Category: The Week That Was

Australia · challenges · colours · flowers · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · photography · spring · subtropical weather · sunset · The Week That Was · Tweed Valley

A Week of Flower ~ Day 7

Joanne6 Comments

Oh no, it’s the last day of Cathy at Word and Herbs challenge, A Week of Flowers! I have enjoyed sharing my flower photos so much this week, although regular visitors know that I share garden photos often. Flowers seem to speak a Universal Language of Friendship and Caring, so I will continue to post photos of my garden often. I love Cathy’s suggestion that A Week of Flowers might become an annual event, so I will definitely participate in future years as well. 🙂

Today I am sharing two of my favourite Grevillea photos. Our Grevillea is a small native tree that we planted about 26 years ago, and every year, without fail, we have a mass of beautiful nectar-filled, pale yellow flowers emerging like delicate spiders legs. Our native birds love the Grevillea tree, especially Noisy Miners, with their yellow beaks and eyes. Don’t they colour-coordinate beautifully with the flowers?

Going from the extreme of a small tree to a ground cover, tiny Alyssum flowers are another success story in my subtropical garden. Technically an annual, Alyssums self-sow each year, so I never know where in the garden a new plant may pop up!

Husband and I went out shopping this afternoon as husband needed to go to our local hardware store, which just happens to have a plant nursery attached. 🙂 I came home with several pots of annual seedlings which I will be planting in the cool hours of tomorrow morning, mostly in large pots situated on our back patio. I bought a large tray of ten Alyssums, far too many for the pots, so I will plant the extras along the border of a garden bed in my front garden.

Tonight we had another strikingly gorgeous sunset-orange western sky over Mount Warning. It was another warm day today – parts of Australia are experiencing a heatwave – and as a result, the valley spent the day veiled by a misty heat-haze. Tonight, however, the sun’s rays burnt away the haze and shone brilliantly across the darkening sky.

Thank you so much, Cathy, for the opportunity to be challenged to share flower photos every day for a week. Searching through flower photos to share, and meeting more like-minded flower fanatics who also shared their glorious flower photos certainly brightened my days, and I hope my photos brought some joy to people as well. ❤

Australia · photography · rain · spring · The Week That Was

The Heat is Back!

Joanne19 Comments

???????????????????????????????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.

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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…….

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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?

 

 

Australia · autumn · The Week That Was

The Beauty in Dull Weather Days

Joanne17 Comments

About a month ago I joined a website called Blipfoto, which I was introduced to by Kathy at “Reinventing the Event Horizon”. Kathy’s partner Sara, a wonderful photographer, had discovered Blipfoto and joined the site herself, and Kathy invited everyone to drop by Sara’s Blipfoto site.

Surfing fanatics don't care about the weather, just the waves.

Initially my plan was to take a look at Sara’s photos and offer her my support, although five minutes later I had joined the site myself and was contemplating my first photo!

Looking out from the Captain Cook Memorial Lighthouse at Point Danger.

The decision was a no-brainer really; any site recommended by Kathy and Sara had to be worthwhile, I had admired Sara’s photos on Kathy’s site for some time, and, although I am a novice photographer myself, I have become increasingly interested in the technicalities of photography myself over the past couple of years.

Looking up at the lighted area.

Blipfoto allows the posting of one photo per day, accompanied by a small description of said photo, although not absolutely essential. I find this extremely achievable, even on the busiest of days.

A closeup of the Lazerbeam Lighthouse.

In the process of taking just one photo for each day, however, I am ending up with at least ten new photos each day, and after choosing “the one” for the day, the rest of my photos, however amazing, must be resigned to a life in my desktop folder of photos…..

Duranbah Beach, still busy, even on a wet day.

…..unless ~ I show some of my favourites here!

A dull day at Elephant Rock, Currumbin, Queensland.

In reality, the weather here during the past week has been nothing spectacular, unless you enjoy rain and dull days. Some of my photos have even been taken from inside my car, in an effort to keep dry and I have been surprisingly pleased by some of the results.

An almost empty car park area at Currumbin Beach.

When the sky is cloudy and grey, the lighting effect on the photos is different to that of a sunny day and I find that there is a certain beauty in photos taken on cloudy days.

Currumbin Beach

Perhaps there has even been a name invented for this white/grey effect, I’m not sure.

Gloomy, yet beautiful.

“The Week That Was” may even become a regular end-of-week post here, if I keep on taking photos worthy (to me, at least!) of being displayed.

This photo made it to Blipfoto; my funny little Cutie, confined to the "great indoors"!