We’re off to Los Angeles, to stay with the little family of our daughter and her partner – about to grow by one more child!
We leave Austria with Spring timidly showing its face. On our last hike in the Wachau, we spied small drifts of pennywort pushing through the forest litter.
My photo
Their light purple petals were almost glowing.
My photo
Further on, on a dry, rocky outcrop overlooking the Danube river, we spied a little group of greater pasque flowers – well named, Easter is around the corner.
My photo
Their yellow hearts stood out against the dark purple of the petals.
My photo
The next day, in the woods covering the hills overlooking Vienna, we bumped into sprays of violets peeping up through the dead leaves.
My photo
So small, so delicate …
My photo
And yesterday, during our last walk around Vienna, which took us through the gardens of the Belvedere Palace, we passed a blooming cherry tree.
My photo
The next time we’re back in Vienna, it will be late summer. Who knows what flowers will greet us then?
I like writing, but I’ve spent most of my life writing about things that don’t particularly interest me. Finally, as I neared the age of 60, I decided to change that. I wanted to write about things that interested me.
What really interests me is beauty. So I’ve focused this blog on beautiful things. I could be writing about a formally beautiful object in a museum. But it could also be something sitting quietly on a shelf. Or it could be just a fleeting view that's caught my eye, or a momentary splash of colour-on-colour at the turn of the road. Or it could be a piece of music I've just heard. Or a piece of poetry. Or food. And I’m sure I’ve missed things.
But I’ll also write about interesting things that I hear or read about. Isn't there a beauty about things pleasing to the mind?
I started just writing, but my wife quickly persuaded me to include photos. I tried it and I liked it. So my posts are now a mix of words and pictures, most of which I find on the internet.
What else about me?
When I first started this blog, my wife and I lived in Beijing where I was head of the regional office of the UN Agency I worked for. So at the beginning I wrote a lot about things Chinese. Then we moved to Bangkok, where again I headed up my Agency's regional office. So for a period I wrote about Thailand and South-East Asia more generally. But we had lived in Austria for many years before moving to China, and anyway we both come from Europe my wife is Italian while I'm half English, half French - so I often write about things European. Now I'm retired and we've moved back to Europe, so I suppose I will be writing a lot more about the Old Continent, interspersed with posts we have gone to visit.
What else? We have two grown children, who had already left the nest when we moved to China, but they still figure from time to time in my posts. I’ll let my readers figure out more about me from reading what I've written.
As these readers will discover, I really like trees. So I chose a tree - an apple tree, painted by the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt - as my gravatar. And I chose Abellio as my name because he is the Celtic God of the apple tree.
I hope you enjoy my posts.
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the heart thrills 