My clothes are out of my suitcases, and through the washing machine.
My refrigerator has milk and eggs again.
And I have started to open up my ‘acquisitions’ that I have made on my trip.
I have several more of the animal figures from Yodobashi Camera’s toy department and will post more tomorrow.
Fire Salamander (Schleich #14870). The fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) is a common species of salamander found in Europe.Indian peafowl (Takara Tomy Ania #AS-16). The Indian peacock or Indian blue peafowl (Pavo cristatus), is the national bird of India and is native to the Indian subcontinent and Sri LankaThe peacock’s feathers can be made to spread.Emperor penguin (Schleich #14841). The emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica.
Headlines and text by the New York Times. Photo by El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office.
The bear, which the sheriff’s office nicknamed Fuzzy, sampled as many flavors as it could get its paws on, the authorities said.
Tubs lay overturned, ice cream half eaten, the authorities said. Paw prints stretched across the black-and-white floor like stick stamps.
The deputies startled the bear, which stopped eating but could not find the exit. They shouted and shined their lights. Finally, the animal lumbered through the front door and back into the dark, the authorities said. The deputies followed to shoo it away from nearby buildings and into the forest.
—Mark Walker writing for the New York Times, about a bear found in the ice cream parlor at 4 am in the morning at Camp Richardson, a 128-acre resort in South Lake Tahoe, California.
I was near Lake Union for two appointments this morning and took these pictures.
Top to bottom—
Rowing lessons for kids near a flotilla of moored yachts;
Troublemakers (Canadian geese) on the docks;
Space Needle and Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI);
Incoming floatplane;
Departing floatplane— the last one of four in a row— but then the first to become airborne (in the center of the last picture).
World Lion Day is celebrated annually on August 10th.
It’s a day dedicated to raising awareness about the challenges lions face in the wild and supporting their conservation. The day was founded in 2013 by Derek and Beverly Joubert to highlight the declining lion populations and the threats they face, such as habitat loss and poaching.
The Lion Hotel in the city of Springs in South Africa, advertising Lion Beer, circa 1954. Lion Beer would later become Lion Lager. Lion Lager is a popular choice for various gatherings and social events to this day. It’s often enjoyed during braais (South African barbecues), sports matches, and family celebrations.Lion safety matches. There was a time in the ’50’s in South Africa when an entire little box of 50 matches could be bought for one penny.I had been to Botswana with my family for more than a dozen times by 1993, and even by then had never seen a lion in the wild from up close there. When we were there in July 1993, though, one of the locals came to tell us of a lion that they had spotted nearby. Seven or eight of us piled into an open-top Jeep ( ! ), and I took this picture through the mopane leaves with a telephoto lens.2018 Austria Copper €5 New Year’s ‘A Lion in Winter’ coin.Artwork by David Pollack, used in Jell-o’s campaign of printed ads in LIFE magazine and others in the 1950s. The lion and a plate of Jell-O appeared in the ads, with the words “When I’m eating Jell-O, I wish I were a lion .. because then I could roar for more of my favorite dessert! (Jell-O, of course!)”I took this picture in New York City in 1999.The Pleistocene Epoch, often referred to as the Ice Age, in Alaska, as with the rest of the world, extended from approximately 2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago. Look at the center of the picture for the lions that once roamed in North America. The North American lion, also known as the American lion, became extinct around 10,000 years ago along with several other large mammals. [Picture taken inside University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks in 2023]A ‘Hungry Lion’ fast food franchise in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2017.A pride of lionesses inspect a remote controlled camera buggy. I believe the photographer is Chris McLennan and that the pictures were taken in 2019. I’m sure it is in Africa, but I don’t have the specific location.On a South African bank note from 1992: lionesses at the water hole, and a regal stare from the king of the beasts.Luggage locker in Tokyo Station, Japan.Lion figurine (model #17107) by toymaker Schleich.
This series is still called the sixth definitive series of South African postage stamps— but the redrawn version of it.
The images of animals and birds are larger and without frames.
Up to four different kinds of paper were used in the printing process for some denominations.
I still don’t have all the combinations, but this is a great start.
I reworked my pages with the sixth definitive series of South African postage stamps.
The inscriptions with the animal names were first in Latin (1993).
A new set with additional denominations was issued later, with inscriptions in English (1996).
These pages with 8 pockets (rows) allows me to display all the stamps in one set on one page— very nice.
P.S. Some of the pairs of stamps look the same but they are printed on different paper, with slightly different shades of white. That makes the ink colors look different as well. And of course I cannot just choose one. I need to put both in.
