Friendly Friday Blog Challenge – Wildflowers

Keukenhof is spectacular in bloom, Toowoomba is stunning during the Carnival of Flowers, as is Japan in Cherry Blossom season, but right now I’m thinking of Wildflowers, especially those that grow in the most unlikely or unusual places.

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  Street light pop up in Helsinki

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  Growing beside a bridge footing in Norway

To say, I was initially surprised, to spot blossoms hard-to-grow-in-Australia, growing spontaneously, by the road in the coldest of countries, was an understatement!

These beauties were busting their glorious blaze of colour beside a street light in Helsinki, beside a bridge support, or vacant hillside in Norway, or idly cheering up an industrial lot in Denmark; their location was a mere afterthought of nature, thriving as they were, with ne’er a green finger or hint of fertilizer, in sight.

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  Marine industry site near the fjord

Knowing their time was short, these blooms took full advantage of the extended summer sunlight, exploding into intense hues that had me gawping at their vibrant intensity. Even simple grasses and weeds seemed aesthetic.

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Enchanting architecture and backdrops increased the aesthetic appeal of the wildflowers.

Wildflowers on the roof in Sunnfjord, Norway

What are these flowers called? Does anyone know them? They were almost buried in a patch of grass in a disused paddock.

Here in my country, the native flowers are showing their best winter coat.

Unusually for Australia, parts of our country are in a snap Covid lockdown and due to that fact and it being winter, it’s more difficult to get out and appreciate the world, but not impossible, and there’s always the archives, isn’t there? The native blooms such as Banksia, Swamp Mahogany and Xanthostemon put on a display.

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WordPress has added a feature in the image photo block where by you can add a tonal colour to your photos, using shadows or highlights. Why not try this out this fortnight? It is a blogging challenge is something in which both hemispheres of the world can participate, no matter the season.

Friendly Friday Blog Challenge Prompt – Wildflowers

Breaking News – Third Host for the Friendly Friday Blog Challenge Team

Sandy and I have been having a ball hosting the Friendly Friday Challenge, we’re really excited to welcome Sarah from the blog, Travel with Me, to our Blogging Challenge team, as host, every six weeks. Sarah is a blogger who loves landscape, architecture, wildlife and street photography. Here is a little more about Sarah:

Those of us with the means and inclination to, [travel], are rewarded with amazing opportunities to learn about different cultures, different landscapes, different environments. And in seeing those differences I think we discover something very important, which is that however different our lifestyles, at heart people have more in common than you might think. We learn to value diversity, to respect other viewpoints and to rejoice in our similarities ~ Sarah

www.toonsarah-travels.blog/who-am-i/

Sarah will be posting the next Friendly Friday prompt in two weeks time, ie. Friday 16th July, over at her blog, Travel with Me. She will concentrate on a particular theme for her prompts. Are you curious to see what that theme might be? Sarah will be posting clues on her blog, next week, so keep an eye out for that post.

Find the next challenge at: toonsarah-travels.blog/

Instructions for Joining the Friendly Friday Blogging Challenge

• Write and publish a post inspired by the prompt, remembering this is a challenge not restricted to photography only. It can be a recipe, story, (fiction or non-fiction), or art in visuals or words: For this prompt it might be a snippet or anecdote of somewhere you visited or even an image of a pressed wildflower you may have received long ago. You are only limited by your imagination.
• Please remember to Tag your post – ‘Friendly Friday.’
• Include a ping-back* to this blog post adding a comment, (with the url of your published post), here on this post.

*NB. You must ping-back to this WordPress post itself, as link or ping-backs to the home page of a WordPress blog doesn’t trigger a notification to the host blogger. That’s why posting a comment here is good practice, so that your hosts can always find your post.

This Friendly Friday Wildflower Challenge runs until 15th July.

Friendly Friday Challenge 16th July – Host Blogger Sarah at Travel with Me

Friendly Friday Challenge 30th July – Host Blogger Sandy at The Sandy Chronicles.

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Further instructions on joining in are found on the Friendly Friday Blog Challenge Page.

Friendly Friday Blog Challenge – Time Capsule

Tãby Church, Stockholm

Almost a decade ago, I was wandering around the backblocks of Stockholm’s upmarket outer suburbs and discovered a place of significance in Viking times. A living Time Capsule.

Rune Stone Causeway in Stockholm

At around 100 metres long, the so-called Jarlabanke’s bridge, in Täby, Sweden, is a causeway or bridge, lined with ancient Runestones.

