Kaïopai° posted a photo:

Brunnen der Jubiläums-Gartenbau-Ausstellung 1926 in Dresden, 1926 oder später aufgenommen.

Weiss jemand wo genau dieser Brunnen im Grossen Garten stand?

"16.17.18. Juli"

BubbaMN posted a photo:

BubbaMN posted a photo:

BubbaMN posted a photo:

BubbaMN posted a photo:

Over 113,000 rugby fans turned out for the three-day Hong Kong Sevens, which ran from Friday to Sunday, with South Africa’s men’s team and New Zealand’s women’s team winning the championship titles.

In a press release on Sunday, the Hong Kong Sevens said 37,000 fans packed Kai Tak Stadium for the final day of the games, which reached a “thrilling crescendo” that evening.

South Africa’s men’s team made history with their first-ever victory at the Hong Kong Sevens, beating Argentina, as New Zealand’s women’s team secured their fourth Hong Kong Sevens title.

See also: Raucous partying and some rugby as Hong Kong Sevens turns 50

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s men’s team won the Melrose Claymores – a competition held at the Sevens that focuses on Asian teams – for the third straight year after beating Japan 19-15.

However, Hong Kong’s women’s team did not reach the finals after losing to Thailand 14-24 on Saturday.

First held in the city in 1976, this year’s Hong Kong Sevens marked its 50th anniversary.

It was also the second year the competition was held at Kai Tak Stadium, the centrepiece of the city’s biggest sporting facility, Kai Tak Sports Park, which opened last year.

Chief Executive John Lee, who watched the Sevens on Sunday, said he spoke with overseas and mainland Chinese business representatives between matches. They praised the tournament and said they were “filled with confidence” about Hong Kong’s future development, he added.

“Hong Kong is committed to carrying forward the energy of the rugby sevens, showcasing our city’s charm and multiculturalism as a premier events capital,” he wrote in a Chinese-language post on Facebook.

The first Hong Kong Sevens took place in front of a few thousand curious spectators, and some of the players wore gym shoes in the mud instead of rugby boots.

Fast forward 50 years and the event has grown into a sold-out three-day festival of global repute, mixing sport with socialising, schmoozing and big business.

The runaway success of the Hong Kong Sevens played a key part in rugby returning to the Olympics at Rio 2016 after a 92-year absence.

France’s thrilling men’s sevens gold, inspired by home hero Antoine Dupont, was one of the standout moments of the Paris Games two years ago.

The Hong Kong extravaganza — where legends such as Jonah Lomu and David Campese played in the past — also had a central role in developing the rugby across Asia.

Speaking to AFP on Friday as Hong Kong’s biggest party kicked off, World Rugby chair Brett Robinson said there was nothing quite like it.

“It’s the pinnacle,” he said.

“Firstly, it’s sort of one of the pinnacle events in global sports, let alone rugby.

“It’s the jewel in the crown of our Sevens series.”

‘Really special’

Packed crowds with many flying in from overseas for the weekend are a far cry from when a group of club enthusiasts launched the event in 1976.

Now there are men’s and women’s sides from all over the globe, but then it was mostly teams from Asia and the Pacific in a one-day men’s tournament.

“It started as a bit of a jolly,” former Hong Kong Rugby Football Union president Brian Stevenson, who was involved at the start, once reflected.

A few of the Hong Kong players did not even have the proper footwear, and one of them was a policeman.

A 3,000 crowd packed Hong Kong Football Club to see New Zealand’s Cantabrians win the first Hong Kong Sevens.

“It was a kaleidoscope of colour, full of the pace and grace, thrills and spills and the glorious uncertainty that make seven-a-side rugby arguably the fastest and best ball game in sport,” local newspaper the South China Morning Post purred in its report at the time.

The seed was sown, and the tournament grew as a commercial and sporting success in tandem with Hong Kong’s development as a global financial centre.

The 40,000-capacity Hong Kong Stadium became the tournament’s home, with the South Stand in particular providing a raucous backdrop of well-oiled party-goers decked out in outrageous fancy dress.

After the Covid pandemic put a temporary spoiler on things, the tournament last year moved to the new US$3.85 billion Kai Tak stadium.

The 50,000-seat arena, which boasts a futuristic purplish facade and retractable roof, is purpose-built for rugby sevens with 24 separate changing rooms.

It is on the site of the old Kai Tak airport, famed for its hair-raising approach over the top of nearby housing estates.

Robinson said that when rugby was applying to become an Olympic sport again, delegations were shown Hong Kong to help stake its case for inclusion.

“It’s just really special in terms of the scale of it, the attendance rates, the momentum and the history of the tournament,” he said.

