Sepia Saturday 11/June/2016 Ancient pools.

Plenty of healthy exercise and such...today's Sepia Saturday theme.

The “Great Bath” at  Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan might have been the first built swimming pool in the world and is one of the best-known structures among the ruins of the ancient Indus Valley Civilization. It was dug during the 3rd millennium BC. The  pool is 12 metres x 7 meters, it is lined with bricks and was covered with a tar-based sealant. A hole  at one end of the Bath may have been used to drain the water into it.

Bath of  Caracalla; Caracalla was built between 212 and 216 AD under the reign of Emperor Caracalla. 

Pools  for bathing and relaxing were common in Roman cities and throughout the empire. The bath complexes  were not just a place for bathing  and relaxing but also for socializing. Rooms were provided  for reading and to relax. 

Typical features  in  a roman bath were;

apodyterium - changing rooms.

palaestrae - exercise rooms.

notatio - open-air swimming pool.

Laconica and sudatorium - superheated dry and wet sweating-rooms.

caldarium - hot room, heated and with a hot-water pool and a separate basin on a stand (labrum)

tepidarium - warm room, indirectly heated and with a tepid pool.

frigidarium - cool room, unheated and with a cold-water basin, often monumental in size and domed, it was the heart of the baths complex.

rooms for massage and other health treatments.

Additional facilities could include cold-water plunge baths, private baths, toilets, libraries, lecture halls, fountains, and outdoor gardens.

My granddaughter Fabrizia enjoys her swimming pool heated by sun power. (Photo Ts/ 2011)




Lake Constance/ Bodensee/ Uttwil on the Swiss side of the lake, where we used to swim in summer. This picture is from the early 1970s, It might look differently now, probably modernised.
Photo/sText Ts

In rerum natura;

Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis"

Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

Photo Ts 

Thursday..... Dodder, the clever world of parasitic plants.

Golden dodder (Cuscuta campestris). Common names;Angel's hair, beggar vine, field dodder, love vine, strangle vine, strangle weed,

The parasitic vine called dodder is the sniffer dog of the vegetable world. It contains almost no chlorophyll – the pigment that most plants use to make food – so to eat it must suck the sugary sap from other plants. Dodder uses olfaction to hunt down its quarry. It can distinguish potential victims from their smell, homing in on its favorites and also using scents emitted by unhealthy specimens to avoid them.

 (Science, vol 313, p 1964).

A distinctive yellow, golden or orange coloured parasitic plant. The short-lived leafless climbing stems are hairless thread-like. These stems produce small suckers which penetrate the host plant's stems or leaves. The plant also produces quantities of seed. Each small, creamy  flower may contain 4 seeds.

This  parasitic plant that is  known as a pest of crops, it also attacks a wide range of naturalised species and native plants.

This exotic, introduced parasitic plant has naturalised  throughout the coastal and sub-coastal regions of Australia. It is most abundant in south-eastern South Australia, along the Murray River and its tributaries), south-eastern Queensland and eastern New South Wales.

Monday....bookshelf; The book of summers;

The Book Of Summers by Emylia  Hall

Every summer was perfect until the last.







A wonderful story from the beginning to the end. Happiness is followed by sadness,  provoked by unforgiveness of unforeseen actions, severely affecting all.

Hungary,  a place never forgotten,
Marika spelling out my name in Raspberries,
Zoltan waving his brush in a cheerful, paint-splash salute and my friend Tamàs.....

One great lie takes everything with it.

Thursday.. magic in the garden..

Mystic and playful,

 charming and savage,

Most are bewitching; we must be cautious.

Cosmos

Orchid

Fungi

©Photos mygarden Text Ts 

Tuesday...

May, cool nights are calling for blankets and quilts. The crochet blanket is old, soft  from washing. It tells stories of hands, holding  a crochet hook, one stitch after the other, thoughts caught for ever in the fibers,  mingling  and swirling, happy and sad, irretrievable. It is great to snuggle when the cold winds are calling, rattling the shadows of the past.

Billy has his own snuggle blanket. He is just like people, he  loves his comforts.

A blanket in progress from all sorts of yarns. Randomly added colours and patterns. I don't know how long it will take to finish it.  I think there are about 350 stitches, one row after the other...when I feel like it!

©Photos Ts 

Wednesday...a little light;

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.” 

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Early morning in the garden, silence, the first birds have already noisily greeted the day, now the morning sun plays and moves with patterns and lights. Ts

©Photo mygarden/ Text Ts