It was designed to be an extravagant reminder of the power and prestige of a Viking chieftain named Jarlabanke Ingefastsson, who owned much of this area, way back in the 11th century.

It is presumed that the purpose of the runes is to catch the eye of passing travellers and impress them. This site must have been especially significant as it was also the place where three Viking families, battled it out for supremacy of the area.

Wooden Viking Scultpure

Four remaining Rune stones line the causeway as some were moved to other locations. One Runestone was taken to Greece by voyaging Vikings who worked as mercenaries for the Varangian Guard.

Another stone stands at the threshold of the church and depicts two serpent creatures enclosing a Latin cross. This was considered to be evidence of Chieftain Jarlabanke’s wish to ensure his entry to the afterlife. Perhaps he was undecided about which religion to follow and chose to hedge his bets honouring both Christian and Pagan practices.

Symbols of the old religion and Christianity are often found together on rune stones, evidence of transition in belief systems.

Wikipedia

Rich Medieval Ceiling Decorations in Swedish Churches

The Church adjacent to the Runsetone Causeway has a rather plain exterior which belies the treasures hidden inside. Here you see but a glimpse of the richly decorated ceiling.

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The interior of the Church

Older churches in Scandinavia often have frescos, or traditional art, decorating their ceilings. They were painted in the day when many members of the congregation were illiterate and this pictorial representations of bible stories was used as a way to communicate religious teachings.

Norwegian Rosemaling in Churches

At times, Lutheran Priests lamented the striking beauty of the frescoes and decorative art, especially that seend in Norway and known as Rosemaling. Certain priests ordered for the rich decoration to be painted over in plain colours, or whitewashed. This was, presumably, to stop the congregations’ mind wandering over the artful decorations and allowed them to focus instead on the Priest’s words.

The art within Scandinavian Churches gives but a glimpse into the past, a Time Capsule of historic Times.

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The ceiling, walls, pews, and altar inside the Church in Lesja, Norway, and the fresco near Trondheim are yet another example of a time capsule.

Student Time Capsules

When my sons started high school, they buried a box of items – a piece of writing, some questions to their future selves, and some small object of significance to them in a box to be opened on their graduation day. Another snippet of the past in the form of a Time capsule.

What would you put in a Time capsule?

Friendly Friday Blog Challenge Theme

The theme for this fortnight’s blogging challenge is

TIME CAPSULE

Document what you might put in your own time capsule in words or photographs, share a snippet of your local area’s or chosen point of history, somewhere you visited or something of interest that has been swept up in time.

Remember that this challenge is not restricted to photography. It can be a recipe, story, (fiction or non-fiction), or art.

Instructions for the Friendly Friday Blogging Challenge

Write and publish a post inspired by the prompt, tagging your post Friendly Friday.

Include a ping-back* here and also add a comment below, pointing the way to your own blog post.

*NB. You must ping-back to this WordPress post itself, as ping-backs to the home page of a WordPress blog don’t trigger a notification. That is why a comment here is good practixe so that we can find your post.

This challenge runs for two weeks after which Sandy will post a new prompt over at her blog The Sandy Chronicles.

Further instructions on joining in are found on the Friendly Friday Blog Challenge Page.

Friendly Friday Blogging Challenge – Something Different

Friendly Friday Blogging Challenge

Sandy set a Friendly Friday challenge to come up with Something different and I was convinced I’d failed to find anything noteworthy until I read Ally Bean’s Rudolph Framework which she’s adapted from a marketing analysis by author Ann Handley.

Not ‘Rudolph’ but quirky namesake

The Rudolph Marketing Framework

The Rudolph Framework “helps you understand the actual problem you and your business solve for your customers– not the one you *think* you solve.” Click HERE to be taken to her fun explanation of this framework.

thespectacledbean.com/2021/02/23/applying-a-business-framework-to-this-personal-blog-to-tell-a-tale/

Most know, or will quickly find out, I am no blog business guru and to be frank, StPA is purely self-expression via my own mindful meanderings covering a multitude of topics from the environment to photography.

