Sunday Stamps: 'I' is for Iran, Ierland and insecten

The Sunday Stamps theme of Sunday 1st October is the letter 'i'.

A pretty stamp which includes a country which starts with the letter 'I' is this one:



The stamp is from Iran, from the year 1395 (2016), and has been dedicated to NowRuz. It shows, besides Iran, also other countries / regions in which the New Year starts at the vernal equinox. I think it a nice idea - and logical - that the new year starts at exactly the same time as does spring.



From the Iranian stamp to stamps from an other country starting with the letter 'I'. That is, not in the native language itself, but in Dutch we name Éire 'Ierland' (pronounced differently from the English 'Ireland').



And of course the word 'insect', or 'insekt' (plural: insecten or insekten), starts with an 'i'. In Dutch the accent (emphasis) is on the second syllable, inSECT, while as far as I know in English the accent is on the first syllable, INsect.



See more stamps on the letter 'i' at and via Sunday Stamps!

In: from the USA (and a little bit from Sweden)

At first sight I thought FinnBadger had sent me common sunflowers. Of course they are, but they are located in a special place and represent some history. Fort Ancient is an archaelogical park / museum, and the name of a Native American people.
According to the text on the backside this photo has been made by the Ohio Historical Society, and the sunflowers stand watch over the museum's re-created prehistoric Indian garden. Other plantings include knotweed, goosefoot and other vegetation, consumed or used by prehistoric cultures.

On the envelope FinnBadger added a special and amazing range of stamps: alle related to this famous actress, and gathered from two countries!



Thank you very much, FinnBadger!

In: from Australia

Thanks to Eva I learned about Naomi's Thousand Postcard Project.
Naomi's husband gave her thousand unused vintage postcards, dating anywhere from 1900 to 1970, and he challenged her to send every one of them out into the world. Thus she invites us all to provide her with our postal address. And here it is: Naomi's postcard to me!
Besides a kind personal message from Naomi and the fact that this is the 189th card out of 1000, the (printed) text on the back says it is a reproduction of a photo, taken in 1890 at an early Indiana state fair.



I love Australian stamps, so I am happy to see these stamps added by Naomi to her card for me.
And this nice rubber stamp print about the project:



Thank you very much, Naomi!

Postcards for the weekend: Love

The following postcard I happened to have received recently. It matches so well to this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend theme!

Rio and I exchange a postcard every now and then. She happened to have a serie of postcards of her hometown Venezia, and randomly chose this one to send to me. Voilá, this is clearly the theme, Love.



Two people, many hearts, and sharing a pizza.

On the back side Rio added pretty stamps. I imagine that the couple of the front side of this postcard, after finishing the pizza, will visit the museum on the left, and subsequently will enjoy a great evening at the theater on the right.



Thank you very much, Rio, grazie mille!

See more postcards on this theme at and via Maria's blog of this weekend.

In: from Kazachstan

This beautiful postcard I received from Assel from Kazachstan. The illustration has been made by Svetlana Popova.

On the back nice stamps, and I learn to say 'Hello' in more languages.
And do you notice the tulips on the round stamp? My country, the Netherlands, is said to be a land of the tulips. However, tulips don't originate from our low country. Their origin is in.. the mountains of Kazachstan! Via Persia, China, Turkey and Antwerp the first tulip finally reached the Netherlands in the end of the 16th century.



Thank you very much, Assel!

In: from Italy/Austria and Hungary

So much to learn by a single postcard! I always thought that Tirol and the Dolomites were located in Austria. The text in front of the card didn't give a clue: as the first words have been written in German I was confirmed in my thoughts. The stamps made the confusion complete, as they are Hungarian. Finally, thanks to wikipedia I learned that since many years the Dolomites are part of Italy. And in 2009 they were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Many thanks to Micu who has send me this beautiful view. As the post offices were closed at the moment she was there, she finally sent me the card from Hungary. Which I think great, too, and I am happy with the wonderful stamps as well as the postmark from Budapest.
I had never heard of a world conference on disaster risk reduction, so that's an other item learned today!



Thank you very much, Micu!

In: from the United Kingdom - of Mail and more Peter Rabbit

To do something 'post haste' means to do something quickly, I learned from John who sent this pretty postcard. Which gives a clue where this phrase comes from: the mail coach travelled faster than any other vehicle.



On the back of the postcard a matching illustration, and an other postage stamp from the Beatrix Potter stamps serie, showing Squirrel Nutkin:



Sent three weeks before the postcard above, but arriving a week later than the previous one, is the following postcard, showing the Port Sunlight Post Office. It has been built in 1891 and is part of the model village, built by Lord Lever / Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in their soap factory.



