Civic Fountains - A Photo Blog

It's been an up and down week and my mood swings haven't been pretty. I need a post where I'm not thinking about anything except beauty and fun, so while people are waiting out the storms on Hawaii and others are anticipating amazing waves for surfing coming to the Cortes Bank from the storm, I want to examine some controlled waterworks - fountains. Architectural and civic fountains can often instill hope and bring smiles to the populace even as they make the air cooler and decorate the area. Here's a photo blog for your Saturday enjoyment.

I love these playful children in a public fountain located
in Kansas City. Doesn't it make you want to join them? 

Although there are many fountains featuring Samson and the Lion, this
one in Prague has a rather unusual focus.  Is it the angle of the
photo? Is it the water pressure? I'll let you come to your own conclusions. 

This lovely and well-used civic fountain is the Keller Fountain located
in Portland, Oregon, USA. I've been to Portland several times and have
always enjoyed the city and the general area. It's a beautiful place to live. 

The public square in Pilsen, Czech Republic, has three fountains
designed to reflect the city's coat of arms. Each features a golden
delivery system.  I thought these were so unique and
attractive that I have the other two pictured below. 

Here is the second of these lovely fountains. 

And here is the third fountain. Architectural fountains are often
very boring and almost cookie-cutter in design. These are unique and
bring a bit of color to a rather uniform environment. 

This fountain called the "Nine Floating Fountains" in Osaka is a great
picture to end this post on unusual civic fountains. I had no idea what
fountains would end up in my blog today, but I'm very pleased with
what I ended up choosing. 

I hope each of you have a wonderful Saturday and Sunday. I'll be cleaning house and working hard to get things more in shape before Renaissance Festival begins next weekend. My open time is closing down quickly. Be safe, be happy.

Errands and Pictures of Fountains - Just Because

Today is my day off which means errands all over town, repairs backed up waiting for my attention, an illustration for CB that I had hoped to get to last week (didn't happen) that maybe can be done today, and my weekly phone gab-fest with Aearwen which had been postponed last week. All good, but a crazy day for sure. Because I allowed myself a bit of extra sleep this morning, I'm running a bit late. I think it's time for a picture blog and because the world has so much bad going on, I'm going to concentrate on uplifting things...FOUNTAINS! Today I'm looking at less traditional styled fountains from around the world.

Broken Sidewalk fountain doesn't rise high but has lots of water.

This is similar using white glass in an interior setting.

This fountain is named Sea Passage. I love the mosaic tiles adding
interesting color and texture to the water.

The Julie Penrose Fountain. I think I've shown this one before, but
it is one of my favorites. It's in Colorado Springs, Colorado. So pretty!

This is the Tanner Fountain at Harvard University. It's fun, flurty, a
cool place to relax and a great place to rock jump if you're so inclined.

And finally, two views (day and night) of the Fountain of Wealth in Singapore...

Fountain of Wealth - Singapore

Fountain of Wealth - Singapore at night

Fountain Beauty

It's Saturday and I have no motivation. Just getting to work and then home again with Chipotle in my hand will be about the limit of my energy today. I'm deep into research for my NaNo since my planned novel is historical in nature and I'll be ordering maps of the area on Monday to post around my room for a few months. My poor DH will have county maps to look at for good or for bad.

We'll start out with the face fountain at the entrance

to Swarovski Crystal World in Austria. I picked this

because I sell a lot of Swarovski crystals in my store,

so it's a nod to work. Now...on to...

I need pretty things today, so I'm going to focus on fountains. No following text, but several pics of wonderful fountains to make your weekend start off well.

This is the Mecom Fountain in Houston, TX (USA). A very

traditional fountain, but strikingly beautiful.

This lovely cone fountain is in Canberra, Australia.

This is a stunning Black/White winter shot of the

fountain at Lincoln Center, New York City, NY (USA)

The Ira Keller fountain is a showcase of downtown

Portland, Oregon (USA). It's huge, soothing, and

very beautiful. A great showcase for one of my

favorite cities.

This is the King Fahd fountain on the Prescott campus

in Saudi Arabia. I love the form of this fountain.

And to finish off this tour, a Magic Tap fountain from

Spain. This style of fountain can be found several places

in the world, but this pic looked so refreshing.

I hope you enjoyed your tour through some fountains. Monday we'll return to thoughts, worries, plans and pratfalls. Have a phenomenal weekend!

Heat and Thanks

It continues hot. Yesterday was 103 F (39.4 C) here in the Twin Cities. The upper story of my house (bedrooms) was at least that hot, even with the fan blowing. The next level down (livingroom/kitchen and the couch where I sleep) was in the 90's with the fan running, and the next level down (computer room, den - messy!) was in the mid-80's with the fan running. The humidity was upwards of 80%. It was miserable. But it was still a wonderful 4th of July. I have to send thanks out to so many of you who Emailed and messaged 4th of July greetings and good wishes. They were so very appreciated.

What could be better for the 4th than fountains and fireworks together?

We had traditional food - not good for you but so good to eat. Hamburgers (covered with blue cheese or Swiss cheese, onions, pickle relish and other condiments after the meat was cooked outside on the charcoal grill, were our dinner. We had a variety of salads and fruit, but ended up saving much of that for tonight's dinner instead. It was a fabulous meal though, and because it was so hot, I actually didn't gain by eating beef - I usually don't eat beef because it is an automatic weight gain for me.

So as I try to catch up with all of the computer messages, etc that have gone on during the past 48 hours, I will be grateful to go to work today since it will be equally hot today. I think we need some nice, cool photographs, so I'm finding fountains to share with all of you today :-)