I’m honoured to be asked on board of Friendly Friday photo challenge as a substitute host for Snow whenever she is melting somewhere else, starting next Friday when I’ll be gathering your Friendly Friday links right here. But today Amanda, the other co-host, said ebb and flow.
As a non-English speaker, I’d never use these words together like that. I’d say low and high tide or something. Ebb and flow, so poetic. So is ebb low tide and flow high? Or vice versa?
I hail from the Adriatic area in the Mediterranean. This must be the sea with one of the smallest differences between ebb and flow. On seaside holidays we never knew whether the sea was high or low, except sometimes when the mussels attached to the pier above the surface were left wondering where the sea had gone to.
Only once it happened that a friend got his rucksack and clothes soaked through. We were swimming and the people next to our towels yelled: “Come back, the sea is coming!”
I’m always in awe when I read about places in the world with high tide warnings. Ahh, how exciting! What if you’re left stranded? Not nice!
Now my sea is the Tyrrhenian (that I’m still learning to spell). Corsica is just over there (but too far to be seen). Waves are bigger. Ours is a 12-km sandy beach next to the nature reserve with minimum facilities. Every time I visit (out of season, in the summer when crowds roll in I prefer to flee), the beach looks different: clean, full of stuff – wood, plastic, dead animals, half of its sand flooded, a wooden structure torn to pieces after this winter.
I don’t know about ebb and flow or which comes first but here is a compilation of seaside views from here, Tuscany, and there, Slovenia, and one from Croatia. They may look completely different in 100 years. Or much much sooner.
And don’t forget: next Friendly Friday we meet right here.
For Friendly Friday Photo Challenge hosted by Amanda from Something to Ponder About
Loved both here and there. And I love different.
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Thank you, Bojana. I feel so lucky to be able to hop here and there like this.
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I bet.
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A beautiful collection with a story, as always. Hopefully people will notice that your post is the one to go to next Friday 😊
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Thank you, SMSW. Well, they will get used to sooner or later. It would help if you post a short warning that day to redirect everybody to my blog.
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You are so right about “ebb and flow” being a poetic phrase. So much so that at first I couldn’t figure out why you were talking about tides. The phrase is so common that it has shed its orginal meaning, and is often used to refer to anything that comes and goes. Traffic on a highway over the course of a day, people in the subway, melody, emotions.
And you guessed it right! Water ebbs away when the tide is going out, and then later the flow is when the tide comes back in. I have lived by the sea and found that the tide changes sometimes are dramatic, and sometimes you can hardly tell by looking. In northern California, the tide change was 10 feet up and down, and it completely changed the look of the bay, or the shore. Piers would appear to rest on the water at high tide, and a few hours later would be towering in the air!
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Oh, and I am simply in love with Piran. We’ll leave it at that.
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It’s waiting… 🙂
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Thank you, Crystal. Quite, that’s what I meant, such drastic changes! Oh, everything that comes and goes… That is to say everything at all, including our lives. 🙂 Happy ebbs and flows to you on this solstice. (I wrote Happy Equinox on my FB by mistake, hehe.)
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Wow, life itself ebbs and flows. You are right. With patterns inside patterns. I can have a season of ebb, followed by a season of flow, but all the little ebbs and flows within a season too. Right now I am having LUCK! So my friend told me to buy a lottery ticket. “I’m serious!” he said. So I did. I’ll let you know if I suddenly become fabulously rich…. (and then Piran and I can become better acquainted)
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Hahhah!! That’s right! Buying the ticket is the precondition. 😀 But everybody can do it with money, my mom likes to say. 😉 Luck is priceless.
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Beautiful shots Manja. Especially love “Night View” – I’ll have to visit Piran someday.
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Thank you so much, Jan. I really hope you do.
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I see that you have worked out that ebb and flow doesn’t necessarily mean high and low tide. I guess the Mediterranean and the Adriatic are protected somewhat from the pull of the tidal forces. How wonderful to have the sea stable at the edge? I am used to dramatic changes. Although you alluded to this, with the photos of the structure that disappeared. Where there is waves there is destruction and in the opposite season, construction. This is what happens to the Gold Coast here in Australia every year. Man tries to stop it placing artificial “groins” out into the sea to protect the coast, but Mother nature finds a way around it. Loved your photo of Piran, and so my cyber love affair with Slovenia continues unabated.
Looking forward to seeing your first post for the Friendly Friday Challenge next week!
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Thank you, Amanda. Here’s to cyber love! 😀 It brings you places! Destruction and construction… that’s some ebb and flow.
A true story of a Slovenian in Mexico: she went to swim, as one does, and the current got you and the life guard rescued her and pulled her out and the first thing he asked her when she came to was: “Adriatic sea?” We were sooo pampered over there. The first time I saw the Pacific and those waves, I stood in awe and couldn’t breathe.
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Hmm. Waves and surf can be treacherous if you don’t know what to do. Thank goodness she was rescued!
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Lovely post. My marine biology degree is handy from time to time. When a tide is on the ebb it is going out and a flowing tide is one that is coming in. These are nautical terms, and an essential part of our language for seafaring communities. Lyrical words they are.
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Thank you, Scooj. 🙂 Oh, I’ve always loved the sea but am not very knowledgeable about it.
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My husband constantly watches the tides so he know when to go fishing–high tide! Me, I just go with the flow. 😉
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Hehhe, sounds just the way to be. Thanks, Lois!
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Ebb and flow are poetic indeed. The tides have so much to teach us. And your coastlines are joyous …tidal or not.
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Thank you, Lisa. I bet you know plenty about tides in various places. For you the coastline is something completely different than for me, or not really: it’s the start of the Other land. 🙂
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Loved this collection of photos Manja. 🙂
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Thank you so much, Lorelle! 🙂
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Lovely photos! I especially love Piran and Koper– they were some of my favorite places on my Adriatic/Istrian road trip a few years back.
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Thank you… I’ve just seen your name, oh, like a cleaning product? 🙂 Need to check. Arielle! 🙂 Welcome to my blog! I’m so glad you got to see these parts. I love to go back every time. How far did you go down the Adriatic? Or just Istria? Did you see Opatija? Just earlier I was thinking of it because some old villas here in Rome reminded me of it.
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I went from Duino in Italy down to Pula in Croatia. I’ve never been to Opatija!
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Oh, Pula is lovely too. It’s been a while. I used to hitchhike around there when it was still Yugoslavia. 🙂
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A lovely collection, Manja:) I tried fixing the issues that you brought to my attention (many many thanks for that!). Is the site visible now?
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Thank you, Moon. Yes, it says ‘bitsandpieces’ in your comment now. 🙂 And the link leads to there. But it leads to your About me page, not to your blog posts. When I click Home on your blog, it leads to the same About me page, not to your posts. If you find where to fix that, you’re all set. But the major thing is okay now!
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Ahhh….let me get on that!!! thanks again:)
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Although others have pointed out the many uses of “ebb and flow,” I still always interpret it as a sea-related term, as you have, which makes it much more appealing to me! I near really thought about your lack of major tidal action over there. On the Atlantic, where I grew up going to the seashore, the differences were often dramatic (and annoying, to be honest!). Your photos and your mini-tides are perfect.
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Oh, yes, Lexi, I prefer it this way too. 🙂 But I feel as if it has made me soft. 😉 Thanks!
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