When I set out for Waterton National Park in Alberta, Canada, I imagined fall forests resplendent in golds, accented by oranges and reds. The smell of leaves composting into the earth and the peace of the earth quieting into winter. What I found was a blackened landscape, still deeply scarred by the 2017 Kenow Fire eight years ago.

When the foliage is gone, the structure lies bare. Undulations ripple along the mountainsides; seeps and drainages stand out. 

The rhythms of the forest are speaking in structure, not color. This gift in this landscape of open vistas is long sightlines – a dream for wildlife spotting.

The Kenow Fire ignited with a lightning strike and burned slowly until September 11, 2017, when it blew up in critically dry conditions, surging from 30,000 to 104,000 acres overnight, overtaking Waterton National Park. The Kenow Wildfire was a fire of exceptional severity exceeding every fire since the Park’s records began in 1700. In the end, half of the vegetated land and 80% of the hiking trails in the Park were burnt. 

In almost all of this burn area, most or all of the organic matter was seared away by the fire. The topsoil burned away to a depth of three feet.

Dense conifer forests are being replaced by young aspens and shrubs such as Saskatoon berry, thimbleberry, and huckleberry. It’s a bear’s delight! The conifers will come back, too. They grow relatively slowly.

Fire is necessary, natural, “normal” for these forests. Our human misunderstanding and resulting meddling have given rise to an increase in these large, catastrophic (by human standards) fires. This was a dramatic fire. The recovery is being documented and studied, providing insights into the land’s history and the resilience of nature.It’s often not what I expected, but it’s always an adventure.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post Waterton Park and the 2017 Kenow Fire appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.

With varying degrees of hope, I commonly say that I’m going to find wild cats when I head into the wild with my camera. And so it was that I excitedly shared this cougar alert post from Waterton National Park just a few days before my arrival there. I never expected what happened next.

Here, Kitty, Kitty. Psspsspss.

On the eve of my first day in the park, during a wildlife drive, I lamented the lack of wildlife sightings. All of the park’s communications warn visitors to be prepared for encountering wildlife while hiking. One hundred yards into any trail is this warning sign.The massive 2017 Kenow Fire razed the dense forests, resulting in extensive sightlines. And yet.

Stuck in My Head

I passed by a small gathering of photographers with their big lenses pointed at a black bear high up on a slope. He was too far away, and, honestly, I’m beyond fortunate to be spoiled by previous, intimate bear encounters.

I’d come here to help reset my head. It’d been way too long since I’d been able to wander the wilderness in this way that feeds my soul, and there’s a lot of stress at home. I craved some forest bathing!

Here’s Your Sign

I was having a hard time shedding the stress. “I’ve lost my wildlife mojo,” I said to myself. The wild is responding to my negative energy, I thought as I rounded a bend to see the unmistakable long tail of a mountain lion crossing the road. A wild, North American mountain lion!!

I stopped in the road and activated my flashers while simultaneously grabbing my binoculars. I didn’t expect to locate the ghost cat, master of camouflage, in the low aspens and serviceberry bushes. But there he was. Standing broadside. This magnificent, muscular tomcat looking back at me.

I’ve spent a lot of time in mountain lion territory. I’ve seen tracks, scat, and sign. One delightful winter day, I heard a cougar calling to her kittens. I’m sure plenty of wild cats have seen me. But, until now, I’d never seen one in North America. Ghost cats!

I quickly exchanged the binoculars for my camera. The puma made some assessment of me and turned to pad up the burnt hillside. He moseyed, moving at a relaxed walk, stopping to look around, gently wagging the tip of that long feline tail, doing all the cat things. I reveled in this magical, solitary moment. 

As I watched him disappear and reappear through trees and brush, he crouched below a boulder and scrunched his ears out to the side. The stealthy cat pose. I thought he might be stalking a hare.

It was at this moment that I heard a car approaching. I am stopped in the lane of traffic below a blind curve. I started the car and crept forward with my eyes on the rear-view mirror. In the car behind me, one of the photographers I’d passed activated her flashers, and we both stopped.

I glassed and glassed the hillside but could not find the cougar. The person behind me had their big lens out the window, focused on the slope. I scanned the area where she was looking, astonished that she had found this elusive cat so quickly, when I’d been watching him and can’t find him. Only then do I realize that she’s photographing a black bear higher up the hillside to the left. To the right, a cinnamon-phase black bear is ambling along the hillside toward the other bear. This must be what caught the mountain lion’s attention, causing him to crouch. Bears and cats don’t play well together. I’m sure “my” cat is long gone now.

Still in Awe

When I got home, I checked the time stamps on my images. I spent almost five minutes with this elegant, wild cougar. FIVE MINUTES! A glimpse is a gift. I don’t even know what to call this—unreal, unbelievable, blessed, connection, becoming.

The image of that lion crossing the road when I first saw him is seared in my mind. Today, I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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The post Ghost Cat Revealed appeared first on Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham.