Well, not only I am still alive ... I also feel exceptionally alive today, maybe not more alive than ever - but definitely more alive tan usual ...
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... because the weather is sunny, and I'm surrounded ... I mean, I was surrounded an hour ago when these photographs were taken, but "I'm surrounded" somehow sounds better ... to me, at least ...
... so, the weather is bright and warm ... and I'm surrounded by a multitude of beautiful white flowers ...
... of the Cistus monspeliensis plant ... the nature is full of life, and so am I.
Some pretty big, hairy fly was enjoying the sunny day on the juicy, aromatic Cistus leaf, so the insect ended up caught on the photograph ... and is part of this post now.
These shrubs grow in dry, stony & sunny places ... and sometimes ... I mean, in some places ...
... they cover kilometers of coastal slopes ...
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... and create a fantastic springtime phenomenon when the flowers appear.
Down on the stony ground, under the Cistus shrubs, I found many interesting plants ... but since I was there mainly to relax and have fun with a bunch of friends, I photographed only one of those plants ...
... the Ajuga chamaepitys ...
... commonly known as the ground-pine. It looks a bit like a minuscule pine ... I guess ...
... and has small but photogenic flowers.
All those flowers around me looked like some kind of natural firework celebrating the life on earth. Beside the small ground - pine ...
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... I photographed some real, tall pines along the way.
On this, and the following two photographs ...
... you can see the remains of bunkers and places for big cannons that were overlooking the sea passage underneath, in the times of the Austro-Hungarian Empire ...
... when all this area, the southern cape of the Istra peninsula was heavily fortified, as an important naval stronghold of that empire.
And that's all I wanted to say ... the springtime brings new life to this landscape, that is uniformly green in winter and dry & brown in summer ... only in this short, less than a month period, it looks like this ...
... as always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work.
