Lotus in the Primorye

Thank you Sveta for this pretty card.

Pecan Pie

Elizabeth sent me this nice and tasty recipe on this card. While the card gives you the ingredients, I have the secret of how to go about making this mouth watering dish ;-)) Those who want to know, please contact me by my e-mail.

Incidentaly, Pecan Pie Day is observed in North America on 12^th July.

Now, what is a pecan? The pecan nut is a species of hickory, native to south-central North America, in Mexico from Coahuila south to Jalisco and Veracruz, in the United States from southern Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, and Indiana to Virginia, southwestern Ohio, south through Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee,Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Florida, and west into New Mexico.

"Pecan" is from an Algonquian word, meaning a nut requiring a stone to crack.

Titanic

Thank you Nora for this nice card.

Reineke island

Small Reineke island is located in south-west of the Sea of Okhotsk between Shantarsky island and the Sakhalin Island, 5 km to the north of the continent. Administratively it is part of the Nikolaev District of Khabarovsk Territory.

The namesake bay currently covered with ice is located several kilometers to the south of the Reineke island. Both the island and the bay are named after the famous Russian hydrographer, Vice-Admiral Michail Reineke, Director of the Hydrographic Department.

Once more Sveta has sent a pretty picture card portraying the Russian Far-East Maritime Zone or Primorsky Krai. 

Ooops!

Ooops! Did that little fellow really do that!

Museum Ship Pommern

The Pommern, formerly the Mneme (1903–1908), is a windjammer. She is a four-masted barque that was built in 1903 in Glasgow at the J. Reid & Co shipyard.

The Pommern (German for Pomerania) is one of the Flying P-Liners, the famous sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. Later she was acquired by Gustaf Erikson of Marriehamn in the Finnish Åland archipelago, and used her to carry grain from the Spencer Gulf area in Australia to harbours in England or Ireland until the start of World War II. After World War Two, she was donated to the town of Mariehamn as a museum ship.

She is now a museum ship belonging to the Åland Maritime Museum and is anchored in western Mariehamn, Åland. A magnificent collection of photographs taken by Ordinary Seaman Peter Karney in 1933 showing dramatic pictures of life on a sailing ship rounding Cape Horn can be found in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.

The Pommern has a reputation of being a "lucky ship". She survived both world wars unscathed, has lost only four crew members at sea on her journeys and she has won the Great Grain Races twice, 1930 and 1937. She is one of the most popular landmarks ofÅland and annually visited by thousands of visitors.

Four other Clyde-built tall ships are still afloat. Thank you Kirsimarja for this nice card.

Ukraine - Zaporizhian Sich

Zaporizhian Sich was a historical territory that existed between the 16th and 18th centuries. The center of which was located in the region around today's Kakhovka Reservoir. The region stretches across the lower Dnieper river. At one point the area was a condominium of both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire. Soon after the colonization of Sich by the Russian Empire with South Slavs and Moldavians, the Sich was liquidated. With the liquidation the area became part of the Novorossia.

The Zaporizhian Sich was a socio-political, grassroots organization of Ukrainian Cossacks placed beyond the Dnieper rapid. It is considered that they started from a fortress built on the Khortytsia island in the middle of the Dnieper River in what is now the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine. The term has also been metonymically used as an informal reference to the whole military-administrative organisation of the Zaporizhian Cossack Host.

Thank you Barsal for this pretty card with an important piece of Ukranian history attached to it.