Friday, April 17, 2015

Aurora in Hundvag 17th April 2015

In the wee hours of the morning, a spectacular showing of the northernlights not 5 mins away from home after a strong geomagnetic storm a few days earlier. I was hoping it'd come around during a clear night ... and so it did.

Here are some of the photos:





 










It was a spectacular display second only perhaps to an earlier event 17th March which I had missed. The show started around 11:37pm and continued well into the morning. by the time I left at 4am it was still there in the northern sky though not as intense. 1000 shots later I now have a complete sequence for a proper timelapse video. Let's us how that turned out.

There were also some very unique shots by other people from the Stavanger Aurora Chasers of which I'm also a member.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Blast from the past ... Balloerveld

There is this very nice dunes and heather preserve near Rolde called Balloerveld. Having driven passed it so many times in the past, we decided to have a picnic there one spring weekend. Though Daddy and Ali have cycled there previously the year Aisya was born, this is the first time for Mommy and Aisya.

Balloerveld is very popular with walkers, cyclist and birdwatchers, and it forms part of the network of the National Drente Landscape. It's populated by heather, silver birch and ancient pines. The silver birch is most beautiful in autumn and spring while the heather holds its own in late summer/ early autumn when the entire place is turned purple by its tiny blooms.

We selected a nice shaded spot near the central sand dunes under some ancient pines and hanged out among the pine cones and heather all morning long. Ali recognised it as a "European old growth forest" (in his own words) though to the uninitiated it may look more like a well tended garden with only the odd twigs and broken pine cones littering the ground.

Aisya was fussy at first but later took quite well to the pine cones, heather and the numerous rabbit trails. Mommy only wished we'd been here more often and maybe even export a piece of "this" back to Malaysia for into own backyard. Daddy already felt at home. We left the outdoors to the confines of home a couple of hours after lunch just in time for the children nap in the car.












Blast from the past ... Keukenhoff

It's finally spring and the flowers are blooming ... not satisfied with tulips we have in our backyard (a few bulbs we were testing on) we went to Keukenhof a day after returning from Maastricht. Mommy and Daddy enjoyed the foray on what was a nice sunny day, Ali didn't seem to as much. He prefered running around and getting physical with the blooms ... which meant that at critical moments he ended up strapped to the buggy ... poor Ali.