Rainbow

Never been that close to a rainbow! It seemed that I could reach one of its ends, that started just across our driveway... It didn't last long - the rainbow moved further and further away, till the bright colours disappeared.

It was a very big rainbow - shame I couldn't get all of it into one photo! I need a panoramic camera... (Hmm... I'd really like to get a new one, just haven't decided what it will be.)

Scientific explanation of this wonder: a rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere. They take the form of a multicoloured arc, with red on the outer part of the arch and violet on the inner section of the arch.
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(Information found in Wikipedia)

For Garden Lovers

That’s aquilegia (also known as columbine, granny’s bonnet and jack-in-trousers). We’ve had it in our garden for several years, but I never tried to find out more about the plant. It starts flowering in the end of May and its pastel coloured petals immediately attract my attention – they seem so soft and delicate!

A few days ago I went through some old Country Living magazine’s* (hey, isn’t one allowed to look at that beautiful country life they depict and dream?) and found an article on aquilegias. I couldn’t believe my eyes – they can be blue and violet, red and light orange… Oh, and all of those petal shapes… What a variety!

It turned out that the plant comes from north America and that there are about 70 species. They can be tall and short, single and double, with long and short-spurred blooms and in almost every colour. This flower can easily cope with a bit of shade and isn’t very fussy about soil – that’s ideal for an amateur gardener like me. So I decided that I want more aquilegias and as you can imagine was very happy to find this phrase in the article: ‘…[they are] shamelessly fertile’.

All you need is to wait till the plant drops its seeds - tiny black one's, that ripen in small pods. The best time to sow them indoors is March. If you do so they will be ready for bedding out in autumn, but will flower only the next spring.

I don't think that my blog gets a lot of readers (probably just occasional few), but if you are reading this, if you are a keen gardener, if you have other species of aquilegia and if you would like to grow the one I have (oh, so many conditions...) I'm offering you to swap the tiny black seeds and to widen the scope of aquilegias in your garden! Well, if you are interested just leave a comment, so that I could contact you.
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* Country Living, May 2007

Lithuania

I thought that it would be very hard to choose a Lithuanian book for my ‘Virtual Tour’ as so many authors deserve to be here! How can I write just about one book and then hope that it would represent my country and Lithuanian literature as the whole? But I knew everything would be fine when in a shop I picked up a book by Kristina Sabaliauskaite.

To tell the truth I didn’t know much about the author – we share the same name, she has a PhD in history of art, has lived in London and used to write for a Lithuanian newspaper – and I didn’t know how good the book would be. The back cover promised to reveal so many secrets that I decided not to wait and to find out if this girl is worth all the praises.

I was nicely surprised. I’d say she scores 10 out of 10. No doubt Kristina Sabaliauskaite can tell gripping stories and make you travel in time!

‘Silva Rerum’ – Latin phrase that stands for ‘forest of things’, but in the 16-18th century it used to be the title for a family chronicle, a book where Lithuanian and Polish noblemen would register important events: weddings, birth and death dates, also poems or quotes, and then pass it to the other generations. Kristina’s silva tells the story of Narwoysz family and lifts the veil that has been casted other the previous centuries. The narration is so vivid and complete that after reading the book you‘ll know what it was really like back then – you’ll know the taste, the smell, you’ll be able to imagine every single detail and to finally realise what unseen currents were governing peoples lives.

2009 is the year when we mark the millennium of Lithuania. It’s an important date that has evoked lots of discussions how we should celebrate it. ‘Silva Rerum’ is the book of the millennium as its author has put all of her talent and knowledge into producing an opus teaching us our own history – can there be a better way to celebrate such a date?

Other opinions about the book:

"...If they only knew about this book, Dan Brown and John Irwing would be terribly jealous. And Adam Mickiewicz would applaud. The book of the year - no, rather of the decade!" Emilija Visockaitė, Pravda.lt

"... The characters and the atmosphere are drawn tastefully and with the art historian's emphasis on aesthetic details, the storyline is solidly built, the intrigue is maintained, and one can hardly stop oneself reading..." Giedrė Kazlauskaitė, "Verslo žinios", 2009 02 20

"...I would like "Silva Rerum" to become a film...", theatre director Gintaras Varnas, Kultūra, Alfa.lt, 2009 02 14

For more information please have a look here: http://www.sabaliauskaite.com/index.php