Therefore, you might, as I initially did, think this Rudolph exercise holds little relevance in the blogging world and is akin to writing one of those verbose, but glib ‘mission statements.’ [Groan]

Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com

Those two words, ‘mission statement,’ is enough for me to tune out and yet, reading further, I quickly realized that I did want to know where I might be headed blog-wise, and that a little blogging self-examination may indeed be useful, at least to me. Add to that, Ally mentioned that she was curious to see where the framework would take other bloggers. Thus, I’d dive right in. I may have taken it in a tangent way off the original intention, but it IS an experiment so who knows where we will end up.

Following are the Framework questions. One fills in the blanks for how it pertains to your blog. Like one of those grammar exercises back in school. Easy, right?

Something to Ponder About Blog’s Rudolph Framework

1. Once upon a time, there was a blog focused on information important enough to share with others that promoted open, independent discussion called Something to Ponder About.
2. It has the capacity to question, to inform, to frustrate and possibly to validate aspects of environmental change, in addition to various other topics.
3. Some people doubt it because they’re sure technology will be the saviour in any environmental disaster and the blogosphere is merely filled with rank amateurs who not only ignore contradictory information and opinions, but seem hell-bent on locking up the planet, subverting business progress or fixate on their own capitalistic endeavours. [which is incorrect].
4. But one day, the earth shouts at ALL its people so loudly that heads turn and deaf ears and closed eyes open.
5. Which means that more folks become interested in environmental change and start to connect with bloggers and others who recognize we all live on one heavenly body.
6. To help the awareness of planetary health and survival for all sentient beings.
7. And that matters because the global population needs access to independent information and different opinions, from many diverse sources which results in an informed global community, who might be more proactive about positive change, mindful of equity and respectful of differences.
8. In the process, you help coalesce a community of global cohesiveness and egalitarian understanding with blogs being one small catalyst.
9. The Planet gets a kiss!

Applying the Rudolph Framework to Your Own Blog

If you wish to try this writing experiment with your own blog, check in with Ally. Blogger etiquette would suggest you cite Ann Handley and include a pingback to The Spectacled Bean.

Something Different

If you wish to join in with the Friendly Friday Challenge, check the instructions, or visit Sandy’s Friendly Friday post.

I will be back with another Friendly Friday challenge theme on Friday 12th March, 2021.

Amanda

Removing Ads on Free WordPress Blogs

Those pesky ads that show in the body, and the end, of a WordPress Post; do they annoy you? As a reader, would you prefer not to see them? I am vacillating between paying to remove them and leaving them as they are.

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

So I think it is time to ask the Blogger Brains Trust, all of you clever people in the blogosphere:

Should I pay to remove ADs shown on my blog posts?

To help me in my decision, I would love you to answer the below poll.

Ad Content for Blogs

Worth remembering is that we, as bloggers can not control the content of the ads according to WordPress, particularly if we have a free plan. Interestingly, WordPress hands this important decision over to their advertising software:

We screen the ads we display for mature or illegal content. Sometimes, however, you or visitors to your site might still see ads you object to — for example, ads for political causes or products you oppose. We do not endorse the content of any ad, and we encourage you to inform your audience that ads are not selected by site owners, but rather generated by our advertising software.

https://wordpress.com/support/no-ads/

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Friendly Friday Photo Challenge – Whilst Walking

“Photography helps people to see” ~Berenice Abbott 

Janeluriephotography

The above quote is taken from Jane’s blog, where you will find photographs that are something special. The natural world is displayed in its incredible beauty by Jane’s skill, as a photographer.

It is a delight to walk in forested or rural areas, in cool, shady glades, in big sky country of cattle grazing lands or scenic vistas away from the inner city. Use arrows to see more images below.

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Whilst walking with my own camera and observing the world, I try to channel that atmosphere that Jane creates, in her photography.

“Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.” 

~ Susan Sontag

Friendly Friday Challenge Prompt – Whilst Walking

This week our challenge prompt is to post a photograph you have taken ‘Whilst Walking.’

[N.B. If you are in lockdown, archival photography is quite acceptable].

Walking Photo Challenge Brief:

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Photograph what it is that draws your attention.

Do you spot something unusual?

In urban areas, we can still pay attention as we walk. The colour of vehicles, the signage, the expressions on people’s faces, the rain hitting the pavements and gutters. It is there waiting for our attention and our camera lens.

Whilst walking.

Join in the Weekly Friendly Friday Challenge

Are you a blogger or photographer interested in joining the photo challenge? This challenge runs until Thursday next week. Link back to this post, leave a comment here and other bloggers will find your Friendly Friday post.

