PhotoHunt: "Natural" at Walden Pond

My PhotoHunt contribution this week is a tad late, but I couldn't actually even get this photo until yesterday. It is a close-up detail of autumn leaves floating in Walden Pond...

Far bigger than what you might think from its name (as you can see below), Walden Pond is located near Concord, Massachusetts and was made famous by the writings of the great American author, Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. His book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, is one of the most important books on nature ever written.

As a result, I thought it would be a fitting expression of this week's PhotoHunt theme, "natural"! After all, as Thoreau himself said in Walden,

"Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still."

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PhotoHunt: "Anniversary" Locks of Love on the Ponte delle Tette

My PhotoHunt post for this week's theme, "Anniversary," is a bit late, but the photo is actually a few weeks old and I was just waiting for this occasion to post it!

Venice is, of course, a city filled with bridges, and most of them are named for a particular landmark nearby. This image is of the bridge named the Ponte delle Tette. It gets this characteristic name from the fact that during the Renaissance it was right next to the city's municipal brothel, and the prostitutes used to hang around in the windows above, letting it all hang out (as it were!)

Surely by now you are wondering what this has to do with anniversaries! Well, notice the padlocks on the railing of the bridge... Known as "love padlocks," apparently they've been appearing on the Ponte Milvio in Rome since 2006, when an author for his teen romance novel invented what he called the long-standing tradition of lovers commemorating their commitment to each other by closing a lock onto the bridge and then throwing the key into the river. From there, the locks spread to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and this past summer officials apparently cut 123 padlocks from the Accademia bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice.

When I was walking around the city back in July, I discovered that the practice had also appeared, interestingly enough, on Venice's Ponte delle Tette. So here's my tribute to these strange but rather poetic (and/or ironic) expressions of anniversary! Enjoy!!

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PhotoHunt: "Hot" Dog, Italian Style

Turns out that "hot" was the perfect theme for this week! We've been unseasonably hot on the east coast of the U.S. this past week... In fact, it was Maine's first real heatwave (defined as three or more days above 90 degrees F. ) since 1999!

Anyway, today's pic is one that I snapped on the colorful Venetian island of Burano back in early August, because when I saw it, I just knew it was the perfect "hot" dog!

So, here is my entry taken for this week's PhotoHunt theme, "hot"... a little dog basking in the heat of the island's sunny central piazza. Enjoy!

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