In recent blogs, I’ve featured many wonders created by humankind, like fabulous gold jewellery from ancient Crete and the astonishing wall mosaics in Sicily. But natural wonders shouldn’t be omitted. I was reminded of that when I was sorting out my thousands of pics and came across this one that I took back in 2020. It’s not just any old rainbow above my garden. It’s a double rainbow. (Though I admit the second one is a lot fainter than the one of the left.)

Isn’t it glorious and inspiring? Among natural wonders, this gets high marks from me. And it’s free 😉

Other natural wonders are found out there in the wider universe. I used to use a selection of them as screensavers on my desktop computer.

This image, courtesy of the NASA library, is one such, and startlingly beautiful, I think. It’s called the Whirlpool Galaxy and you can read about it by following the NASA link above.

And there are loads more that you can download, free, from the NASA library. Such as the M81 galaxy that NASA labels “pretty in pink”. You have to admit it IS pretty, no?

Natural wonders can be small, too…

I found this image during my great sort-out. (Don’t ask. It involved writing and encrypting about 100 GB of data to a new, whizzy memory stick with both normal USB and USB-C connectors, so that I can use it with different computers. Worth it in the end, honest…)

But these violets are such a delight. They have self-sown in my garden. They appear spontaneously in all sorts of places. Sophie (of this parish) tells me that she has never been successful at growing them.

Neither have I, Sophie.
In my garden, these natural wonders grow themselves, usually alongside a wall or around the edge of pots with roses in them

And, talking of roses, how about these?

Now there, I will admit to having cheated. These are not natural wonders, though they are wonders. They were bred, with great skill, by David Austin Roses. The yellow one is Lady of Shalott. The pink one is Princess Alexandra of Kent. And both are currently giving great delight in pots on my patio.

Roses have a lot of history

Dog rose image by Hans Benn from Pixabay

Remember the Wars of the Roses? Roses have been around for a long time. At least, red and white ones have. But were they actually red? I’ve seen it suggested that the roses in question were actually pink or white, since real red roses didn’t exist. Is that true? Dunno. Do you?

I’m assuming the roses they picked to indicate whether they cleaved to York or Lancaster were dog roses, like this one. The dog rose was the stylised rose of medieval heraldry, so it already had meaning.

That’s about all I remember from what I learned at school about the Wars of the Roses. Except that they went on for a very long time. And the eventual winner was Henry VII, a Lancastrian, who then married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, in order to bring the two sides together. His badge, the Tudor Rose, married up the white and red roses which was, I will admit, rather neat.

The one other thing I’ve learned about the Wars of the Roses is that George R R Martin mined that period of history for Game of Thrones which has a huge number of fans, both for the TV series and for the books. I confess that, unlike the rest of my family, I’ve never managed to finish even the first book. My bad, eh?

Yes, I’m digressing, but writers do go down research rabbit holes…

In classical antiquity, the Wonders of the World were all man-made. You can see a stylised version of them here. They are  (from left to right, top to bottom):

1. Great Pyramid of Giza,
2. Hanging Gardens of Babylon,
3. Temple of Artemis,
4. Statue of Zeus at Olympia,
5. Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,
6. Colossus of Rhodes,
7. Lighthouse of Alexandria.

Sadly, the only one that still exists is the Great Pyramid of Giza.

But there are other wonders, too, including a more recent list of 7 Modern Wonders, compiled in 2007. You can see them on Wikipedia. They include Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and the Colosseum. So I’d say they qualify, wouldn’t you?

Colosseum by frederic-prochasson – stock.adobe.com

…so back to natural wonders…

Following a campaign (2007-2011) to find the New 7 Wonders of Nature, the final choices were:

1. 1. the Amazon Rain Forest and River;
   2. Halong Bay in Vietnam (shown below);
   3. Jeju Island, South Korea;
   4. Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil;
   5. Puerto Princesa Subterranean National Park, the Philipines;
   6. Komodo Island, Indonesia;
   7. Table Mountain, South Africa.

Halong Bay, Vietnam, by hien-phung – stock.adobe.com

Several wonders from Europe, North America and Australasia were finalists, but none made the cut to the final seven.

All these final choices are splendid. Of course they are. Though I do wonder about the omission of natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef and the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon by amineah – stock.adobe.com

Politics? I hear you cry…
I couldn’t possibly comment 🙂 could I?

So, to finish with my natural wonders, I’ll go back to my own garden and a stunning winter sunrise that now graces my office wall. I took this over 20 years ago from my bedroom window, but it still serves to remind me that Nature and its wonders are worth cherishing.

Which natural wonders do you find inspiring? Do share. We might be inspired too.

Joanna