Full Instructions on engaging with the Friendly Friday Blogger community are found here.

Sandy at the blog: TheSandyChronicles will present a new Friendly Friday prompt to you next week.

May I suggest that you follow both our blogs if you want to catch the weekly prompts for Friendly Friday.

Using Tags in Blog Posts

The keywords you enter in a post show up at the bottom of your article or blog post in WordPress and are commonly called ‘tags.’ If your blog post is about your trip to New Zealand, your post might be tagged Travel and New Zealand.

Do you add so-called ‘tags’ to your blog posts? Do you think much about what the tag might be?

There is so much debate about whether tags are beneficial or deleterious to SEO, I have assembled some tips for you to decide, for yourself, based on the purpose of your blog.

Tag Pages in WordPress

WordPress will create a Tag Page linking your post to all other articles tagged with that keyword. This is important from a Search Engine perspective as it can help you rate higher in a search index.

Did you know that if you repeatedly use a tag word indiscriminately, WordPress will bump you from the WP reader? This lowers the chance for readers to find your site.

Tag your posts accurately

Google reads tags or keywords completely differently: “website” and “web site” and “websites”.

Duplicating the same term in a category, as well as a tag, will confuse Google and the search engines will not know which page or site to rank first.

Be consistent in the way you tag your posts.

There’s nothing wrong with either keyword, [‘web site’ and ‘websites’, above], but choosing one form and using it that way consistently increases your chances of getting ranked for that form of the keyword.

So pick one and stick with it. Either you always use “website” as your tag or you use “web site”. Don’t use both interchangeably or you’ll be missing the chance for better rankings and more traffic.

theblogpress.com/

Use Tags that relate to your article

Doing your homework and looking up the number of searches each version of a keyword gets, is time-consuming and tedious, but it will help you when you are starting out. If you add bogus keywords as tags, then your “tag pages” will be full of spam.

theblogpress.com/

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

How Many Tags is a Good Number to Use?

What is a good number of tags to use?

The jury is still out on this question. Some recommend 4 – 12 tags, others say the less the better and still others maintain the more you use, the higher you will rank.

When visitors click on a particular tag, they reach the page whereon all posts, having the same tag, are displayed. It allows them to look for the desired content easily. Tags and categories are both examples of a taxonomy system. When used correctly, a good taxonomy system can boost your site’s SEO. The opposite is also true: when used wrong, it’ll break things. (theblogpress.com/)

What have you found worked for you?

Less tags or more?

Do you use Categories and Tags, or one or the other? Let me know in the comments.

Worldly Wisdom

 No one can climb a tree with no branches

– Finnish proverb

Birch Trees in Helsinki, Finland

What do you think the underlying message says. Does it refer to the support of friends and family that folk find so essential to personal growth and development?

Or, could it refer to the many divergent paths one might consider, or does take throughout life, before we reach our ultimate destination or end goal?

I often find there is profound wisdom in proverbs, sayings and quotes and I marvel at the way they are so succinct in communicating messages, to the reader. Mostly anonymous, they come to us from past generations and from across cultures. They speak of the experiences of lives lived and lessons learned. Quotes, like proverbs, make us think more deeply about something.

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Nothing is more beautiful and powerful than a smile that has struggled through the tears

~ Demi Lovato (Actress and Singer Song-writer)

Source Credit: http://www.cuded.com

This theme of this week’s  quotes is power, not raw power, but rather that power of the self, as an entity, that power we find within ourselves.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful

you will be

~ Bruce Lee

We have nothing to lose by trusting the infinite power

of the Self, except the bondage of our own ignorance

~ Mata Amritanandamayi Devi

First World Problems

And finally there are these words:

“You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now.

How?

By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged.   Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.”

–Dale Carnegie

Linking to Friendly Friday’s Smiles Challenge

Sharing one’s perspective increases understanding.

How to Please People

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

Jim Rohn

Do you like to Help Others?

We are encouraged to help others according to the religious and social conventions of our world. Doing so, promotes joy in others, a sense of, ‘loving kindness,’ in our interactions with others and community.

But,

where are the boundaries between helping others and neglecting our own needs in order to please others?

People-pleasers typically have low self–esteem. They overdo it on kindness and helpfulness because they feel a need to prove their worth. They’re uncomfortable with conflict and negative emotions, so they work hard to always keep their partners happy, with no concern for their own feelings.

