Fort Tilden beach is located in Fort Tilden Natural Area (Far Rockaway, Long Island) that surrounded by dunes, rosehip bushes, wild grapevines and maritime forest.

“Wide-open and pristine sands, a fresh sea and a rugged beachscape of barnacled bulkheads and sea-softened pilings jutting up out of the sand.  Regulars at Fort Tilden smile to one another as if sharing a great little secret” - New York Times.

“Fort Tilden State Park feels like the city’s best-kept secret—an unspoiled island oasis, tantalizingly close to Manhattan. Even on a weekend at the height of summer, you’ll get a 50-yard stretch of beach to yourself. On weekdays, it’s practically all yours. On a busy day, you might see several families (mostly Russian) picnicking and grilling.  How can this be? Simple: Fort Tilden is so difficult to access that only the most intrepid Robinson Crusoe types dare venture there” - NYMag.

Note: Unless you own a bike!!!!

Directions: Bedford Avenue bike lane ends in Sheepshead Bay where you have to deal with car traffic until the Marine Park bike path begins.  Over the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge and you’re there.

It can turn into a fun and sustainable weekend.

Opportunities to chain up a bike end early but no problem you can always take your bike with you on the shore:

The sunset viewgasm from Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge on the way back, makes this a perfect bike ride experience. 

August 31, 2010 by Designsquish

“Почти каждый день Феня принорила Петру Ильичу цветы.  Она ходила за цветами в заливные луга и рвала их долго, подбирала все одинаковые: то одну ромашку, то кипрей, то подмаренник.  А когда весна входила в полную силу и всю ночь над лесом не потухала заря, Феня пробиралась в усадьбу к Липецкому и рвала там для Петра Ильича сирень. 

До чего она была холодная, пахучая, росистая! Прижмешь к лицу пышные ветки  - будто умоешься.  Принесешь цветы, Петр Ильич возьмет за подбородок, поднимет зардевшееся лицо, скажет: “Ех ты, сероглазая!”  - и обязательно чем-нибудь отдарит.  А потом сядет к роялю, заиграет.  сирень вся задрожит, и роса с нее польется прямо на рояль...” - Paustovsky

Read in Enlish by clicking below:

August 01, 2010 by Designsquish

And the wind, full of wantonness,
wooes like lover
The young aspen-trees till they
tremble all over.

- Thomas Moore (From Trees of America)

July 30, 2010 by Designsquish

Paper made out of sheep poo.  I personally touched it and it is very very soft.

by Designsquish

From the book:

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I or you:
But when the leaves hang trembling
The wind it passing thro’.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

Christina G. Rossetti

July 26, 2010 by Designsquish

“The most notable characteristic of bowerbirds is their extraordinarily complex courtship and mating behaviour, where males build a bower to attract mates. There are two main types of bowers. One clade of bowerbirds build so-called maypole bowers that are constructed by placing sticks around a sapling, in some species these bowers have a hut-like roof. The other major bowerbuilding clade builds an avenue type bower made of two walls of vertically placed sticks. In and around the bower the male places a variety of brightly colored objects he has collected. These objects — usually different among each species — may include hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass” - Wiki.

by Designsquish

The most cheerful thing I know is the calm, the silence,  which are so delicious,  both in the forest and the fields.

-Jean Francois Milllet

July 19, 2010 by Designsquish

“Man can better set up in a small house than in a huge castle.” - Leo N. Tolstoy

“With the loved ones you can be happy even in the smallest of places.” - Leo N. Tolstoy.

July 03, 2010 by Designsquish

Photos taken in Harriman State Park, NY + motylek (small butterfly)

June 28, 2010 by Designsquish

“Red List protects nature” - The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, founded in 1948, is the world’s most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of plant and animal species.

“Protect birds - they are doctors of the forest”

“Cut down one - plant ten”

“Welcome, my feathered friends!”

June 25, 2010 by Designsquish

Sun Boxes  are installations by Craig Colorusso powered by the sun via solar panels. There is a different loop set to play a guitar note in each box continuously. These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord. Because the loops are different in length, once the piece begins they continually overlap and the piece slowly evolves over time.

The sounds of Sun Boxes have been described as both soothing and energizing. A unique combination of adjectives often used to describe yoga, or meditation. When experiencing the piece, Sun Boxes allows the participant to slow down, and notice the subtleties of the composition unfold. With the abundance of technology and hustle of this culture it is a much needed concept to not only be allowed, but also encouraged to slow down.

June 22, 2010 by Designsquish

June 17, 2010 by Designsquish

Above: Willow branch chandelier. 

Above: Hickory Branch Chandelier.

Above: Hickory pendant light.

Handmade twig chandeliers inspired by nature.  Found in Collier West.

June 06, 2010 by Designsquish

Forest Floor Still Life by Otto Marseus Van Schrieck. Otto was a Dutch painter best known for mysterious dark close-ups of the live undergrowth of forest floors that give detailed views of
wild flowers, weeds, thistles, and mushrooms, lives of insects.

Even though it is not really a still-life, I think this painting is particularly amazing because of how still it is.

