I was surprised by how large normal-sized traffic lights are (they are a foot in diameter) when seen close up. I was walking by one which happens to be at ground level and this time I put my left hand against it for scale.

View through the diaphanous curtains in the bar at the Stafler Hotel in the village of Mauls, in South Tyrol.

Black vultures in the parking lot of the building next to my hotel in Houston, Texas, last week.

Trees in Vahrn, South Tyrol, last week.

Street scene in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol. Photo taken two weeks ago.

Spring in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol. Photo taken last week.

Spring in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol, three days ago.

The literary critic Hugh Kenner (whom I got to know a bit when I was an undergrad at Johns Hopkins) once wrote about the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) that he “…tired of flowers, and indulged in artificial flowers, and then tired of those and sought out real flowers so exotic they could pass for…

A fruiting hedge at the Soldatenfriedhof in Brixen, South Tyrol. Photo taken in October, 2021.

Scene at the airport in Helsinki in February, 2022.

Self-portrait in a passing train window at the Munich East train station in February, 2022.

Found Frederica Krueger sleeping in my bed like this.

Trees from a train window at the station at the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria, three weeks ago.

Saw this from my train window while entering Munich a couple of weeks ago.

A view of Helsinki, Finland from an aircraft just before landing at the airport there. Photo taken on February 3, 2022.

I awoke yesterday morning to find these ice crystals which had formed on the glass of my window at Akola, near the town of Ii in northern Finland, which is pretty much on the arctic circle (65.3° North latitude). The temperature outside was around -21° C (or around -6° F). The wind chill factor? Don’t…

Snowfall in Franzensfeste, South Tyrol. Photo taken in November of 2019.

Taken from my window an hour ago.

Just a spider spinning a web in Amsterdam that I passed by on the street in November of 2021, stopping for a second to take this photo.

Water freezing on a chain link fence near Mittewald, South Tyrol.