Psychology Today

This statement goes a little far in finger-pointing, and it could incite feelings of guilt in the person who aims to please. But I take their point on the fundamental issue.

So how do we achieve that balance between helping others and not hindering ourselves?

I think that it’s a learning process for some of us.

People pleasers hope that saying yes to everything asked of them will help them feel accepted and liked. However, no matter how nice they are, some people won’t like you for no good reason.

Why not?

Who knows?

Do you like every person you meet?

Kindness or Pleasing Others?

Many people-pleasers confuse the act of pleasing people with kindness. When discussing their reluctance to turn down someone’s request for a favour, they say things like,

“I don’t want to be selfish,” or “I just want to be a good person.”

Consequently, they allow others to take advantage of them.

https://www.psychologytoday.com

It is impossible to be all things to all people. Trying to be that person will just stress you out.

“Some people-pleasers have a history of maltreatment and somewhere along the way, they decided that their best hope for better treatment was to try to please the people who mistreated them.“

Psychology Today

Some People-pleasers seem to spend a lot of time walking on eggshells and neglecting their own boundaries to keep a significant other happy*. For these folks, people-pleasing becomes a habit and a way of interacting with family, friends and other people.

*NB. If this tips over into an abusive relationship, professional help should be considered, at the earliest opportunity.

What You Can Do to Break a People-Pleasing Habit

• Start by saying no to a small request or take a stand for something you truly believe in.
• Express your real thoughts and opinions to something small or less significant.
• Validate the other person’s right to a different opinion before calmly stating your own.

Check to see if this works for you.

A positive or neutral response to this, from the receiver, may help to build confidence in one’s own ability to be more aligned with the true self.

Any adjustments in this communication might mean re-phrasing your words without acquiescing your own beliefs. Validating other people’s right to their own opinion, whilst calmly stating your own, may also be helpful.

“I get why you would think that and it would be nice if I could see it your way/agree with you, but right now, I see it/think differently.”

“The Number 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbours.”

– Napoleon Hill

Friendly Friday Challenge – Quiet Places

The world can be a stressful place at times. Often there is a need to step back and re-energize our tolerance to stress, pressures and worries.

Certain places in the world can be restorative to our spirit. These places may be somewhere in your own region, in your own street or even in one’s own backyard or a quiet city street.

Such ‘Quiet Places,‘ may bring solace and a settling of the nerves.

Dalen, Norway

In the year of Covid confusion, I re-visit quiet places in my dreams. Photo archives bring those memories to life again, if only for a transient moment, in the present time.

Like the time, I stayed up in the mountains of Norway..

Or on the banks of the Tauber River in Germany.

I am drawn to locations by the water, presumably due to the calming effect of the waves gently caressing the shoreline.

What about you?

Where is your ‘Quiet Place?’

Create a Friendly Friday Challenge ‘Quiet Places’ Post

To join the challenge, simply add a ping-back link and a Friendly Friday tag to a new post, then come back here to leave a comment with the published link, so visitors can find you and visit.

If this is your first challenge contribution, there is a full set of instructions on how to join the Friendly Friday Photo Challenge on my blog header.

Friendly Friday will at StPA, in two weeks time. In the meantime, next Friday, you can discover the next prompt at my Friendly Friday Challenge Co-host’s blog, The Sandy Chronicles.

Good Things

Amidst the darkness, turn your face only towards the sun, so the shadows will always fall behind you.

If we look, they can always be found.

The Value of Life and Possessions

Weekly Quote

Compassion motivates people to go out of their way to help the physical, mental, or emotional pains of another and themselves, according to Wikipedia

When I was young, I don’t think I was such a compassionate person. I think I may have been caring and kind, but I do not think I was truly compassionate.

I did not go out of my way, nor did I always take the time to remember the details of others’ lives. I came to realize this was important and meant a lot, when someone takes a moment to enquire how they are faring.

Animals have the ability to teach compassion to anyone.

Possessions

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn’t generosity-it’s only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me. Jean-Paul Sartre

http://www.azquotes.com/author/13003-Jean_Paul_Sartre

Satre may have been considered to be selfish to want others to be enslaved by beautiful things. This could even have been considered as lacking in compassion.

Or, did he think that others would be less bothered by the entrapment and possession of objects to the same extent that he was?

Existential thoughts

What is your relationship with the objects you possess?

Do you jealously guard treasured possessions or give them away if they are no longer useful to you, regardless of their value?

