Category: spring
Silent Sunday
The Heat is Back!
What an array of weather we have had this week, all the way from cool rains, right through to the extreme humidity of our sub-tropical climate.
I think that if you compare the two photos above, you will see what I mean ~ the first photo shows a kookaburra on a bright sunny day, feathers fluffed up, and looking very handsome indeed.
The second photo shows a bedraggled kookaburra on a dull day, with feather weighted down by the drenching rain.
All of these photos were taken during the last week…….
In the next photo you can see a placid kookaburra enjoying a quiet moment in the morning mist. The purple tree beside him is a Jacaranda, a beautiful tree which puts on a brilliant show in the late spring in our area.
For a couple of months now I have seen very few rainbow lorikeets, even though most days until recently I have had thirty to forty of them in my garden at a time. Their numbers seem to have decreased, and I have no idea why. This week though, they have started to visit again, first just two, then four, and today I had six lorikeets here, enjoying breakfast at the bird feeding table.
Without the rainbow lorikeets in the garden to take photos of, photography loses some of its appeal to me. I think I would feel the same if any of my regulars stopped visiting though, they are like my own little wildlife family, right outside my back door, and I miss them when they are gone.
With summer making its way back during the last few days, Christmas being just around the corner is becoming a harsh reality……but how did the year vanish so quickly?
Coming up for air….Spring Air!
Yes, that’s right, I really am coming up for air, after days and weeks at the sewing machine again.
Remember I said I would be selling my sewing business? Didn’t happen. I lost the urge to part company with my long-standing “friend”, the one that monopolises my time and leaves me with eye-strain and an aching neck during the most demanding times of the year. And you know something, I actually enjoyed the familiar whirring sounds of my industrial sewing machines, the cutting of fabric, the snip of the clippers, seeing the shirts I have constructed finally taking on form. That old familiar sense of achievement kicked in again and I’m feeling okay with the work that I do. For now.
I have had to put my fun, creative craft work temporarily on hold but my hours spent at the sewing machine has given my mind time to wander off along on the creative avenues that I will be pursuing again when the work is complete.
Whilst sitting in my work room, with window wide open, the welcoming sounds of the chirping of baby birds has filled my ears! Through years of practice I have learnt the art of “selective hearing”, allowing the outdoor sounds of nature to have a higher volume than my machines. A few days ago two baby “Noisy Miners” came along for a visit with Mama Miner and yesterday I was thrilled to bits to finally see a baby Magpie, whose tiny chirps I had heard for a few days.
On Monday morning my youngest son flies to New Zealand for nine days….a school excursion, no less! How times have changed, school excursion highlights back in my days at school consisted of a trip to the local council chamber! They’ll be skiing almost daily and having a fabulous time I know, I’ve seen the itinerary, so this weekend will consist of sorting through clothes, shopping for last minute warm clothing requirements and making sure the bag he’s taking doesn’t weigh any more than twenty-two kilos…..
I’m really looking forward to entering the world of people again (as opposed to the world of sewing!) and can’t wait to read what all of my blogging friends have been up to while I’ve been in semi-hibernation again.
For tonight though I am looking forward to a night in front of the television, perhaps watching a DVD, glass of white wine in hand, followed by an early night to bed…… 🙂
Ten Minutes of Sunset (and a wet kookaburra!)
The rain crashed suddenly onto the car as I drove south along the M1 Motorway. Sitting beside me in the passenger seat was my daughter Emma. She said nothing at all and I didn’t dare look at her although I could feel the tension in my girl, as I struggled to see the road.
At first, I wasn’t sure whether the loud crashing was due to millions of huge raindrops on the car, or hail. It could have been either.
When Emma did speak, all she said was, “we can’t even pull over mum, we’re on the freeway”.
She was right. The visibility of the road ahead was perhaps two metres, we couldn’t pull over safely, freeway or not, as I couldn’t see to find a safe place to park for a while, whilst we waited for the deluge to pass.
I continued to drive, oh so carefully and ever so slowly. I knew Emma was scared; so was I.
Our exit off the freeway seemed to take forever to arrive and thankfully, by that time, the rain had eased slightly, so I could actually see our exit! We could have ended up having to continue over half an hour further south on to Byron Bay. Not that Byron Bay isn’t a lovely town to visit, but please, not today, not in this weather!
Five minutes later, (after we had reached our destination!) the rain had stopped.
Showers of rain continued on and off for the rest of the day, but nothing anywhere near as ferocious as the rain Emma and I had driven through, for perhaps ten minutes, on the freeway.
Late in the afternoon, when safely home and standing in my back garden, camera in hand, this is the series of photos I took, which also spanned a ten minute period of the day.
Did we need to endure the sudden colossal downpour a few hours earlier in the day, to be rewarded by this amazing sunset? I suspect we did, as I don’t remember ever having seen the sky on fire in such a beautiful and magnificent way!
In some of the photos you will notice Mount Warning peeking through the clouds here and there. Mount Warning is an extinct volcano and has been there for as long as time. I can imagine the sunsets that the mountain has seen over the years.
These photos are straight from the camera, just as I took them, no editing other than reducing the size to download them here. This is the colour that I saw, standing in the garden, shivering, after what had been a sunny and pleasant morning. Isn’t it spectacular? I just had to share these with all of you.
And look who came to visit, just as I was about to head back indoors to the warmth of the house!
One poor, wet, bedraggled kookaburra. This is my very tame friend, who I have named Larry, due to his Three Stooges hairdo!
I would like to think that Larry was there to enjoy the sunset with me, but in all honesty, I have to admit that I know he was there for the bacon rind I feed him!
I wouldn’t have missed this sky show, only lasting for ten minutes, for anything. 🙂
In My World 