IF - fluid

For 'fluid' I show you an illustration for my book 'The Golden Hero Dragan'. It was really hard to capture the feeling of fluidness.
During the research I found so many different aspects of water like flowing water, drops, bubbles, frost patterns, waves and more that I intend to do a series of it.

IF - popularity (7)

Moles are more intelligent than man. When we had one in our garden, we tried all the popular means of scaring it away: nothing worked. As in Germany they are a protected species (I am at a loss why because almost every meadow I see around here seems to be riddled with molehills), so you mustn't kill them. Anway, to protect our precious lawn, we tried the ultimate solution and installed a mole-trap (You can buy them in spite of the ban to kill moles. How crazy is that?). The mole must have laughed out loud at us by then because, guess what? It  just dug a new burrow around the trap!

IF - popularity (6)

The last winter was so hard with masses of snow for weeks that voles came into my garden and ate virtually every single bulb they could find. And I had masses of them as spring flowers are my favourites, especially tulips. I had them in so many different colours and varieties including parrot tulips. In my garden plants are grouped by colours: shades of white in one flower bed, shades of pale pink over bright pink to dark red in another one and shades of blue and purple in yet another one. In between some greenish yellow of alchemilla. Anyway this year I didn't dare to plant new bulbs because of the voles which, once they had discovered my garden, continued to come throughout the year.
When I googled them to better know what they looked like I was completely surprized to see that they are no bigger than an ordinary mouse. Somehow by the extent of damage they had done, I had imagined them to be closer to rats.

IF - popularity (5)

In my first garden I proudly planted some dahlias which had such a wonderful colour and were full of blossoms, only to come out the next morning not finding anything left but the naked stems. By then I had never seen slugs and when I discovered how tiny these voracious monsters are... Arghh!
Fortunately this is not the season to deal with slugs and I hope the summer won't be so humid that they'll become a plague.

IF - popularity (4)

Follows part IV.
My son had a tick last year. We didn't find it immediately, so it got stuck and infested and he had to be treated with antibiotics (though I try to avoid them if possible). You can still see the spot.

IF - popularity (3)

And now: part III. Hope you still enjoy it.

IF - popularity (2)

This is part II of the mini series for popularity.

IF - popularity

I am doing a mini series on popolar places as you can see above. So if you care to join, I will show a new part every day of the following week.

Valentine's Day 2012 (2)

On second thought I changed the Valentine's Day card by eliminating the hands. I guess you wouldn't understand it without kowing my last post for IF. Which version do you prefer?

Valentine's Day 2012

I was eager to do something for Valentine's Day, but no idea was really convincing. The last post for IF (suspense), though, inspired me to do a heart of toy stones for Valentine's Day with the most important 'ingredients' for love written on them. As there are always two people contributing to a happy love you can see two hands who built this heart together.

IF - suspense

When my son was about 2 - 3 years old he used to build towers of toy blocks that were so hazardous, they kept you filled with suspense. Especially as I was trained as an architectural draftswoman who knows how to build solidly. I had to stop myself from warning him all the time, so he could find out by himself what would work. The towers were even much higher than the one you see above and also more dangerously assembled which goes to show that sometimes it might be better if you don't know too much about what you do because that way you take more risks and breathtaking results.


The tower above was built today and my son and I had so much fun in trying to outdo each other in creating the most hazardous one, it kept us busy a good part of the morning. Below you can see some of the other results.

The smallest may seem easy but was the most difficult one indeed because of the round brick that had to balance four others on top. The biggest was done by my son and also required much patience.

So if you don't know what to do with your next Sunday (or bad-weather day, or...) how about a nice little building contest?