Happy Friday.
These black-eyed Susans must be looking out to the skies for a little rain.
It’s the 25th of the month, and there has been none so far.
The average for July in Seattle is 0.78 in.
The black-eyed Susan or yellow coneflower belongs to the family Asteraceae.
The lilies in the community garden at Republican St and 20th Ave E here on Seattle’s Capitol Hill are gorgeous.
Lilies (genus Lilium) is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants growing from bulbs. Lilies are among the oldest cultivated plants. They have been cultivated for at least 4,000 years. [From Wikipedia and Google Search Labs | AI Overview]
A reader sent in this set of photos to the South African newspaper Die Burger (The Citizen).
Kitty of the Kgalagadi The reader Estelle Jordaan writes: “A once-in-a-lifetime experience .. we were in the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park (in the Kalahari Desert region of Botswana and South Africa, bordering Namibia to the west). On our early morning drive from Nossob (at Marie se Draai) we came across seven young lionesses who came walking up the road from the front. One was very curious and approached our vehicle. The next moment she first stood with her paws on our pickup’s runner board, and then upright against the pickup with a ‘high five’ with one paw against the window (luckily the window was closed!). Then she decided she wanted to explore the side mirror more closely and taste it… the damage to the mirror? A small tooth hole, and a few light scratches– but we rather see it as lasting evidence of the best memory so far.” [Photos by Estelle Jordaan. Published in Die Burger newspaper online, Thursday Jul. 10, 2025]
Clarissa Brincat writes in the Science section of the New York Times of July 15, 2025: Researchers at Cocha Cashu Biological Station in southeastern Peru set up a camera trap to study bird behavior, but they got a surprise guest appearance instead: an ocelot trailing an opossum through the jungle at night.
The ocelot, a wild cat slightly larger than a house cat, and the common opossum, a marsupial, are usually predator and prey. But in this video, they moved in tandem— like two old friends walking home from a bar.
Intrigued, they contacted researchers in other parts of the Amazon who turned up three additional, nearly identical videos from different locations and years.
… Opossums’ attraction to ocelots remains a mystery, but Dr. Damas-Moreira and her colleagues suspect there’s something that draws both animals. One hypothesis is “chemical camouflage.” “Opossums have a strong smell, and a close-by ocelot might help hide the opossum’s scent from bigger predators, or the opossum’s odor might mask the ocelot’s presence from prey,” said Ettore Camerlenghi, an evolutionary biologist and ecologist at ETH Zurich and an author of the study. Opossums are also resistant to the venom of pit vipers, a snake that lives in the Amazon. Ocelots lack that defense, and teaming up could give both animals an edge when hunting, Dr. Camerlenghi said. In North America, a similar alliance exists between coyotes and badgers, who buddy up to hunt squirrels.
[Stills from videoclips in the New York Times article ‘Videos From the Amazon Reveal an Unexpected Animal Friendship’]
We did have the hottest day so far this year here in Seattle, with a high of 91°F (33°C). I waited until it was almost dark before I ventured out for a walk.
Sunset is now at 9.02 pm.
No, my phone’s camera was not malfunctioning. I found this coneflower (genus: Echinacea) tonight. They usually come in purple and pink varieties. This is likely a hybrid, perhaps the ‘Green Twister’ (Echinacea purpurea) that features a distinctive two-toned appearance with lime green and magenta petals.
The stamps of last of the four South African homelands that issued stamps, made it into my album: those of Venda. (A sample below).
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s parents were of the Venda ethnicity. The Venda people reside primarily in the Limpopo province of South Africa, near the border with Zimbabwe. They have a rich and distinctive culture, including a unique language called Tshivenda or LuVenda (I see it is simply called ‘Venda’ on Google Translate).
Venda, officially the Republic of Venda, was a Bantustan that was declared independent by the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1979. (In the far north of South Africa on the map). On 27 April 1994, independent Venda ceased to exist as it was reintegrated into South Africa to became part of modern-day Limpopo Province. Venda’s stamps were still valid for postage, though— the 16c stamp below on the last page has a 1997 cancellation.
Hydrangea is derived from Greek and means ‘water vessel’ (from ὕδωρ húdōr “water” + ἄγγος ángos or ἀγγεῖον angeîon “vessel”), a reference to the shape of its seed capsules. [From Wikipedia]
It was another cool and overcast day here in Seattle with 66°F (19°C) and a little rain this afternoon.
