to stop to take a look inside the Festzelt (party tent).  Little did I know I was going to find huge yellow decorations there:

Mellow Yellow Monday

The banners hanging from the ceiling displayed quotes related to wine, and wine tasting,  the first one reads something like  "God didn't want the good wine to go to waste, that's why he gave us thirst "...oh, well, it rhymes in German!

And we also found a  cute little guy for  Blue Monday.