Brithday Visit to the Greenhouse

One of my special birthday treats last week has been an evening visit to Fata Morgana - a greenhouse of the Prague botanical garden. Every year, the botanical garden organises night-time guided tours through the darkened greenhouse. We booked ours in January.

The tour started at 6 p.m., when it was already dark in the greenhouse and the little frogs that live there were chirping loudly. The only lights were the ones that lit the lanes and the lake and the flashlight of the guide. We saw a lot of interesting things and as A. doesn't speak Czech, I had to translate (and I bow down in front of everyone who has that as a carreer, it was damn hard to listen and talk at the same time), but I noticed that he wasn't the only foreigner there. We saw a lot of plants and got to know much more than when we come in daytime. The whole greenhouse looked and sounded magical, but we were both definitely interested in the pond and the silver arowana fish the most (freedivers' deformation).

Silver arowana (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) in the pond in Fata Morgana greenhouse in Prague.

Moulting time

There has not been much activity in my millipede (Luculus terrestris) tank recently, the animal did not come out at night to feed, nor did it produce any waste. I was starting to get a bit worried, but I eventually discovered that it was hidden under the big mossy pillow that I brought from my trip last year and has given itself to shedding its old exoskeleton.

                                     

Last time some of my millipedes moulted was in July 2012. Now I only keep one, so I cannot tell whether it is the one that has already moulted or not, but I would say it is a different one. Here are some pieces of the old exoskeleton of which I managed to take photos back then.

Belated Valentine's Day Breakfast

A few days lateValentine's Day breakfast - his and mine. A little bit of playing with pancakes, hand-cut baking paper stencil, sharp knife, vanilla ice-cream, and hot raspberries and blueberries with sugar. Yummy!!!

Did I say "No heart decorations" ?

Well, then... ooops?

Yes, on Valentine's day I suddenly felt intense aversion towards hearts... But thein it turned around and suddenly a wave of inspiration came upon me, urging me to cut out some hearts, splashing around me in mixture of pink felt and threads. It might have something to do with my man coming to visit tonight. Then I hope he enjoys pink, because his life will get tough otherwise... : )

I even tried stitching out what was intended to be stars, but mostly they ended up being crosses with an occassional star hiding among them. Still, I like it. Not a single heart was cut out using a template (therefore the shapes) and here is the result. One finished ornament and a few hearts cut out of leftovers. I can sense more hearted decorations coming soon...

Valentine

Happy Valentine's day to everyone who celebrates it! I will, too, however, in a few day's time when my dear is here to keep me company and calm my nerves and so on.

In the meantime, he spends the day by uploading photos to his work website (veeery exciting, because he has just finished rebuilding a grand piano), while the highlight of my day has been a brief meeting with an overly friendly cat (probably because of her toxoplasmosis) that often leaves footsteps in our snowy garden and crocheting more procrastination squares while watching The Big Bang Theory and wishing I was more like Leslie Winkle (Is it disturbing? Is it not disturbing? I guess it isn't. But am I in a state of a mind to judge appropriately?? I really don't know.)

Therefore, I pronounce today an ordinary day and the actual Valentine's day is postponed to next Tuesday and will be celebrated by waking up together and cooking special breakfast and all that stuff. No heart decorations.

Procrastination Crochet

There are days when work goes great and there are days when it doesn’t. I am having one of those other days today. Nothing, even the shortage of time seems to motivate me. My daily strategy is to wake up really early, so that I can spend even more time by procrastinating. I even started crocheting a special thingie.

I am not sure what it is going to be, so far there are two squares with a side of 15.5cm, which might possibly turn into something awesome, but most likely just some more clutter (I feel incredibly environmentaly irresponsible at the moment).

Also, I happened to have an open bottle of wine in the fridge – and as I explained to my boyfriend earlier on the phone, there is something terribly sad about unfinished things other than work. So... I had to help it to get to wine-bottle heaven.

At least, this bright green yarn makes me think of green spring lawns which we will soon be able to enjoy. And I am optimistic and I really think that in the light of the longer and brighter days that are about to come, I will be able to do more work. Or... you know... procrastinate somewhere in a sunny field and get a tan and blonder hair at the same time.