Saturday, October 31, 2009
Invisible Man
Friday, October 30, 2009
Spectacular Swiss Villa By Attilio Panzeri For Sale
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Ten Architectural Wonders of the Wine World
Peregrine Winery, New Zealand
The Merus Winery
López De Heredia Winery
O. Fournier Winery
Petra Winery
I. Boutaris & Son Winery
Artesa Vineyards & Winery
Winery Collemassari
Leo Hillinger Winery
Sunday, October 18, 2009
11 Impossibly Loaded Bicycles
Image: Kimi & Martin
When Tulip Fields Transform into Modern Art
Image via onpaperwings
Red, yellow, orange, purple, blue, white, pink – we’re not talking about rainbows here but tulip colours that look like they’ve sprung from a painter’s palette. No wonder then that rows and rows of tulips and tulip fields look like impressionist paintings up close or like modern or abstract art from above. Beautiful for sure and a great way to celebrate summer.
Red tulip rows with poplars in the background, most likely in Japan:
Image: Nao
Did you know that the orderly tulip (Tulipa) as we know it has its origins in the rugged mountain ranges close to Islamabad in today’s Pakistan? From there, tulips reached China, Mongolia and then Europe but before the Dutch took over as tulip connoisseurs, this title belonged to the Turkish. They had a reputation as tulip cultivators as early as 1000 AD and were known for their skill throughout Persia and Asia.
Today, tulips are grown all over the world; here tulip fields at Table Cape, Tasmania:
Image: Martin Howard
The head gardener of the University of Leiden in Holland and botanist Carolus Clusius tried cultivating this wild flower in the early 17th century. He is credited today with starting the Dutch tulip tradition.
Tulip bulbs are truly tough cookies; they actually need a chilly winter before being planted, so gardeners advise placing them in the refrigerator around four weeks before planting. They should then be placed deep into the soil in a cool spot so that they don’t warm too quickly. Also, the deeper a tulip bulb is planted, the tougher the plant will be.
Like a carpet of tulips – tulip gardens at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in northwestern Washington:
Image: Ramanathan Kathiresan
Oh, and did we mention that tulips are truly social animals, er, plants? Looking at the pictures of rows and rows of beautiful tulips in all kinds of colours, they’ve literally come a long way from lonely mountain plant to abundant and hardy city flower. Well done!
A rainbow on the ground – another impression from the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival:
Image: Ramanathan Kathiresan
Monet would have happily cast aside those boring water lilies:
Image: Julie Markee
Rows of red as far as the eye can see:
Image: Andrew Larsen
Another tulip mosaic:
Image via shophorne
My tulip heart beats for you:
Image via desktopnexus
Yellow, orange and red tulip fields at Keukenhof in Amsterdam:
Image: Ian Katz
An old barn and tulips in the Skagit Valley, WA, between LaConner and Mount Vernon:
Image: Divya & Deepak
Gentle waves of yellow tulips:
Image: Steve Voght
Red, white and blue like the Dutch flag – don’t miss the sailboats in the background:
Image: David Evers
Tulips as far as the eye can see:
Image: Amy Bonner
Red, purple and pink
Image: Lauren Elyse Lynskey
Not French lavender but purple tulip fields at the LaConner, WA Tulip Festival:
Image: Stephen Cochran
Friday, October 16, 2009
The Most Terrifying Mountain Bike Trail On Earth
All images by Victor Lucas via Hans Rey
Dawn was breaking. The wheels of the bike crunched over the shale-covered surface of the path as the wind swirled beyond the overhanging ledge. Conditions were far from ideal: damp, misty and with more than the hangover of a storm in the air, they left little margin for error – an error that equated to a sheer 600 foot drop down to the waiting rocks and waves of the Atlantic. The riders had ventured out not knowing fully what to expect, but it was too late to turn back now.
When Hans Rey embarked on a road trip with fellow mountain biking star Steve Peat, the plan, as he told Environmental Graffiti, was “to ride all the cool biking trails and spots in Ireland and to visit a few pubs along the way.” Yet the Swiss trials rider and multiple World Champion had long had his sights on the Emerald Isle’s legendary Cliffs of Mohan and just knew he had to “ride that edge one day.”
The problem was that they hadn’t foreseen the Cliffs being quite such a tourist trap by day, nor that the weather would be as adverse as it was. So they postponed their plans until early the next morning, though not without misgivings. “We were well aware of stories of the dangerous upward drafts, strong winds that would sweep the cliffs, and as stories have it, pulled several people down over the years,” said Hans.
Daybreak came, and it wasn’t just the visibility that was a bit on the murky side. “Our heads were slightly foggy as well,” Hans explained, “from the Guinness the night before.” Still, they only had one shot at it, and weren’t about to be put off. “As we went out there, I quickly felt comfortable and in my zone. As a trials rider you learn to focus on your line, on what you want to do, not what you don’t want to do – in this case, fall to death.”
The guys’ confidence grew as they became more comfortable in their environment – and like a dog that smells no fear on you, their environment seemed to grow more accustomed to them. “Even though it was a stormy day, the winds were calm right on the edge of the cliffs. We got more and more daring. We rode ledges that were only about 4 inches wide and even jumped over 4 foot gaps.”
Yet however crazy this sounds to us, pros who are used to navigating over all kinds of obstacles – often without ever putting a foot down – know where the real perils lie. “The dangerous part riding the ledge was not to ride too close to the hillside, since we didn’t want to catch a pedal on the rocks and high-side down the cliff.” Obviously it takes superlative skill to pull off a stunt like this, and the riders completed their spectacular trail without mishap.
Of course, the local authorities knew nothing about what was going down on the Cliffs of Moher that cold Irish winter morning, and apparently they were none too pleased when they later found out. But since when have extreme sports guys cared about doing things by the book? “Just for the record, there were no parachutes in our backpacks, as some had speculated,” Hans concludes. “Mind over matter and the mercy of Mother Nature.”