first harvest

Lammastide, the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox

The festival marks the wheat harvest and is the first harvest festival of the year.

dramatic

Pola Negri, a Polish silent film star who was the first European actress invited to Hollywood. 

She was as well known for her love affairs as for her screen roles. When Rudolph Valentino died suddenly in 1926, her histrionics at his funeral proved too much for the public and she was never taken seriously again. She died on August 1, 1987 aged 93. Or 90. Or maybe 88. A mystery.

stairs

winding down Montreal

proost

I was introduced to this beer while living in Amsterdam and for some reason I saved a few (empty) bottles and  brought them back as souvenirs. When I got home, I discovered our bottles were a different colour, so of course I had to collect them as well.

emblems

     Francis I (salamander)                          Louis XII (porcupine)

          Claude de France (goose)              Anne de Bretagne (ermine)

turtles

The spotted turtle (Clemmys guttata) is on the left, while Blanding's turtle (Emydoidea blandingii)  is peeking out on the right. Both are illustrated by Sarah Still (these are very different than her larger than life paintings)


I'm not sure why he is Franklin in English and Benjamin in French, but this Canadian turtle is illustrated by Brenda Clark with the stories written by Paulette Bourgeois






for Sunday Stamps - illustrations

silhouette

a street cat from Russia

CATURDAY

first

The Wawel Castle in Krakow is honoured to be the first designated Unesco World Heritage Site.

The oldest parts date back to 970AD and the structures within the courtyard contain examples
of nearly every architectural style from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods.

lipstick

lipstick matching  her car? of course it will!

sequoia

Sequoia National Park was established in 1890.
Sequoias can live for 3,000 years.

riverfront

the river in this case is named Moira

Captain John Meyers was a Loyalist spy during the American Revolution. After the war he came up to Ontario and started this gristmill as well as a distillery and an inn. The beginnings of the Town of Belleville.

pei

home of Cow's Ice Cream

numbers

The Norwegian post horn design has been in continuous use since it was first used in 1872 (148 years)

The next longest running series is the Danish Wavy Line  first used in 1905 (115 years). Somewhere I read that these lines represent the three main rivers, but I can't find which rivers.

for Sunday Stamps - numbers

jaunty yellow

I can only hear Antonio Banderas' voice for Puss (even if this one is a different breed)

CATURDAY

cowboy

I picked up this card because of the architecture but it's special now because I've been following the fun museum twitter account being run during lockdown by "Tim" #HashtagTheCowboy (yes, he was so new at it that he thought he had to write out the word 'hashtag'!)

fishing

The balancing act.
It must take great skill and years of practice to maneuver these large nets by hand!

fashion

I have been using my lockdown time at home to sort through my postcards...

Kaj Stenvall's ducks don't seem to be as popular as they once were, which is a shame as I quite enjoy his imaginative style.
Both of these received from Finland

sketches

Bastille Day

wrapping the trees

So happy to be outside!

sunset

Cypress trees in Flat Lake at sunset from a photograph by Louisiana wildlife photographer, C.C. Lockwood.  Flat Lake is part of the one million acre river swamp of the Atchafalaya Basin, the largest contiguous river swamp in the US. Appropriately, Atchafalaya derives from Choctaw meaning "long river".

The stamp was issued for the 200th anniversary of statehood.

for Sunday stamps — nightviews

caturday

cat days
from Finland

finlandia

a different route 66
where in Rovaniemi is may get up to a high of 13°C today. a far cry from our unbearable 33°C in Toronto

1920s

Hong Kong street showing tram tracks but no trams.
Today, I imagine this street is very busy though I wonder if any of these buildings still exist.
\

tomatoes and cabbages

I like to support the local farmers as much as I can and the farmer's markets are the best place to do that. If you find yourself in Indonesia, here is what you would call tomatoes (tomat) and cabbage (kubis)

in a garden

If I could be anywhere in the world right now?  

New Zealand comes to mind, for so many reasons.
Gardens are such restorative places, and NZ has many.

a 'one stamp' answer to Eva's question

murad

A sun cured tobacco making it more aromatic than smoke cured. (not that I would know — I've never smoked) Is that not one large carton of cigarettes?!  In the early 1900s their ads were created by Rea Irvin who would later become the art editor of The New Yorker.

st kilda

Life on St Kilda, a remote archipelago in the Outer Hebrides - 110 miles off the coast of Scotland and 40 miles from the next nearest island - in the rough Atlantic ocean, was never easy. The island had been occupied for millennia = though not by very many people - but by 1930 the last 36 inhabitants were finally evacuated. The National Trust for Scotland has recorded gales for 75 days a year with peak winds at 144 mph and peak waves at 52 feet. 

for Sunday Stamps - land and sea

flag

wrapped in the flag

KVIFF

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival          
the award is the Crystal Globe which has been given out since 1948
July 3 to July 11 ... but not this year :(
One of many thousands of events cancelled the world over

the miracle worker

Officially known as Church of St Nicholas the Miracle Worker, the Russian Church was built on the site of a mosque which was destroyed in 1882 after the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottomans by the Russians. The five domes are coated in gold and the bells were donated by Emperor Nicholas II. No word if he ever worshiped there.

hello

A quieter than usual Canada Day
The bears won't have to hide from the fireworks this year.

KGB

Hotel Viru, Tallin

Built in 1972 and the first high rise building in Estonia. From this angle, those two towers look awfully close together giving the whole thing a look of a double headboard and a bed.

In the Soviet era "any hotel that was appropriate for foreign visitors had to be appropriate to the KGB"

So this is also now a home to a KGB Museum.

liver bird

The symbol of Liverpool is the mythical Liver Bird. Here is one of the two that stand watch atop the Liver Building.
They are named Bertie and Bella. Not sure which one is shown here.

800

The Eisteddfod is held every August as a celebration of culture and language in Wales.

 Eight days of competitions in music and poetry.

This 844 year old tradition has only been cancelled once  – in 1914 – until this year.

for Sunday Stamps - anniversaries

people make

GLASGOW

Thinking of (my other city) Glasgow during this tense and sad time

angles of luxury

circa 1964
The Inn on the Park, a long ago luxury hotel in Toronto built in the early 1960s
sadly demolished and now a luxury car dealership (Lexus)

add ons

A medieval castle with a museum and inn.

The oldest parts built in the late 13th C with a rebuild and extension in the 15th C and an 'attic' added in the 17th C and the final renovations completed in the 21st C.  It really does look like one of those buildings which was added on to several times until the original is dwarfed.

vamp

Lya de Putti, a Hungarian silent screen actress

(1897-1931)

flying free

an argument?

It looks like these "two old ladies' have had their fill of each other.
We have finally moved on to stage 2 of re-opening so there's an opportunity to get out of the house!

father

This topic proved harder for me than I thought it might...

But, eventually, I settled on Canadian politician Tommy Douglas (1904-1986) who formed the first democratic socialist government in North America. He is best known as the father of universal health care. Back when such things were popular (2004), he was voted 'Greatest Canadian of All Time'.

You may know his grandson, the actor Kiefer Sutherland.

This stamp shows a portrait by Yousuf Karsh

for Sunday Stamps - father figures