{mushrooms love}

Hurray, finally, my dream of hunting mushrooms in the Swedish countryside came true. My host families took me out into the forests and here came my first 'autumn gold' experience: I was picking chantarelles! And right after our mushroom hunting my hostmom gathered the chantarelles, sauted them in oil and garlic and served them on Swedish hardbread (knäckebröd)...yummmmmyyyy....!

But wait, not only the chantarelles I was up for, but all kind of mushrooms that could be found in the forests that time - for the delights of my camera! :D I was particularly fond of what I called 'the storybook mushrooms' - you know, the fantastic red mushroom with white dots on it...very beautiful but alas, poisonous, too... but my camera loves them of course, and also other kinds of mushrooms and the autumn forests. Captured in my camera's memory card, they are so very nice souvenirs from the Swedish countryside.

Voilà some pictures for your inspiration...


















Further to the forest we go...


really liked it walking here


drops of water trapped in cobweb


these mushrooms look like microphones :-)

{back in Jakarta}

Stockholm old town

Hello hello!

I'm back in Jakarta after spending 3 weeks of a very inspiring trip (work + play combined) in Sweden. Somehow I realised why I loved it so much what I saw there. Red, yellow (and the color in between: orange), and a dash of green and blue are my favorite colours, so you can imagine how spoilt my sights were during that 3-weeks trip: red and yellow cottages, lush greens turning into yellow, orange and red, lovely blue sky and water.











Next post: and it was the very season of mushrooms picking...

[.moving.and.in.the.meantime....]

Friends, hate to say this but I've got trouble accessing my own site so far, so I decided to move it to a blog. I will get the domain name intact, however, so there is no change when it comes to linking to amretasgraphics.com. It stays the same :-)

It will take sometime to complete this, because I have a fulltime job and I can only work on it slooooowly after working hours :-)) Thanks in advance for bearing with me. And in the meantime, I have some pictures from our walk at the Botanical Garden in Bogor, West Java, a week ago. Enjoy a great week!



Victoria Amazonica, the giant lotus. I so love them! The leaves are up to 1 m wide, fascinating!





We were 4 days late for this giant flower's blooming time. Amorphophallus Titanum only blooms once every two years, so it was actually a special time to visit the Botanical Garden. In its full bloom, it's about 2 meters tall.




These trees wear hula-hula skirts! :-))




I love giant trees, look at the up-ground roots.




Love the colour of this purple banana




A happy bunch of bamboo trees




This Japanese tree has a lovely texture




Another giant tree




The fruit of Meranti tree has wings on it! It flew down from the tree like a helicopter and 'landed' right in front of me, like a present! So I brought it home :-D




Lovely orchids, a mix of pink and tiger orchids, it seems to me..




These 'shy' flowers were also at the orchidarium. I forgot to take note where exactly it was located, or the name of it.




Certainly the white orchids!




This is what we call "carnivore flowers" - see the 'bag'? It attracts and traps insects then 'eat' them! Wow..




The giant orchids were in blooms, we were so lucky! Look at this picture above - the middle of the flower looks like a doll :-))



Calla Lily




I am somehow very fond of those bottled plants at the Herbarium...





Our guide said this African fruit could make hippopotamus drunk! Oyayay, I wonder how it looks, a drunk hippo!










Somewhere in this blog I mentioned that I fell in love with pink flowers with extravagant petals like roses and peonies. Now it includes Lotus. I just love them, the pink ones of course! :-)