Well, it is dark and stormy now, a complete contrast to the brightness of the valley this morning. Even though there were a few showers of rain about, the rain did not deminish the brilliance of the valley, mountain and sky colours.
The little Pee Wee bird who recently found my bird bath at the side of the house ventured around to the back of the house in time for breakfast this morning for the first time. Most of the regular gang had eaten and gone, leaving just a few scraps on the feeding table, which seemed to keep this little guy happy.
Today has been dreadfully humid. I spent most of the day with my daughter and her baby boy, Eli. Eli is the most kissable little man, and I would have loved to have held him all day if cuddling him hadn’t made us both feel even hotter.
Quite loud thunder has been rolling and rumbling around us for the last couple of hours, but so far we haven’t had any rain. The severe storm warning issued this afternoon may be relevent to other areas around us, but we haven’t seen a spot of rain. It did go dark earlier than usual though, hence the cliché title of tonight’s post. 😉
And once again, the daylight hours ended with a touch of drama in the sunset sky over Mount Warning. ❤
After quite a while – three weeks? four maybe? I awoke this morning to signs of rain.
Exhibit A – One drenched kookaburra atop a wet glass balustrade –
Exhibit B – Little Hoppy, my butcher bird with one gammy leg, waiting in the dryness of my back veranda for breakfast –
Exhibit C – My yellow and white frangipani, growing close enough to the house to allow me to take a photo without going out into the rain, with tiny beads of moisture captured on the leaves –
Later, baby magpie visited. The rain was light but consistent, and by the looks of the baby’s dry feathers, I think he may have hidden himself away amid tree foliage to escape the unfamiliar (to him) sight of rain –
And finally, Mount Warning. Just kidding. 😉 Actually, there was no sight of the mountain today, it was hidden behind the rainclouds. 🙂
If I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden
So the hinges on your windows would rust and colour
Like the boats pulled up on the sand for the summer
And your sweet clean clothes would go stiff on the line
And there’d be sand in your pockets and nothing on your mind ~ Josh Pyke.
Summer wasn’t shy today about letting us know it had arrived. At 31°C and 88 percent humidity, it felt like the middle of summer and not the first day. Tomorrow’s prediction is for 35°C (95°F).
Regardless of the weather, I had a very special visitor today, my daughter Emma and her three-and-a-half month old son, Eli. Today, Emma turned 28. I apologise profusely every year for having her at such a hot time of year, which also happens to be the month of Christmas so her birthday can easily be overshadowed by another significant event. This birthday though, as Emma is now a mother herself and realises the futility of my tongue-in-cheek comment, we agreed that babies usually arrive on the day of their choice.
After Emma and Eli headed home, I spent some time Christmas gift shopping online. Even though Australia is travelling incredibly well Covid-wise, I’m still a bit of a scaredy-cat about spending time in crowds. Perhaps more to the point, it saves me time to shop online when I’m still sorting, cleaning, tidying and decluttering my house.
Maggie in a Tizz.
During the afternoon I heard a commotion out in the front garden. Noisy Miner birds – who are named “noisy” for a reason! – were kicking up a ruckus in the tree at the top of our garden, their squawks intermittently interrupted by the sound of a distressed Magpie.
I tried to ignore the noise, but it got the better of me. Even the two dogs sprawled out beside me got up and peered out the door, as if investigating the situation. The dogs know, just as I do, that magpies and miners are friends. If a miner carries on a treat as they were doing today, there’s a threat. I imagined one of the neighbours cats may be lurking around the tree.
Ignoring the noise wasn’t working for me, so I ignored the heat instead, and trudged to the top of the hill to investigate. Whatever the threat was, it seemed to be in the tree, which meant it could be a snake wrapped around a high branch sheltering from the heat of the day.
This is what I found –
A Pee Wee!
We occasionally see Magpie Larks in the garden, and I have noticed recently we have one dropping into the back garden each morning after the other birds have finished eating the food I give them. Magpie Larks are another native Australian bird, affectionately known as Pee Wees. They have a very pretty song and seem completely harmless, so goodness knows why the magpies objected so much to the visit. Maybe the magpie family feel that they “own” my yard, and the tree being in our yard belongs to them.
Satisfied that one tiny pee wee posed no threat to my lovely magpie family, I paused to take a photo of Mount Warning, which could be seen today, although not as clearly visible as it could be (first photo).
Later tonight at around sunset, I took another photo of the mountain. Dark patches of cloud had rolled in, and we didn’t see the beautiful orange sunset sky we have had lately.
The opening words of today’s post are song lyrics from Josh Pyke, an Australian singer, whose creativity with words conjures images of immense beauty when describing the most mundane moments of everyday life. This song is called The Summer, so very appropriate for today. I love this song as the words romanticise the one season of the year that I struggle to cope with. For anyone interested, here’s the rest of the lyrics to The Summer ~
But every year it gets a little bit harder
To get back to the feeling of when we were fifteen
And we could jump in the river upstream
And let the current carry us to the beginning where
The river met the sea again
And all our days were a sun-drenched haze
While the salt spray crusted on the window panes
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
And I’ll remember that summer as the right one
The storms made the pavement steam like a kettle
And our first goodbye always seemed like hours
In the car park in between my house and yours
And if the summer holds a song we might sing forever
The winter holds a bite we’d never felt before
But time is like the ocean
You can only hold a little in your hands
So we swim before we’re broken
Before our bones become
Black coral on the sand
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer
So if I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden ~ Josh Pyke.
Cathy’s Week of Flowers at Words and Herbs is going way too fast. Here we are at Day 6 already! What is it they say … time goes fast when you’re having fun? This week certainly is fun. 🙂
Last year, I started choosing more drought tolerent plants for my garden. One of the first plants I chose was Gaura, which have adapted well to my subtropical garden which is rich in volcanic clay loam soil. I love the dainty flowers – and so do the bees! – so I planted more Gauras early this spring. This morning when I took these photos, my flower garden was abuzz with activity!
Some Daisies (but not all) are happy in my garden as well, and cope very well with the summer heat. Several years ago I planted this pretty lilac variety, and every once in a while I give them a harsh cutting back, usually when they try to take over the garden bed! In August, when this photo was taken, I had a patch of daisies about three metres long by two metres deep, and they looked just beautiful in full bloom! After the flowers had seen better days, I pulled out a few wayward runners and dead-headed the remaining plants. Within a week or two I expect to see the plants blooming profusely again.
My bottlebrush (Callistemon) is one of the first shrubs I planted in my garden after we built our house over 26 years ago, and it is still going strong. Callistemon is endemic to Australia, and a favourite with our small native honey-eating birds. This photo was taken in August as well, when the garden was springing to life after a brief winter rest.
Today the weather has been pleasantly warm and sunny, and in the early part of the day Mount Warning – the Cloud Catcher – lived up to its Indigenous name by “catching” a passing cloud.
Tonight, the darkening view across the valley, complete with orange sunset sky, looked equally as stunning.
In My World 