Sunday Stamps: Spring, Easter

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'Easter or Spring'.

To me the two are related: Easter is the celebration of the awakaning of nature after winter and the new life.

In our country crocuses are one of the first clear signs of this wake-up, this new life. Even though they not have been native in the Netherlands until 1560, nowadays bunches of crocuses pop up in the parks and lawns. Well, before crocuses snowdrops are marking the end of winter already, be it that snowdrops are seen less often.

Recently PostNL issued stamp sheets by the Dutch illustrator Janneke Brinkman-Salentijn. On one of the sheets I spotted this yellow crocus:



This stamp I used for my postcard to John in the UK, writing on the back that the yellow crocus is less common than the white and lilac ones. But since I posted the postcard I'm seeing yellow crocuses almost everywhere!

After crocuses, usually narcissus, daffodils, appear. Also these already are appearing in real now.

The Belarus Post issued this fine stamp, showing this typical spring flower:



Besides spring flora, there also is some spring fauna, which (coincidentally?) also is associated with Easter celebrations.
Among them the rabbit, here on stamps from Belarus:



And baby chicks, here a chick with its mom and dad on a beautiful stamp from Indonesia:



Stamps showing lambs I couldn't find so far. Instead I found three easter stamps, received thanks to postcrossing in the past years:

From Poland this Easter Bunny, with all well-known spring/easter items in it:



A more beautiful image, showing this stamp on the first day cover, you can see at Ana's blog post of today.

The following Easter stamp is from Ukraine. The text, 'Христос воскрес' (if I can read it well enough and as far as I can decipher thanks to translate.google), in Dutch would mean 'Vrolijk Paasfeest', 'Happy Easter', however the Ukrainan meaning literally is 'Christ resurrected'.
The fact that the largest image is an egg shaped figure might make the circle round for Easter being not only a Christian celebration but also a celebration of new life from even ancient times.



Eggs are not only used in Easter traditions. Painted eggs are also part of the Persian New Year celebrations, Now Ruz, which started a week ago, exactly at the start of spring.
The following stamp I alas don't own myself, but this picture I found on the internet, showing beautifully painted eggs:



Finally a basket with unpainted eggs, which hopefully will be hatched to have young chicks come out.
Also this stamp is from Poland. Google.translate told me that 'Wilkanoc' means Easter in Polish:



See more Spring and Easter stamps on today's Sunday Stamps blog post and via the links mentioned under that post.

In: from Spain

'One hour to departure' is the name of this painting by the Polish painter Wiktor Najbor.
The card was sent by Eva from Spain. I am happy that Eva sticked the Spanish Europa 2015 stamp on the back.
Out of all participating countries, and besides the Dutch stamps which of course I already have used for outgoing mail, this is the first Europe 2015 stamp I see in real!



This year's Europe stamp theme is 'Old toys', and I love this wooden train. The stamp even smells after wood!
Thank you very much, moltes gràcies, Eva!

In: from Morocco

Recently I received this Sheep postcard from Eva. I scanned it last week, but was busy doing other things after that.
So I planned to post it the coming weekend, when I suddenly saw that Eva blogged about sheep (more or less) today! Apparently today is a good day to publish Sheep postcards, and I am happy to show you this wonderful picture, taken in Poland by photographer majeczka (Maria Wachala).
Wish I was there in that peaceful quiet landscape, instead of here in too busy times!..

Eva has sent me an other great sheep postcard, which I will keep for (and cherish) myself. Alas lack of time keeps me from my wish to publish all mail I am receiving (and sending). I learned that turning all received and sent mail into digital blog posts takes a lot of my time and will restrain me from sending out snail mail. And that analogue action of course (snail mail lovers will understand) has some priority :-)

Sunday stamps: Olympic stamps

Deze zondag zijn de Olympische Spelen onderwerp van Sunday Stamps.
In 1992 werden bovenstaande postzegels uitgegeven, ter waarde van 80 guldencent per zegel. Zoals je ziet heb ik er twee gebruikt, en ik was eerlijk gezegd vergeten welke sporten op de ontbrekende postzegels zijn afgebeeld. Gelukkig is het complete vel terug te vinden op deze site. En het oorspronkelijke ontwerp, dat heel anders is, staat hier
Meer Nederlandse sportzegels vind je, met ook een commentaar op bovenstaande zegels, op het Postzegelblog.

This Sunday the theme of Sunday Stamps is 'Olympic Games'. The stamps sheet above was issued in 1992. The stamps were 0.80 gulden cents each. As you see, I've used two of these. I had forgotten which sports were pictured on the missing ones, but fortunately the complete sheet you can see on this website (which is quite different from the original design which you can see here).
More Dutch sports stamps are gathered here.



Hierboven een meer recent vel, uitgegeven in 2012, ter ere van tien Nederlandse Olympische gouden medaille winnaars.
Above you see a more recent stamp sheet, issued in 2012, in honour of 10 Olympic gold medal winners from the Netherlands.

Hieronder een Olympische postzegel uit Wit-Rusland, die achterop een van m'n Postcrossing kaarten zat:
Below a stamp from Belarus, which I found on the back of one of my received Postcrossing postcards:



En ik kocht ooit een partij postzegels om te gebruiken voor mail art. Ook hiertussen zitten verschillende Olympische postzegels, uit uiteenlopende landen:

And some time ago I bought stamps to use for mail art. Among these stamps also some Olympic stamps, from various countries: