Wordless Wednesday ~ Cloudy Mountain
Tag: changing seasons
No Mountain Today …
Today I haven’t seen Mount Warning at all, not even for a second. There is no rain about, so I can’t blame the whiteness on distant rain. The day has been warm, dull, and humid, so perhaps it is heat-haze. It has also been extremely windy all day, so my granddaughter and I couldn’t even enjoy some time in the garden today while she was visiting. So indoors we remained, playing with farm animals, reading books, and watching some cartoons on TV. It is easy to keep Aurora occupied, both indoors and outside, and she is wonderful company. I must admit to being a tad tired tonight though after a whole day with my lovely little visitor.
Considering the lack of an interesting mountain photo today, it is a good opportunity to share a couple of photos taken during the past week. First I have a photo of a cute little Honeyeater who visited my back garden recently. If it wasn’t for the rustling of the palm leaves, I wouldn’t have known he was there.
The gum tree the trio of Kookaburras are perched in is right down the back of our garden. I realised these three were there when they had a laughing competition with another group of distant kookaburras. I’d love to know what they were saying to each other.
The last photo is from May. I came across this photo when looking for flower photos for The Week of Flowers posts, so saved it as an extra to share this week. It is a beautiful bunch of flowers my daughter – Aurora’s mummy – gave me for my birthday.
So here we are, the 30th of November, the last day of spring. It is with a touch of trepidation that I will turn the page of my calendar tomorrow morning to the first day of summer. Every year, I try to find positive aspects of my least favoured season of the year, and by the end of summer I always look back and think the heat wasn’t as difficult to cope with as I imagined it would be. It’s a bit like a visit to the dentist really, an unpleasant thought until it’s over. Once again, I have my fingers crossed that we will have rain without floods and heat without melting! I learned many years ago that when living in a subtropical climate, it’s useless wishing for no extreme heat and no cyclonic rain. Mother Nature will do as she does regardless. 🙂
Kookaburras – Mates for life.
Today – the 1st March – is recognized as the first day of autumn here in Australia. Thank goodness!
The 2018-2019 summer season has been brutal, with this summer being Australia’s hottest summer on record.
Where I live on the coast we’ve been lucky. Our maximum temperatures have remained, on average, around the low thirties (or the high eighties if you go by the Fahrenheit scale). It’s the high humidity of our sub-tropical climate that has really knocked us about though.
Right through summer I’ve been refreshing the water bowls every morning that I leave strategically placed where my beautiful feathered visitors will find them. I worry about the birds constantly, wondering whether I’d lose any of my regulars, but most of them continue to show up every day.
It’s a relief knowing the worst of the heat is behind us. Last night we had quite a bit of rain and this morning the air felt cool, fresh and still. My resident kookaburras came to visit, singing their raucous territorial song in my front garden, and in the distance I could hear another flock of kookies staking a claim on their territory in reply.
It’s been a few weeks now since my original, Larry, visited and I miss seeing him. His lady friend, Shilo, who would once hide behind Larry, peeking out to see if I’d noticed her, visits still with the rest of the flock. But I’ve noticed a change in her manner. She flies down to sit close to me when I feed the others. And when I pass her food, her super-timidness has been replaced by a confident gesture – by Shilo’s standards at least – she now grabs food from my hand before joining the others.
She’s not as gentle as Larry. Larry had a confident air, a steadiness of eye that I’ve never noticed in any other bird. I could pass the tiniest morsel to him and he’d peck it gently from between my fingers. But Shilo wouldn’t dream of allowing me to hand-feed her when Larry was around.
I wish Shilo could tell me what has become of Larry. My fearless friend has been visiting for over ten years, and given the lifespan of a kookaburra is around 11-15 years, maybe Larry didn’t make it through the heat of the summer. I prefer not to think about that possibility though. Kookaburras mate for life, so what is Shilo to do now?
Thankfully, Larry and Shilo’s clan has grown in numbers over the years. Now, every afternoon when they visit, I do a head-count. I have seven regulars visiting. Hopefully some of the younger birds are noticing the trust Shilo has in me. Perhaps in her timid way, Shilo is doing the same as Larry, by setting an example of trust.
Maybe over time, the youngsters will learn to trust me too.
Postscript: I have to wonder, are birds psychic? Three hours after writing this post I went outside to feed the kookaburras, just as I do every afternoon. Today, as I approached a kookaburra waiting in Shilo’s usual place, another bird flew down … the waiting bird was Larry, and Shilo sat beside him. As usual, she took her food, then joined the others. Larry stayed, gently taking each small piece of meat from my hand as I passed it to him.
I wonder where he’s been? He looked fantastic! Clean, bright eyed, and as calm as ever. 🙂
April.
“April came along like a blessing, and if it were a fine April it was so beautiful that it was impossible not to feel different, not to feel stirred and touched.” ~ From “The Enchanted April”, by Elizabeth Von Arnim.
Without meaning to let it happen, the month of March has passed me by without my adding a single post. I checked back to March of last year ~ it was the same ~ post-less. I seem to have formed a habit.
This summer has been hotter than usual. I know I spend every summer muttering under my breath about my intolerance to hot weather, but this summer, I wasn’t the only one. It wasn’t just hot weather, it was humid. And sticky. And sweaty. And dry. Not pleasant at all.
Now, I think the months of extreme discomfort may finally be behind us for another few months. The rain finally arrived in such abundance that our nearby river was on flood warning one day last week. But that’s okay. We needed the rain. The ground needed the moisture. Even the weeds were dying from the heat, not a bad thing when you think about it, but I lost some of my plants too.
Between showers of rain last week, I started gardening again. We are extending an existing garden, which I call “Tess’s Garden”. It’s where our beautiful dog Tess was laid to rest in January, and I have planted “her” Azalea on her grave. The garden isn’t finished yet, but when it is I will show you the finished area. In my mind’s eye, I see a beautiful and relaxing area and it is beginning to take shape, now we can venture out into the garden again.
Early morning is the most delightful time of day right now! The air is so cool on my bare arms, the mist swirls around the mountains in the valley and often it is thick in my garden too, before the sun rises and melts it away.
Frangipani’s must love this kind of weather. The branches are still covered with leaves, when usually by this time of year they are all but bare. The rain last week knocked many of the last of the flowers to the ground. It looks so pretty though, seeing the dainty flowers on the ground. Whilst many other plants in the garden give up in the extreme heat, the frangipani’s thrive.
Every afternoon for the last week I have had a visit from a pair of Eastern Rosella’s, right near the front door. They love the flowers of the Grevillea tree, an Australian native, but they are so timid and it has been a challenge to sneak outside the front door without disturbing them! After a few attempts I finally managed to make it to the veranda and take a few photos before they took fright and flew away. As you can see, they are incredibly colourful. I have plans to plant more natives in the garden. I love to see the birds they attract.
You know that I always have a helper in the garden too, right? Little Miss Tibbs loves the garden too and really appreciates the watering can being filled to the top!
If I’m not mistaken, this is the time of year when the whole world rejoices at the change in weather. Here, we are loving the cool air, whilst in the northern hemisphere everyone is heaving a collective sigh of relief as they watch the snow melting and the green buds beginning to grow on the trees.
All is well with the world as April begins. 🙂
In My World 