MORE ON THE SPECIAL SPRING BABIES

For those of you who have been interested in the baby falcons nested in the tower of Brussels' Cathedral, here are two photos of them I took today - 10 days after the first ones I posted on May 7th.  The photography is not good because they were moving all the time, but it will give you an idea of how much they have grown.

I am leaving for Scotland on Monday, the 20th so I'm afraid they will have flown the nest by the time I see them again on the 31st.

A WELL-KEPT SECRET

From late April to early May, a few acres of woodlands in Halle (south of Brussels) are covered with a breathtaking carpet of wild bluebell hyacinths.  It's one of Belgium's most amazing natural spectacles and one of its best-kept secrets.

The beech is the dominant species of trees in these woods and Halle's woods are part of Europe's largest beech forest, stretching across the south of Brussels.

I have never seen anything like this: this soft blue colour spread out in front of me as far as I could see.

It was an outing that really moved me; another opportunity to praise the Creator and thank Him for the beauty of this world He made for us.

And since today is Mother's Day, I wanted to send it to all you beautiful mothers out there who have a special place in my heart.

Happy Mother's Day!

SPECIAL SPRING BABIES

When was the last time you had a front-row seat at the birth of baby pelegrine falcons?!

In the left tower of the Saints-Michel-et-Gudule Cathedral, on the lefthand side, up at the very top, a mother pelegrine falcon has made her nest ...

and given birth to 5 babies!  And how do I know and how can I observe them?  Aha!

At the base of the cathedral steps, a camera truck has been parked.  There are web cameras placed high up on the cathedral and on a neighbouring building. We can go into the truck and watch the babies on computers!

They are two weeks old.  I'll go back in 10 days- just before they learn to fly - and take another picture so you can see them again.  Amazing, isn't it?!!

NEED A CHOCOLATE FIX ??

Trust the Belgians to think up something new.  They are artistically avant-garde  in designer fashions, cartoons and painting, so why not stamps?

Last month, just before Easter, five new chocolate-flavoured stamps arrived on the market.  They have pictures of chocolate on the front, the essence of cacao oil in the glue at the back for taste and in the ink for smell.  A complete fix !!

It was not easy to get the scent and flavour of the dark chocolate right. In the end, people from Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland all worked on it.
It is not the first scented stamp … but this is the first time it has been combined with a flavour.