The garden dahlia, peony and borage (starflower) are from the P-Patch community garden at Republican St and 20th Ave E.
I have expanded my South African stamp collection to include the four Bantustans (homelands) that had issued postage stamps from 1976 to 1994. Technically these are not stamps from South Africa.
Although these stamps were denominated in South African Rand, they were not valid for mail that was sent from outside the homelands.
Below is a sampler of pages from my collection for Ciskei.
First, a little history. This is what South Africa looked like before the first democratic election of 1994. The four main provinces were established in 1910, and the Bantustans (homelands) were established by the South African apartheid government. After the 1994 election, the Bantustans ceased to exist, and were reincorporated into South Africa. Nine new provinces were established: Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West, and Western Cape.
[More from Wikipedia: Bantustan]- A Bantustan (also known as a Bantu homeland, a black homeland, a black state or simply known as a homeland) was a territory that the National Party administration of the Union of South Africa (1910–1961) and later the Republic of South Africa (1961–1994) set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia), as a part of its policy of apartheid. The government of South Africa declared that four of the South African Bantustans were independent—Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskei (the so-called “TBVC States”), but this declaration was never recognized by anti-apartheid forces in South Africa or by any international government. Other Bantustans (like KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa) were assigned “autonomy” but never granted “independence”.
It was a quiet and mild Juneteenth* holiday here in the city today, with a high of 68 °F (20°C).
On this last day of spring, the rain gauges still show zero for June.
That should change tomorrow, with much needed rain in the forecast.
*Juneteenth, officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, is a federal holiday in the United States. It is celebrated annually on June 19 to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States.
The amigos ran out this morning to play pickleball, but found the courts swamped with players, everywhere. So we met at Chuck’s Hop Shop in Central District for beers early in the evening. I walked back home from there, and took pictures of the flowers with my phone’s Portrait mode (so that it blurs the background). These are cotton lavender, belonging to the family Asteraceae.
Happy Friday.
The white daisies are out, here on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
There are over 20,000 species of daisies— the flowering plants belonging to the Asteraceae family. It is one of the largest plant families. The central disk is actually a cluster of small, tightly packed flowers called disk florets. The ring of larger, more showy petals is called ray florets. [Shot on iPhone 16 Pro’s Portrait mode with Natural Light filter]
The stamps to complete my 1931 set of South West Africa’s* first definitive stamps arrived in my mailbox today, and I promptly added them into my album.
*Namibia, since 1990. Namibia’s history spans from the arrival of hunter-gatherers like the San and the Bantu-speaking peoples to European colonialism and finally, independence.
Key periods include it as a German colony (1884-1915), a South African mandate (1915-1990), and the struggle for independence during that time, culminating in the nation’s independence on March 21, 1990.
[Source: Google Search Labs | AI Overview]
The 1½ penny was issued later (1937), but I included it in the set .. why not? I have a mint 1½d pair coming, but the used ones that I have now with OTJIEWARONGO and GROOTFONTEIN postmarks are cool, too. What’s unusual with this set is that the country name is in a different font for each denomination. Usually, the lettering for the country name is identical for all the stamps in a definitive set. The 20 shilling stamp denomination at the very end of the set is an extremely high value and must have been intended for very heavy or very large parcels. (20 shillings translates to a modern currency value at least 10x than the highest denominated modern stamps!). Furthermore: The “Okuwahakan Falls” depicted on the 1931 20-shilling stamp of South West Africa is something of a mystery. Despite its prominent appearance on the stamp, there is no well-documented waterfall in present-day Namibia known by this name, either historically or currently. Chat GPT says it is possibly a former or obscure name for a known waterfall: One candidate is Ruacana Falls on the Kunene River (the border with Angola). Another is Epupa Falls, further downstream on the Kunene. Both are among Namibia’s only notable large waterfalls. It is speculative, but “Okuwahakan” could be an old or alternate indigenous name for one of these falls.
The rose is from the little rose bush in my front garden.
From Google Search Labs | AI Overview:
Roses have a long history, with the earliest evidence suggesting their existence dating back 35 million years. Fossil evidence indicates roses were present in North America as early as the Late Eocene period (38 to 33.9 million years ago).
However, their cultivation in gardens, particularly in China, began roughly 5,000 years ago. Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, wrote about roses being grown in imperial gardens about 2,525 years ago.
It’s the last Monday of May, and Memorial Day in the United States— the day for honoring and mourning the U.S. military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Red poppies from a garden in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle. The red poppy is a nationally recognized symbol, worn to honor and remember all those who have served.
