Tag: family

blessings · challenges · friends · gardening · new beginnings · photography

Weekly Photo Challenge ~ My 2012 in Pictures

Joanne20 Comments

???????????????????????????????

The people at WordPress have challenged bloggers to search through their photographic archives for the last Weekly Photo Challenge for the year and for me, it hasn’t been easy to decide on which photos to choose for my final post of the year. I wonder how other bloggers have made their final choices and what has tilted the scales in favour of one photo, against another?

My main deciding factor has been to try to choose photos that I haven’t published this year, something perhaps just a tad different, although I must admit that I am a creature of habit. Nearly all of my photos could be filed under perhaps six headings ~ birds, my pets, my garden, sunsets, natural views and my family!

January
January

When I searched back to January, I had forgotten about the floods during that month! With the humidity of our Australian summer in our sub-tropical climate always present, January is not one of my favoured months weather wise, although the flood waters in our valley do make for a different view.

February
February

When the sun took a peek at the garden in February the flowers were thrilled, breaking out in bloom all over the place! I love these little trailing violets, a beautiful ground cover between the larger shrubs.

March
March

The humidity continued into March and the day I took a drive to Tyalgum, a small village about an hours drive from my home (and away from the coastal breezes!) the heat was almost unbearable! Some beautiful scenery along the way made up for the heat and it turned out to be a very pleasant trip after all.

April
April

During April, a visit to Fingal Beach was definitely a highlight of the month. This small child also appears to be enjoying himself, exploring the rock pool between the volcanic rocks along the beach.

May
May

This is one of my favourite photos of my Indian Ring Neck parrot, Charlie. When we brought Charlie home to live with us we had no idea whether Charlie was a he or a she, so he or she needed a name suited to either sex. I have recently reached the grand conclusion that Charlie is a she, as I’m sure she would have developed a brightly coloured ring around her neck by now, if she were a he. I love Charlie regardless, although the rest of my family don’t share my love for her. I seem to be Charlie’s “chosen person”, so she coos are tweets at me, allowing me to pat her and tickle her neck. It’s another story if another member of the family gets too close for comfort though! My little angel can be quite the devil at times!

June
June

During May, the photo-bug had set in big time for me and I had become the proud owner of my new “best friend”, a wonderful new Canon Powershot SX40 camera. The camera went with me everywhere (and usually still does!) and I enjoyed many an hour at the beach, taking photos of anything and everything. I love the simplicity of this long-legged bird walking through the ripples in the water.

July
July

Like I said, mid year I would photograph anything! I loved experimenting with anything that may (or may not) look good in a photo, trying out different angles, in varying light throughout the day. Standing between a clump of palm trees in the middle of the day, blue sky above, seed pods shimmering in the sunlight, turned out to be one of my successful photos!

August
August

Through experimenting with photos I have also discovered that certain birds are very photogenic, with our beautiful kookaburras being some of my favourite subjects. I’m sure they pose for me when they see the camera!

September
September

And speaking of posers, here is my adorable little garden helper. She also helps around the house, with the washing, making the bed, washing the dishes….but even an enthusiastic little helper needs to take a break some times!

October
October

My gorgeous friends the magpies are another photogenic subject. Not a day goes by without they visit my garden for some scraps of food and I am always rewarded with their happy, chortling song.

November
November

This little Butcher Bird is a fairly new visitor to my garden and he and his little mate have made themselves right at home during the latter part of this year.

December
December

How did the year come to an end so quickly? As I finish writing, it is a mere twenty minutes to midnight and I would like to wish you all a very Happy New Year! May 2013 bring you many blessings, happiness, good friends, loving family, and prosperity in everything you do.

Australia · birthdays · blessings · Changes · gratitude

Happy 100th, Joe!

Joanne22 Comments

It was on this day, one-hundred years ago, that the first child was born to Percy and Esther Kelly, exactly nine months to the day after the young couple were married.

Today, Andrew Edward Joseph Kelly, better known as Joe, turns 100 years of age.

After Joe, Percy and Esther went on to have another eleven children. They had eight sons and four daughters, and Joe has outlived them all, except for one.

