This post is just to announce that I have a Pinterest account for PlanktonPunkt Designs. I’ll use it mainly to publish pictures, jigsaw puzzles (those typically after they have been published here or in CreateJigsawPuzzles.com), designs with links to the PlanktonPunkt Designs online shops, and maybe short video clips. Hopefully, you’ll find something beautiful there!
Tag: Beautiful
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A Bumblebee And A Rhododendron
A short video from material filmed in Finland.
I have been working through my insect clips and this is a bit too short for YouTube as a stand alone but too big for Pinterest, so I posted a mobile phone formatted version here, since the bumblebee and rhododendron video was so pretty.
A bumblebee is an important part of Finnish ecosystem.
A garden Rhododendron is an imported species.I hope this little clip will provide a relaxing break, enjoy!
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Jigsaw Puzzles – 5
To apologize for the vanished free jigsaw puzzles, here are two until I design more. These are photographs from around Berkeley, CA, which I gave more color and adjusted brightness and contrast. As before, click the picture to open a jigsaw puzzle and, please, have fun!
Weed

Unbothered. Moisturized. On my lane. Happy. Focused. Flourishing.
Humble but resilient weed (80 pieces).
Colored Magnolia Flower

( 130 pieces)
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Lichens
I have been planning and working on making short form videos. The Morning Chorus was a test video filmed at one go but this is a slideshow converted into a video.
I hope you like lichens.
Update, July 9th, 2025: I have edited the video, trying to improve the sound quality and changing the text a bit.
Finnish lichens, photographed 2025
I do not know where the crack in voice track and and flicker in video come from. Some programs do not show it, others do. If you have any idea, I’d appreciate the info…
Update, July 9th, 2025, continued: apparently these cracks were a bug in PowerPoint I used for converting a slideshow into a video – I ended up loading the individual slides and separately recorded voice tracks into Clipchamp and cutting, stretching and pasting them there into this updated video.
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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.
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Commercial Announcement
PlanktonPunkt Designs is now also on eBay.
Hence, the banner above has a new shop.
This on-line store is connected to Printify and contains a subset of my designs depending on eBay sales policies and limits (and my whimsies.)

Beautiful lichens (palleroporonjäkälä) from Finland, photomanipulation.