Why is it we want to accumulate so many material objects in our lives, knowing that we cannot take them with us when we are done?

Do you think Simone de Beauvoir’s quote is valid?

Join in the conversation by leaving a comment below.

Hometown Conversations

My 7th Great Grandfathers house Sønder Felding

Hometown – Home – Hjem

What does it mean?

There is that trite saying – “Home is where the heart is,” but that saying means little to me. My current hometown is a relatively new one, at the Home by the Sea.

Origins

Whilst my blogger colleague, Sandy has lived in many different places in many countries, I have lived in just four cities my entire life, and all four in the same country, Australia. Three in the same state. Yet it is a different country on the other side of the globe to me, that captures what most would recognize as a feeling of home. Home: that warm fuzzy feeling of sanctuary one gets when they hear that word.

I never felt that feeling in any of my previous hometowns and don’t like to dwell too much on them, much less write about them. But there is one place that I felt completely relaxed and ‘hyggelig,’ and that was the time I spent in Denmark. Danes have such a knack for creating a comforting, cosy atmosphere in their homes that they invented a unique word to describe it. Hygge.

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Growing up in Australia, I actually knew very little of Denmark and even less about the town my family came from. I had seen a photograph and read a book in 1995, but that was pretty much all. The pictures in that book were a revelation and they entranced me. From that moment, I was on a mission to figure out how I could visit that magical place and my family’s hometown.

Arriving in Denmark

I longed to visit Denmark and I’d waited and saved for years. Despite this, it seemed both corny and surprising that when that SAS aeroplane, I was seated in, touched down on the tarmac of that longed-for country, I had a strong sense of relief wash over me, a sense of coming home. Could I put that down to wishful thinking and finally reaching my goal? If so, why was I so utterly surprised at the extent of this overwhelming feeling I couldn’t get out of my head? Being there at that moment, just felt right.

DNA Memory and Research

Some think there is more to DNA memory. That you can remember certain things through the generations and heredity.

Animals such as mice, have been able to pass on useful environmental information learnt during their lives to their offspring two generations hence, even though it was not in their original DNA. This appears to occur after a traumatic event.

Scientists have conducted studies with roundworms that indicate they can ‘remember’ information for up to 14 generations.

Don’t you think that is fascinating?

That a Grandparent or ancestor might learn a vital piece of information in their early life and you, as a grandchild or descendant might express, feel, exhibit or react to, a certain stimulus in the same way as that Grandparent might have done?

This may be what happened when I visited Denmark. Whether it was DNA, or the expression of a gene with a particular leaning towards certain environmental factors, or something else. I can’t say.

Do you have a longing to a certain place? Is it your home or is it another place in the world?

Join the Conversation with Sandy and Amanda on your hometown.

Friendly Friday – Anniversaries

September seems to be the month for it.

Wedding anniversaries, Relationship anniversaries, work anniversaries and special occasions.

I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised.

September is Spring in this part of the world and for those that dislike winter and cool mornings, it is cause for celebration when the earth turns towards the sun again.

Brides choose September for their weddings.

Do they do that in the North as well?

Weekly Friendly Friday Theme

Friendly Friday challenges you to look back on your own Anniversaries. Where were you last year, six years ago, ten years ago or more?

My photo archive indicates I am frequently found close to the water on my Anniversary.

The wild surf at Greenmount headland, at Coolangatta draws us in.

A surfer was taken by a shark right at this point, just two days ago.

A father in his 40’s who surfed here every day. He was rescued, taken ashore but paramedics could not save him. The shark, believed to be a Great White, left its tooth embedded in the bite mark on his surfboard.

On our anniversary visits, I rarely went in for a swim, preferring to walk in the shallows and then past the old Shark Tower monument, which was erected in the 1960s for lifesavers to use as an observation site.

From that point, I would follow the boardwalk through the pandanus trees around the headland.

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  waves

Even though we have nets to protect swimmers, the killer shark appears to have swum underneath the six-metre nets that line the shore.

The irony of the local name: ‘Snapper Rocks” Hotel and Surf Club, does not escape me.

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Join in with the Friendly Friday Challenge

Add a Friendly Friday tag, to your anniversary post, including a pingback, or if that is confusing, read the full instructions on joining in with the Friendly Friday Challenge.

Please remember to leave a comment below as pingbacks don’t always work.

Next Friday, Sandy will have another challenge for us.

Happy Anniversary.