11 December 2020 - ABANDONED RUSSIAN SETTLEMENT IN NORWAY

 

ABANDONED RUSSIAN 

SETTLEMENT IN NORWAY

G'day folks,

On the top of the world at Svalbard, an archipelago situated between Norway and the North Pole, is a place that the world forgot for nearly a decade, a Russian mining settlement established by Sweden in 1910 but then sold to the Soviet Union in 1927, then completely abandoned in 1998.

It’s only reachable with by driving 140km with a snowmobile during winter.

 

Clancy's comment: Brrr ... far too cold for me. 

 

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10 August 2019 - HISTORICAL EVELYN'S MULBERRY IN ENGLAND

 EVELYN'S MULBERRY 

IN ENGLAND

G'day folks,

Legend has it this gnarled old tree was planted by Tsar Peter the Great during his visit to London. 

Laid out by the writer and gardener John Evelyn, Sayes Court Garden in Deptford was among the most renowned botanical collections of 17th-century England. Now mostly vanished under more modern construction, the largest remaining green space in the area is Sayes Court Park, an unremarkable example of 1950s landscaping apart from one feature that has supposedly survived since Evelyn’s time.

 

In the middle of the park, fenced off and with wooden supports holding up its aging limbs, sits a mulberry bush that is reckoned to be over 300 years old. How it got there is not entirely clear and there are many varying accounts. In 2018, a stone was placed at the base of the tree to present the most popular—and probably most apocryphal—of all the stories.

In the 17th century, Deptford was a hub of shipbuilding, which attracted Tsar Peter I, or “Peter the Great” of Russia to the area to research the latest techniques. In 1698 Evelyn leased his Sayes Court Garden to the tsar, who then seemed to forget the main reason for his visit and instead spent his time researching the local pubs. His drunken behavior caused significant damage to the estate—legend has it he trashed the garden by pushing his friends around it in a wheelbarrow, and the mulberry was planted to make up for his exploits.


More likely is that the bush was planted by Evelyn himself, or even predates his possession of the land. Almost a century earlier, King James I had sent out black mulberries to London landowners hoping they would attract silkworms and start a British silk industry. (He failed to realize that silkworms prefer white mulberries.)

Whatever its origin, the mulberry tree is very popular with locals, who quickly gather the fruits when they appear during the summer months.

Clancy's comment: Three-hundred years of age?  Who cares who planted it? The tree has survived.

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28 August 2017 - SOVIET MURALS

SOVIET MURALS

G'day folks,

In the early nineties, well after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, did you know there were still over 300,000 Soviet soldiers in Eastern Germany? In 1991, there were still 4,200 Russian tanks, 690 aircrafts, 180 rocket systems and over 200,000 civil employees and relatives of officers, among them about 900,000 children. 

Until the final withdrawal in 1994, Russians occupied 777 barracks at more than 275 locations in the territory of the German Democratic Republic, mostly in the area of today’s Brandenburg. With numbers like that, there’s no wonder the Soviet footprint in Germany can still be found by wandering off the beaten path. The footprint is fading, crumbling and peeling, but it’s definitely still there.

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Clancy's comment: They sure left a mark on the landscape.

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