Jemima Puddle-Duck, also created by Beatrix Potter, more than a century ago, is the character on the stamp on the back of this card:



Inbetween the arrival of both cards, John as well as the Royal Mail and Dutch PostNL surprised me with a nice envelope (well, here I'm showing the two stamps only):



'Surprised' because the size of this envelope was far below the minimum sizes Royal Mail and PostNL prescribe, nevertheless the mail carriers did pick up and deliver the tiny envelope without complaining!



Thank you very much, John!

In: from the USA

This year it's hundred years ago that the tallest man of Puerto Rico has been born, el Gigante de Carolina: Felipe Birriel Fernández.
This postmark is in honour of him, and with many thanks to FinnBadger I received this postmark, too.
Which has made me wonder: has this mail been traveling from the USA to Puerto Rico - which I always thought to be an independent country, but wikipedia learns me that it isn't - and from there into the world?!?

See more information about Felipe Birriel and other tall men on thetallestman.com.

The postmarks and stamps have been accompanied by this postcard, showing a painting by Charles Seeler, named 'Pertaining to Yachts and Yachting', painted in 1922.



Thank you very much, FinnBadger!

In: from Spain

A lot of flowers to give water to!
Nice wall view, sent by Eva from Spain.
On the back side a heartful stamp, and the name of this polaroid shaped postcard serie, 'Spanish details'.



Thank you very much, Eva!

Sunday Stamps: Flowers

Today's Sunday Stamps theme is 'flowers'.
I don't know any country that hasn't issued flower stamps, do you?
So there is a bunch to choose from. Many beautiful colourful pictures of flowers on stamps you can find on/via today's Sunday Stamps blog. I love to add some more stamps here.

I'll start with a famous flower pot plant. It's a cyclamen, and the stamp has been issued by Japanese Mail:



From Singapore I received this stamp, issued in 2011 for the 20th World Orchid Conference.



Here the stamp is again, now accompanied by a stamp from 2007, showing an other flower, the Plumeria, also known as Frangipani:



A postage machine stamp (I think, because of the missing typical stamp edges), also from Singapore, shows flowers (also the orchid!) in front of some sights, among them the Merlion):



Flowers are colourful creations, however these black and white stamps from the USA show that there's beauty not only in colours but also in the shapes:



From Asia via America to Europe.
This Dutch stamp is part of the recently issued Postcrossing stamp sheet. The sheets shows various typical Dutch sights. The bulb flower fields are one of these:



In 2007 Dutch Post (then names TNT Post) issied this ten flower stamps sheet. If you look well, you can see some dark tiny spots in the middle of each stamp. Those are flower seeds, and in real you can see some small plastic circle sticked above it, so the seeds stay in their place.



Maybe you can see the seeds better in this detail below.
The text on bottom says that these stamps are meant for national use. However I would like to send this sheet as a 'thank you' to some mail artist in the US who has sent me flower artistamps and even also flower seeds, pressed into the cardboard of a postcard. I'm hesitating to send out, and to have grow the received seeds, being not sure if it is a good idea to have those postcard's seeds come out here in Europe and to spread the Dutch flower seeds to America, because you never know if one of these will turn out to be a harmful invasive species (having in mind, for example from the animals world, the harlequin ladybird, who has been introduced in our country in 2004, and who now is pushing aside the ladybird species I used to admire from childhood, and who I hardly see anymore nowadays, the seven-spot ladybird.)



I'll finish my contribution of today with an other famous pot flower plant, the Geranium (or is it Pelargonium?).



As said, see more colourful stamps on flowers at/via today's Sunday Stamps.

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.

Out: to the United Kingdom

This painting by Carl Spitzweg is named 'Der ewiger Hochzeiter' or 'The eternal bridegroom'.

In the back you can see a clock (and I think it a nice and fascinating painting!), that's why I couldn't resist to send this card to John for his clock postcards collection, even though his clock blog is closed now.

On the back I added a stamp which shows a flower who is appearing in real in our country, these days, as a sign of spring: the crocus.

In: from Sri Lanka

It's always a pleasure to send train and lighthouse postcards and cars and lighthouses on stamps to Ravindra in Sri Lanka. And also a pleasure to receive the beautiful views of his country in return.





And of sea life in the ocean around Sri Lanka (do you spot Dory?!):



The postcards arrived with beautiful stamps on the back:











In the past year we exchanged much more postcards, among them these also:













Thank you very much, Ravindra!