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"All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer — one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going — one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doing, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world."
L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams
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"We cannot change our past. We can not change the fact that people act in a certain way. We can not change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude."
Charles R. Swindoll
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© Copyright Natalie Panga - All rights reserved. EXPLORED June 13, 2013.
A high-quality studio portrait captures a young woman with a joyful, radiant smile as she poses against a solid dark gray background. She is tilted slightly backward with her hand resting on her hip, exuding confidence and a cheerful energy. Her shoulder-length, curly blonde hair is styled with subtle highlights and frames her face beautifully. She is wearing a sleeveless, light blue knit top featuring delicate texture details along the neckline, paired with denim shorts. Her accessories include a thin silver necklace with a small pendant and a silver chain bracelet on her left wrist. The professional studio lighting is focused from above, casting soft shadows, highlighting her facial features, and adding depth to the portrait.
"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy?"
Albert Einstein
A gorgeous full-length outdoor portrait featuring a high school senior from the upcoming Class of 2027 graduation year. She is captured walking confidently down a shaded city sidewalk lined with lush green manicured hedges and tall trees. Wearing a stylish charcoal gray long-sleeve crop top and relaxed-fit, wide-leg light-wash denim jeans, she strikes a natural pose with one hand gently resting on her head. The soft, dappled sunlight filtering through the trees creates a beautiful, warm ambient backdrop.
"Love-apples, me dear. Love-apples, they be; though some hignorant folks be a callin’ 'em tommytoes. But you don't want any o' they—nasty sour things, they be, as only gentry can eat. You have a nice sweet orange wi' your penny." But Laura felt she must taste the love-apples and insisted upon having one."
Flora Thompson
"Of the tomato or love apple, I know very little. It is chiefly employed as a sauce or condiment. No one, it is believed, regards it as very nutritious; and it belongs, like the mushroom and the potatoe, to a family of plants, some of the individuals of which are extremely poisonous. Some persons are even injured, more or less, by the acid of the tomato."
William Andrus Alcott, "The Young House-keeper" (1846)
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"I'm hungry for a juicy life. I lean out my window at night and I can taste it out there, just waiting for me."
Brigid Lowry, Guitar Highway Rose
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"The tulips are my speech. The grass and trees are my speech.”
George T. Delacorte
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"Yes, just like those flowers. There's something strained, but there's beauty in that. Something like that."
Koushun Takami
"Let a thing be but a sort of punctual surprise, like the first cache of violets in March, let it be delicate, painted and gratuitous, hinting that the Creator is solely occupied with aesthetic considerations, and combines disparate objects simply because they look so well together, and that thing will admirably fill the role of a flower."
Hope Mirrlees
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The cornucopia (in Latin also cornu copiae) or horn of plenty is a symbol of abundance and nourishment, commonly a large horn-shaped container overflowing with produce, flowers, nuts, other edibles, or wealth in some form.
From my archives: just the sketches. I'm a little busy now...
Sorry for the pause, my dear friends.
"Love is a blue balloon that wants to be orange.”
Jarod Kintz
"You cannot get a grip on blue.
Blue is the sky, the sea, a god’s eye... It’s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.
Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster.
This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there’s nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. ‘True blue’ is a ruse, a rhyme; it’s there, then it’s not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color."
Christopher Moore, Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art
"It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought."
James Douglas
"I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day."
F. Frankfort Moore, A Garden of Peace
This photo was taken on September 24, 2011 using a Canon PowerShot G10.
"My life is like the summer rose
That opens to the morning sky,
But ere the shades of evening close
Is scattered on the ground - to die."
Richard Henry Wilde
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A stunning, professional high school senior portrait from a specialized Class of 2027 senior shoot. The photograph features a confident young woman posing gracefully in an ultra-modern urban setting. She captures a timeless casual look, styled in a black long-sleeve crop top paired with relaxed, low-rise wide-leg denim jeans. Her bright, natural smile balances beautifully with her poised posture, one hand lightly running through her blonde hair as she steps forward on a concrete pathway.
This image highlights premium professional photography techniques, executed with expert clarity and sharp depth of field. The background showcases a vibrant display of striking, vertical neon pink light installations that cast an artistic, soft magenta ambient glow. The photographer expertly balanced this colorful background luminance with a subtle fill flash or a precise softbox setup from the front. This intentional lighting design highlights her facial features, preserves natural skin tones, and separates her cleanly from the backdrop, creating an eye-catching, high-fashion senior portrait.
