PlanktonPunkt

Go back

Your message has been sent

PlanktonPunkt Designs puzzles available in CreateJigsawPuzzles

link to order print on demand PlanktonPunkt Designs jigsaw puzzles (printed in China)

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Printify

link to order PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from the source

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Etsy

A link to order from a selection of PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from Etsy

Category: Flowers

  • Happy July 4th, 2025

    Or Treason Day, if you happen to live in UK. In recent years, I have been watching the fascinating news from that side of Atlantic with increasing horror. Sure makes me glad I am a US citizen, not a subject to the whimsies of Prime Minister Starmer. For the past couple of visits to Europe, I even have specified to my travel agent: no stops in UK.

    Why? When Soviet Union was a thing, if you traveled there for cheap vodka (vodka tourism) and other cultural immersion, you would only be charged for drunken and disorderly, such as might happen. Obviously, potential troublemakers would have been screened during visa application, but even people caught inside Soviet Union for the heinous crime of smuggling Bibles were sentenced merely for what they were doing in Soviet Union. Or so I think. However, according to an Internet source, officials in Starmer’s UK have stated that folks traveling to UK are subject to prosecution for doubleplus ungood on-line speech even typed outside the UK borders, even if they are not UK citizens. I think such dictatorships are to be avoided, especially when they have gone clearly bonkers. I love and I am grateful for my First Amendment rights, and this is one of the reasons I am happy this Independence Day.

    I have bought a steak and cherries, to be eaten soon, some canned fish for future, and had an Asian/Pacific Islander style BBQ beef minimeal with teriyaki sauce for breakfast.

    Big white magnolias are in bloom, and I have tried to get a nice photo of them for days, but that has been difficult. Many of the trees are very big and the flowers tend to be in the upper branches, either too small for my cell phone zoom or obscured by leaves and branches. Or the flowers are not otherwise accessible to photography. When I see a magnolia bud at nice, near to eye level, getting back in time before it has bloomed and is wilting is tricky, apparently the blossoms open and are done at a quick rate.

    Here are a couple of magnolia flowers I photographed with my cell phone today.

    One of these days, I should make more jigsaw puzzles.

  • Spring Flowers in Berkeley

    One project I was proud of was the series of five collages, Spring Flowers in Berkeley.

    Spring Flowers in Berkeley 1 – Urban Beauty

    All these flowers were photographed in Berkeley, CA from March to May 2025.

    Spring Flowers in Berkeley 2 – So Many Varieties

    The only modifications were cropping and adjusting color saturation, warmth, brightness and / or contrast. Except for one of the background images that may have more manipulations to make the background prettier.

    Spring Flowers in Berkeley 3 – Beautiful California

    Yes, palms have flowers, too. By the way, palms are not trees but monocots like lilies and grass.

    Bay Area climate supports an impressive variety of ornamental plants from all the inhabited continents (Antarctica does not count), and the residential streets of Berkeley are an ideal place to spot them blooming.

    Spring Flowers in Berkeley 4 – Relax and Enjoy

    Spring Flowers in Berkeley 5 – Moments of Calm

    These five collages have been uploaded to CreateJigsawPuzzles site and can be bought from there (click a picture and the link will take you to the shopping page), though I should warn the US readers that the current tariff situation with the elimination of de minimis rule from China may make them surprisingly expensive and / or complicated to buy.

    One advantage CreateJigsawPuzzles has is that their bulk discount applies to products of similar type even if they individual puzzles have different designs, so one Spring Flowers in Berkeley tube puzzle is 20,40 euros + shipping, whereas all five tube puzzles of the series are 83,00 euros + shipping or over 18% cheaper per puzzle (for some reason CreateJigsawPuzzles is not showing USD prices for me any more.) Two puzzles instead of one already have the same discount, i.e., price of 16,60 euros per puzzle.

    I am planning to create Summer Flowers in Berkeley series once the summer photos have been collected. Right now, I am processing lichens from Finland.