Toadfish Monastery

No surprise there. One can find a lot of Soviet equipment in the bunker too. The gamma-ray detector that in an emergency would have locked the complex from the outer world is even still working. The bunker guides say that they don't know why the Russians did not remove it after 1990 as was their custom with 'secret' equipment, maybe they simply forgot that it was there.

I was walking by this vase today and was struck by the way the light was hitting the wall. At this time of year (Autumn's coming in, here) the light becomes so interesting. I had to run and get my camera.

I love the reflected light!

This past Sunday we went to a butterfly park no to far from home. This place is a photographer's paradise and I took my (relatively) new camera for a spin:






Here is a link to the full album (I took more pictures but uploaded the most representative):
https://picasaweb.google.com/106627152868409907082/20110925MamaMariposas?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLWn1tWIh_PgNQ&feat=directlink

Those are really lovely, Zono.  What camera is it?

A Sony DSLR-A330, the lens I used was a 55-200 and I used a high aperture ~5.

I especially like the first one, with the light falling through the leaves.

I am working on getting some pic of the beautiful statue and water feature here at the Otter Creek library-- it is just a grand job they did.
Fall out of your chairs when I finally get it all figured out.

Do we have an expert here that can make sense of this?

It's a picture of a badly constructed rope ladder? Or a fossil of a dinosaur's teeth with bad dental work?

It's written in runes, I think the elder Futhark.



Or it might be a variant runic alphabet, but they're all pretty similar. Can't be bothered to transliterate it, it's not very clear.  Seems to begin: i a th ?

It could be a small Kensington Stone!

I can't see all the signs clearly.  

It's hard to  judge what kind of runes the person that made this little stone intended to use.
I think I can rule out The Scandinavian Futhark aka the younger Futhark because of (among other things) the F:s.
The second sign however, is a younger Futhark U... The older looks like a upside down V.

Sign 3 and 8 are unreadable to me, sign 8 might be something out of "The futhorc" ie the Anglo-Saxon runes, but the rest is as DavidH already pointed out the elder Futhark.

To me it spells out:
I
A
?
th
U
H
I
F
?
T
A

Makes sense... no... but as usual a lot lies in the context.

* living in Mälardalen which could rightly be called "Runestonevally" Runes isn't that exotic. "This"http://www.illustrata.com/pages/sigurdsristning/sigurdpano.html was literally on my back yard when I lived in Eskilstuna.   

Quote from: DarliThe second sign however, is a younger Futhark U...

Ah, yes!  Thanks, Darli, I couldn't make it out.  Having had almost nothing to do with runes, I stupidly didn't consider that the writer might not be using one of the sets we have now standardised.
I read 3 as Þ thorn and 4 as ƿ wynn (to use the A/S names - I don't know your Scandinavian ones   ).

EDIT: http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x97/Swatopluk/DSCI0110.jpg  hmmmmm......
I think I was a bit slow there.  Pieces appears to have twigged it.

One L clearly turned into another U.
Chiseling is harder than it looks even on soft rock, at least that is my experience.