Bublik (also Booblik or Bublyk) (Russian and Ukrainian: бублик) is a traditional Ukrainian, Russian, Polish (obwarzanek) and Lithuanian (riestainis) bread roll, very similar to bagels; however it is somewhat bigger, has a wider hole and a much denser and 'chewier' texture. Bubliks are members of a class of bread products made from dough that has been boiled before baking, which also includes bagels, baranki, sushki, and other similar breads.
Baranka — a dough ring somewhat smaller than a bublik, but much thinner and drier. While bubliks originate from Pale of Settlement (Ukraine and Belarus), barankis are an original Russian dish, their very name, baranka or baranok, being a contraction of a word obvaranok, "scalded". They are also far harder than bubliks, thus requiring dipping them into tea or coffee before eating. Sushki are an even smaller and drier type of baranki, generally about 50 mm in size, and have the consistency of a hard cracker.
(from Wikipedia)
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"The pear is the grandfather of the apple, its poor relation, a fallen aristocrat, the man-at-arms of our domains, which once, in our humid land, lived lonely and lordly, preserving the memory of its prestige by its haughty comportment."
Francois Pierre de la Varenne
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"Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock."
Henry Ward Beecher
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"In our quiet time
We do not speak, because the voices are within us.
It is our quiet time.
We do not walk, because the earth is all within us.
It is our quiet time....
We rest with all of nature..."
Nancy Wood
"O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark.
The vacant interstellar spaces......
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
T.S. Eliot
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Chernobyl. 1986-2012.
The Chernobyl disaster (locally Ukrainian: Чорнобильська катастрофа, Chornobylska Katastrofa – Chornobyl Catastrophe) was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then officially Ukrainian SSR).
"Sweet is the memory... Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart."
Washington Irving
"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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"Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul."
George Bancroft
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© Copyright Natalie Panga - All rights reserved. EXPLORED November 23, 2012.
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"Wine is light, held together by water."
Galileo
"The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams."
Thomas Love Peacock
"Wine is the most civilized thing in the world."
Ernest Hemingway
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"Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."
Robert Frost
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Cowslip - Primula veris
Cowslips have clusters of yellow, nodding flowers, borne on tall stems above a rosette of oval, wrinkled leaves. They grow in meadows, on downland or in open woodlands in moist, but well-drained soil. Like primroses, cowslip seedlings can be pricked out of lawns whey are very tiny and grown on in pots. Cowslips declined in the last century due to changes in farming practice, but they are now staging something of a recovery and becoming an increasingly common sight. They have reappeared especially along motorways and other roadsides, often as part of amenity planting schemes, although often it is the garden varieties and crosses that are used.
Cowslips provide a valuable early nectar source for bees.
Myosotis (from the Greek: "mouse's ear", after the leaf) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae that are commonly called Forget-me-nots. Its common name was calqued from the French, "ne m'oubliez pas" and first used in English in c.1532. Similar names and variations are found in many languages.
In a German legend, God named all the plants when a tiny unnamed one cried out, "Forget-me-not, O Lord!" God replied, "That shall be your name."
The Christ Child was sitting on Mary's lap one day and said that he wished that future generations could see her eyes. He touched her eyes and then waved his hand over the ground and blue forget-me-nots appeared, hence the name forget-me-not.
"April hath put a spirit of youth in everything." (William Shakespeare)
"Come, gentle Spring! Ethereal Mildness! Come." (James Thomson)
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"A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east."
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
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"A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked."
Anais Nin
"Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf."
Albert Schweitzer
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Green peas, Green peace, etc.
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"C'est mon petit bouquet de fleurs
Mon petit muguet, mon porte-bonheur
Je l'ai cueilli pour la vie entière
Et je veux le porter à ma boutonnière."
Jacques Plante
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© Copyright Natalie Panga - All rights reserved. EXPLORED May 13, 2013.
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“Rest and be thankful.”
William Wordsworth
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© Copyright Natalie Panga - All rights reserved. EXPLORED October 20, 2012.
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"The earth has music for those who listen."
George Santayana
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"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else."
