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We are coming up to Halloween time and Ferrebeekeeper always features a special theme week to celebrate the spooky season. Start getting ready for next week’s dark excitement! For today though I want to present a half-spooky, half-beautiful Gothic post (since it has been too long since we visited that category).
One of my favorite things are fountains—the aesthetic (and, usually, the actual) focal point of gardens and town squares. Fountains represent vitality, comfort, and healing—they are the place where people go to quench their spiritual thirst (and, you know, get water).
The most famous fountains tend to be in Baroque, modern, and Greco-Roman styles, but there are also many lovely Gothic fountains throughout Europe. Some of these are almost wholly religious in character, but others are spidery and ornate or feature dragons, monster, and gargoyles.
Here is a little gallery of random Gothic fountains. Most of them are real, but it seems like a couple may have been built by computer programmers to enliven online worlds of magic and fantasy. They are all exciting and interesting and they provide an early taste of Halloween fun (and hopefully quench your need for Gothic hydration).
Rainbow Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta) photo from Flickr by See Reeves
Only 15 species of Eucalyptus trees occur naturally outside of Australia and of these 15 only Eucalyptus deglupta made it to the northern hemisphere without human help. Eucalyptus deglupta is native to the lowland rainforests of Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The tree grows rapidly to 75 meters in height (about 250 feet) which makes it one of the world’s giants. Sometimes it becomes so large that it grows 3-4 meter tall buttresses to help it support itself. Because of its rapid growth, large size, and medium-strength, slightly lustrous wood, these eucalyptus trees are grown commercially in huge monoculture plantations for pulping into paper.
Rainbow Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta) photo from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/amelia525/303048913/) by *amelia*
The most remarkable aspect of this huge useful tree is its remarkable bark color. The tree sheds long strips of bark throughout the year which exposes greenish yellow inner bark. The exposed stripes of green then change color to orange, purple, red, maroon, and dark green. Since the tree is constantly shedding narrow strips of bark its trunk becomes dazzling vertically striped rainbow of lovely colors. In wet tropical gardens around the world the Eucalyptus deglupta is grown as an ornamental highlight both because of its beautiful color and impressive size.
Close-up of Eucalyptus deglupta