June 04, 2010 by Designsquish

April 26, 2010 by Designsquish

Located on the Rockaway Peninsula Brooklyn, NY, Fort Tilden is mostly a natual area that was a former United States Army installation.  Fort Tilden today is largely a natural area of beach, dunes and maritime forest. Most of the old military installations are abandoned, though some buildings have been renovated and are used by local arts groups. Atop one of the old batteries, Battery Harris East, is a viewing platform offering 360-degree views.  Fort Tilden includes some of the most secluded beaches in New York.

April 19, 2010 by Designsquish

The discovery, which the researchers reported last week in Nature, supports research showing that birds are dinosaurs, having descended from a group of bipedal dinosaurs called theropods.
Dr. Prum and his colleagues, meanwhile, had set out on a similar quest. Working with paleontologists at the Beijing Museum of Natural History and Peking University, the researchers began to study a 150-million-year-old species called Anchiornis huxleyi. The chicken-sized theropod was festooned with long feathers on its arms and legs.

Above: Mohawk Dinosaur

Scientsts were able to assign color to individual feathers and thus work out color patterns for the entire fossil of Anchiornis huxleyi, a small, feathered, two-legged dinosaur that lived roughly 150 million years ago.  The animal would have weighed about four ounces (110 grams) and appears to have had a dark gray or black body and wings with some white feathers that gave it a stripe pattern, plus a reddish-brown crest and speckles on the face. ( Source:  New York Times and Discovery News)

March 30, 2010 by Designsquish

Early spring moss in upstate New York. 

March 21, 2010 by Designsquish

“I have been trying to visually find a means to express the turbulence, sadness and strange beauty that comes with personal struggles, relationships and dealing with one’s own personal history in a more poetic way. Whenever something arises in my life that is profound, I find that nature always mimics it, and some of the shots I take grow into more rich personal symbols as time advances. I am interested in this use of image as a sort of personal time-capsule of my own struggles with anxiety, self-doubt and frustration”  - Allison

http:/allisonbeonde.com

February 23, 2010 by Designsquish

November Meteors

Mare Humorum. From Study made in 1875.

Sun as Revealed by Telescope and Spectroscope

February 20, 2010 by Designsquish

White Wolf in Mossland, chromogenic print

Canadian artist Adam Makarenko creates series of dioramas which are then photographed with altered perspective.  Influenced by science and nature, Adam creates photographs concerned with human manipulation of nature.

Pursuit, chromogenic print

Cessna, archival pigment print

HWY Drive, chromogenic print

There is a raven on our way down the northern highway

Adam grew up in Atikokan, Northern Ontario, where the caribou once roamed. “When Adam was growing up there, Atikokan was coated in red ore dust, and boasted two of the largest ore mines in the world. It was nestled in the heart of the Northern Ontario wilderness, isolated from the rest of the world. In 1980 the mines shut down, and it was at that point when Adam began to nurture his artistic ideas by exploring fields of endless moss, muddy swamps, thick boreal forests, and abandoned open pit mines” - from website.

February 18, 2010 by Designsquish

Spring Beauty
1943

Found on EMPIRICISM, new blog aimed at keeping track of all things beautiful, innovative or interesting.

by Designsquish

I actually do not remember where I found this post card or who made it but I really love it.

February 14, 2010 by Designsquish

February 05, 2010 by Designsquish

Ivan Shishkin. Winter. 1890.  Oil on canvas.

(Winter, detail with bird)

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin born in 1832,  was a Russian painter who is known for his realistic forest landscapes, paintings of wildlife, grasses and especially pine trees. I like the tiny details in his paintings. Click on the images to see in full resolution.

Ivan Shishkin. The Rye Field, 1878. Oil on Canvas,

(The Rye Field, detail with grasses)

(The Rye Field, detail with birds)

January 19, 2010 by Designsquish

Have you ever walked in or passed by a large bright yellow field of flowers? Rapeseed (Brassica napus) is a bright yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family). In agriculture, canola are certain varieties of rapeseed oil, or the oil produced from those varieties. Today 80% of the acres sown are genetically modified canola.

January 08, 2010 by Designsquish

Victorial from Tel Aviv, Israel and originally from Kiev, Ukraine makes these beautiful, delicate mesmerizing photographs of the natural world with different vintage film cameras.

“And he retraced his wanderings in those deep old lanes that began from the common road and went away towards the unknown, climbing steep hills, and piercing the woods of shadows, and dipping down into valleys that seemed virgin, unexplored, secret for the foot of man. He entered such a lane not knowing where it might bring him, hoping he had found the way to fairyland, to the woods beyond the world, to that vague territory that haunts all the dreams of a boy.”
Arthur Machen

-Inmost Light on Etsy

January 05, 2010 by Designsquish

Flower illustrations from ” Plants - 2400 copyright-Free Illustrations of flowers, Fruits and Vegetables”

January 03, 2010 by Designsquish

TREE
Graphite on panel, 2007
18” x 24”

WINTER TREE
Graphite on panel, 2007
18” x 24”

- By Anastasia Ugorskaya

December 30, 2009 by Designsquish

Frozen lake in Pennsylvania.

by Designsquish