Joe’s youngest sister, Irene, is twenty-one years younger than Joe, and along with other members of the family and some longtime friends, celebrated his birthday with him last Saturday night in Sydney.

My husband wouldn’t have missed his uncle’s one-hundredth birthday for anything. Let’s face it, it’s not often in one’s lifetime you have the privilege of knowing a person who has reached such a grand age!

The year of 1912 is well remembered as the year of the sinking of the “Titanic”. George V was the King of England and the Commonwealth of Australia was a mere baby of only eleven years old.

It was in 1912 that Australia saw its first air crash. The Commonwealth Bank was established with Australia’s Prime Minister of the day, Andrew Fisher, being the first account holder at the bank.

The Maternity Allowance was granted to new mothers in 1912, giving them a five-pound “Baby Bonus” upon the birth of a child. I guess Joe’s mum just missed out, with him being born on October 2, and the allowance being introduced on October 10!

Uncle Joe would have seen many changes during his one-hundred years; the progression of cars through the years, aeroplanes becoming common place in the skies, the opening of The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the introduction of television and so many other wild and wonderful inventions that have changed the world!

And speaking of cars, Joe still has his driver’s licence! I was very surprised to learn also that he has only had his licence for the last fifty years. Driving around the streets of Sydney is not for the faint-hearted, so he is doing very well indeed!

Before my husband headed off to Sydney for the birthday celebrations, I asked him to find out if Joe had received a “telegram from the Queen”, as I recall that being a highlight for those who reach this wonderful age.

What Joe did received was a letter from the Queen, and the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the State Premier, the Federal Member of Parliament and the Local Member also!

He even received an O.B.E! ~ Old But Everlasting, signed by Father Time and Mother Nature….how wonderful!

You’ll have to excuse the poor quality of the photos of the letters, as they were taken with a mobile phone, but I’m sure they will be clear enough for you to see the mail you can expect when you also reach one-hundred!

In a lovely gesture, to mark the occasion himself, Joe presented each of his five children, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren with a 1912 Australian penny.

I don’t know what everyone else thinks, but I believe that to reach the age of one-hundred, in a fit and healthy state, still living in your own home, and having the independence to drive yourself about is something to strive for!

Happy birthday, Uncle Joe, and wishing you many more years of good health to come!! 🙂

Australia · Changes · freedom · new beginnings

“Yours is the Earth and Everything that’s in it”

Joanne5 Comments
The SS New Australia

One of the most time consuming, although thoroughly enjoyable, items on my ‘to do’ list, is to sort through old photos I inherited from my parents. I have two brand new scrapbook style albums, which will become the new home for most of the photos, after they have all been scanned and labelled.

Another album I have to work on is a very old photographic record of my parents voyage in 1951, on the ship the “SS New Australia”, which brought them and their three young daughters from Southampton, England to Sydney, Australia, a journey taking them over one month, when they travelled across the world in search of a new and improved life.

In among a paper bag full of photos I discovered three restaurant menus, carefully saved and well preserved after all these years from their weeks on the “SS New Australia”.

On the back of one of the menus, printed Wednesday, December 6, 1950, I found a poem. As I read the poem, I couldn’t help but think what a thoughtful gesture it had been, giving these immigrants so much hope for their future lives, in particular with the line “Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it”.

As they embarked on their new lives, they had the whole world in the palm of their hand!

Note~ After deciding to record these thoughts here today and researching how many others there were on the same voyage as my parents (over 1,500 people) I happened to notice the date when they arrived at their destination of Sydney, Australia.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge in the early 1950's

The “SS New Australia” sailed into Sydney Harbour on the March 19, 1951, exactly sixty-one years ago today. And just by coincidence, today is the eightieth anniversary of the opening of the “Sydney Harbour Bridge”!

~ ~ ~

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

“If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

And make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster,

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold On!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings, nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!”

Rudyard Kipling ~ Photo scanned from my book "The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English"

 

Australia · friends · gardening · Mount Warning · summer · Tweed Valley

Excuse Me…..Can We Come in Please?