Leonardo da Vinci
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"The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind the anonymous medieval poet makes me remember, the rain that falls on a day when you'd just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam and look out the streaked window with complacency."
Susan Allen Toth, England For All Seasons
"Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby."
Langston Hughes
"Rain and tears are the same..." (Demis Roussos Lyrics)
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The pomegranate is mentioned frequently in the Bible and figures prominently in many religious traditions. Here are some quotes mentioning pomegranates in the Bible.
"Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks." - Song of Solomon 4:3
"I would lead thee, and bring thee into my mother's house, who would instruct me: I would cause thee to drink of spiced wine of the juice of my pomegranate." - Song of Solomon 8:2
"A land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey." - Deuteronomy 8:8
"The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men." - Joel 1:12
"And beneath upon the hem of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the hem thereof; and bells of gold between them round about: a golden bell and a pomegranate, a golden bell and a pomegranate, upon the hem of the robe round about." - Exodus 28:33-34
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Lacrimas Profundere means "to shed tears" in Latin.
"Todo se reconcentra como el metal, se esconden
las hojas, el invierno enmascara su estirpe
y sólo ciegos somos, sin cesar, solamente.
Solamente sujetos al cauce sigiloso
del movimiento, adiós, del viaje, del camino:
adiós, caen las lágrimas de la naturaleza."
Pablo Neruda
[Everything comes together, alloyed. The leaves
are hidden, winter masks its origin,
and we are simply blind, ceaselessly and solely,
subject only to the stealthy lane
of movement, good-bye, of the journey, of the road,
good-bye, of nature's fallen tears.]
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Agapanthus is commonly known as "Lily of the Nile", but it is not a lily and all of the species are native to South Africa from the cape to the Limpopo River.
The purple colours are just beautiful, it's starting to bloom and it reminds me that summer is here and it's almost Christmas!
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Have a lovely Sunday!
"Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there."
Robert Cormier
"I really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love."
Conor Oberst
"I expand and live in the warm day like corn and melons."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Painters use red like spice.”
Derek Jarman
“Of all the hues, reds have the most potency. If there is one electric blue, a dozen reds are so charged. Use them to punctuate white, burn into bronzes, or dynamite black."
Jack Lenor Larsen
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"My grief lies all within,
And these external manners of laments
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortured soul.
There lies the substance."
[William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. King Richard, in Richard II, act 4, sc. 1, l. 295-9. Lamenting his fall; "manners" means shows or forms.]
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"Close your eyes and I'll kiss you,
Tomorrow I'll miss you."
Paul McCartney
"My heart is a red rose.
When happy, it sparkles brillianly..."
Claire Charmont
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The Winter Sentinel: A Red Squirrel’s Survival
This evocative series of photorealistic images captures the resilient and enchanting life of a red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) amidst a pristine, snow-covered winter forest. The collection showcases a masterclass in cinematic lighting, blending wide-angle vistas of frozen pine woodlands with intimate, high-detail macro shots. Each frame reveals the intricate textures of the squirrel’s russet fur, delicate frost-tipped whiskers, and expressive dark eyes.
From the dynamic energy of a mid-air leap through powdery snow to the quiet, focused moments of foraging for pine cones on ice-dusted branches, the series highlights the ethereal beauty of nature’s struggle against the elements. The use of shallow depth of field and soft, golden-hour sunlight creates a magical atmosphere that celebrates the spirit of woodland wildlife in sub-zero temperatures.
These images have been generated by Artificial Intelligence.
"Her kisses are sharp buds of fire; and I burn back against her, a jewel
Hard and white, a stalked, flaming flower; till I break to a handful of cinders,
And open my eyes to the scarf, shining blue in the afternoon sunshine."
Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
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"Why do we need so many kinds of apples? Because there are so many folks. A person has a right to gratify his legitimate taste. If he wants twenty or forty kinds of apples for his personal use…he should be accorded the privilege. There is merit in variety itself. It provides more contact with life, and leads away from uniformity and monotony."
Liberty Hyde Baily
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© Copyright Natalie Panga - All rights reserved. EXPLORED May 10, 2012.
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"Life is a great sunrise."
Vladimir Nabokov
"Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed."
Walt Whitman
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"She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
"Winter is dead.”
A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young
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