19, going on 20 – Mardahl.dk

Yesterday, this blog turned 19. I thought its birthday was today, but I was wrong. Wow. 19 years is obviously a long time, but my mind is still boggled at the thought of all that has happened since I started this blog during a long ago Christmas holiday.

The blog has been very quiet in recent years. At the beginning of 2025, I thought I would post more often. I got inspired, but then my two attempts at posting about books I’ve read didn’t work for me. Writing publicly feels so vulnerable these days. I might be hiding in plain sight because I don’t exactly have a million followers, but I don’t dare publish too many personal thoughts because that can get the wrong kind of followers, and I don’t want to deal with that.

One thing I have enjoyed over on Mastodon is the posting of photos from nature. In the middle of all the mess called the news these days, seeing amazing, beautiful, and fun photos from nature are calming. There are various hashtags for following these nature photos such as #BloomScrolling or #FungiFriday. One nice effect of these photos is that I feel more curious when I am out and about in nature. The other day, I discovered something quite whimsical in the forest. The forest seems like it is just bare trees with a carpet of fallen leaves in 50 shades of brown and black. Moss and lichen make inroads on the carpet when they can make a home on a rock or dead branches. I passed just such a big split-level rock rising out of the brown-leaf carpet and edged with quite a bit of moss, topped with a sprinkle of more brown leaves. Something was off in the colour palette.

Large flat grey-black rock mostly covered in bright green moss with a scattering of brown leaves. A carpet of brown leaves surrounds the rock with clumps of grass here and there in the foreground. In the background is a wall of mostly bare young birch or beech trees where only a few have dead brown leaves clinging to some branches. Some larger twigs are scattered on the leaf carpet.

I stopped and looked closer. Someone had placed three small statues of elves across the rock face. They were little spots of red in the otherwise brown, black, and green palette.

Close-up of a large flat grey-black rock mostly covered in bright green moss with a scattering of brown leaves. In the center of this photo, three tiny elf statues have been placed across the rock. On the left is a blond child elf with a red cap, blue shirt, red shorts, striped socks, and wooden shoes. In the middle, on a blue base, is an adult elf with a red cap, big white beard, blue shorts, red socks, and black shoes playing a drum held against its left hip. On the right is a seated light-brown bear figure wearing black gloves, a red cap with white edging and a white pompom, and a red jacket with white edging and a black belt. The statues are probably small enough to fit into the palm of an adult's hand.

I thought this was a delightful find so thank you to whoever it was that brought a smile to my face at that moment. Later on, I encountered three more small statues on what remained of a falled tree trunk that had turned black from all the moisture in the forest from recent rains. The third statue, or maybe I should call them figurines, is quite hard to see. If you have trouble seeing it, check out the alt text for the image.

A fallen tree trunk lies across the center of the photo with a carpet of brown leaves behind it and in front of it along with a scattering of twigs. The log is partially rotted and blackened from moisture with patches of green moss on its surface. Toward the top of the log ar two elf statues. The left figure is a child lying down on its belly in a red suit with black shoes and a red cap. It is smiling. The other figure is seated with black shoes, blue pants, white and blue horizontally striped shirt, and a red cap. Lower down and on the right is a pale blue Santa Claus figure with a sack of gifts over its left shoulder. The jacket has a reddish hue, which indicates this can be a faded statue that has lost most of its colour. The statues are probably small enough to fit into the palm of an adult's hand.

I enjoy seeing whatever Mother Nature dishes up out there: moss, lichen, fungi, gnarly tree shapes, and so on. This time, Mother Nature had an assistant dishing up some whimsical surprises. That gave me some photos to post as a quirky 19th birthday present from my little blog.