Joanne4 Comments
Where Mount Warning should be.

The magpies visit my garden regularly and we have become rather friendly over the last year. This summer, the mummy and daddy magpie have brought their three babies to visit, no doubt teaching them where The Home To Come To When You Are Hungry is, as I always drop everything I’m doing when they arrive and rush outside with soggy bread for them all, which they seem to enjoy enormously.

They have me very well trained!

Just the other day, as I walked outside with hands full of garbage to go the garbage bin, one of the babies, no doubt expecting a treat, swooped down out of the trees and landed right in front of me. I had to explain, of course, that I hadn’t brought any bread with me, only the garbage, but would be back in a jiffy.

Understanding every word I said, he waited, of course.

You know you love me....

We’ve had a run of rainy days for the last three days, today being the fourth day of sog and mist. The plants in the garden are growing profusely, as are the weeds. Mount Warning has vanished out of sight.

And our magpie babies are not impressed!

Two of the babies came to my bedroom door yesterday, which leads out onto the back veranda, looking straight at me, longingly, with their cute beady eyes. I could well imagine them asking, “Excuse me, but it’s awfully wet out here. Can we please come inside for a while?”

Yep. It's still raining.

Not satisfied with sitting on a post a whole six feet away from the door, the more adventurous of the siblings came even closer to the door, sitting on the back of an outdoor chair and peering longingly at me.

I took his photo through the window, hence the blurriness you see in the photo, and then carefully and gently tied to open the door, so as not to startle him, hoping to take a photo without the window impeding the way.

Can we come in please?

The baby magpies made the sudden, joint decision that they had had enough close human contact for the day and in a flurry of feathers, off they flew.

They were back again this morning for breakfast though. 🙂

birthdays · dad · gratitude · happiness · Mum · sisters · spiritual

Our Cups Runneth Over with Love and Laughter

Joanne4 Comments

Many years ago my mother slipped on a wet floor at the local butcher shop, later learning that she had broken her toe. As Mum related the story to family and friends over the next few days, she would erupt into fits of laughter, tears streaming down her cheeks and hardly able to finish her story.

The reason for Mum’s hilarity was simple. The butcher who had attempted to help her up off the floor after her fall was around five-foot-nothing tall and perhaps weighed eight stone, if he was lucky!

Mum imagined what a sight it must have been, with this tiny gentleman (of course he was a gentleman, he was helping a lady!) helping a substantially larger woman up off the slippery floor!

And that, in a nutshell, was the story of my life, growing up with a mother who could always see the funny side in any situation, no matter how serious it may seem to others.

To quote an overused cliché, my family have always seen the cup as being half full, rather than half empty!

Today has been one of ‘those’ days, a day when I have spent a good deal of the day reflecting on my family life. By “family life” I am referring to my first family, the one I was born into.

There were six of us originally – Dad and Mum, my three big sisters and me. Half of them are no longer with us, but half of us are still here! And the three of us remaining sisters still share the laughter, still share the memories of the good ole days and are still there for each other, through the good times and the bad.

The sister who isn’t with us any longer would have celebrated a mile-stone birthday today. She’s been gone for over four years and sure, I miss her. Some days I feel downright angry with her, for bailing out on life and leaving the three of us!

But when I think about my biggest sister, the things I remember the most are the good times, days when we were happy together, when we shared the laughter, when we laughed so hard we cried! (It’s a family trait, you know, this crying laughing!)

I remember her when she was full of life, and joking, finding the funny side to every situation, no matter how serious it may have seemed. What I don’t want to focus on is the memory of my sister being a dead person, when her days of life meant so much to all of us!

Did I say before that my eldest sister was no longer with us? That must have been a Freudian slip! Of course she is still with us, just as our Mum and Dad are, still sharing the tears of laughter with us, still guiding us through life, still loving us.

First Family Bonds don’t break that easily, not in my family, anyway!

And the love and laughter that we have shared, and are still to share, has our cups filled to overflowing. 🙂

Photo credit – Gadget Lab.