Winter in My Garden

July 6, 2015 Joanne11 Comments

I try, often unsuccessfully of late, to add a photo each day to my Blipfoto journal. One day that I try to participate in however is “Mono Monday”, a day in which “blippers” are invited to add a black and white photo of a theme, as created by a generous host of the challenge each month.

A brilliant blue sky on a winter's day. — A brilliant blue sky on a winter’s day.

Today, the theme chosen by an Australian blipper was “Winter”, so my camera and I took a wander around the garden in search of suitable photos for the theme.

With the brilliant blue sky overhead today, we had a maximum temperature of around twenty-three degrees Celsius, I had in mind to take some photos of the almost bare branches of the pecan nut tree. The leaves begin to grow again when the weather warms up in spring, and by autumn we have a tree laden with pecan nuts.

About a month ago, the leaves began to fall, and now, the only leaves left are those that got caught in the branches during their fall, and have since lost their brilliant green colouring.

I think I'm being watched! — I think I’m being watched!

As I walked toward the pecan tree, I heard a rustling sound, and there amid the scrub outside our side fence was an old friend of mine, Mr. Bush Turkey! I haven’t seen him for over six months now, and had feared the worst. Apparently, he left the area for a while, and has now returned and taken up residence in his old nest amid the scrub and small trees.

He’s not the prettiest of creatures, you must admit, but what he lacks in looks he makes up for ten-fold in personality, and he remembered me! As I said hello to my old friend, he ran to me, showing no fear. (I have been known to slip him the occasional treat to eat.)

The sugar mill in the valley, surrounded by cane fields.

Another notable sign that winter has returned is the smoke rising from the huge chimney at the Condong Sugar Mill. I can see the mill, way down in the valley, from the back of my house. The mill remains dormant throughout summer, awaiting the new stalks of growing sugar cane, harvested and brought to the mill by many local farmers during the winter months.

After my garden walk, I took the clothes off the clothesline, leaving my camera on a table on the veranda. A while later, remembering where I had left my camera, I collected it, at just the right time to see the muted tones of a gentle winter sunset. So pretty, and so much a sign of the season.

Ah winter, how I love the cooler months. 🙂

One of my friendly magpies, guarding their territory. Nesting has begun.

challenges · Changes · gardening · In My World · photography · respect

Words on Wednesday…

July 1, 2015 Joanne8 Comments

Have you ever found yourself living life on a roller-coaster, both emotionally and physically, when all you really wish for is peace? Managed to get conned into playing the lead roll in dramas, whist yearning for a quiet place back stage?

When your deepest desire is to yell out in your loudest voice, “Stop the world, I wanna get off”, you know it’s time to force yourself into a backseat position, where you can flick through the pages of your book unnoticed, hide in a quiet place in the corner of the garden to take photos of flowers and birds, switch off the phone (and/or take the phone off the hook!), batten down the hatches, take a few deep breaths of sea air (how long is it since I went down to the beach??) and get a hold of your thoughts and feelings.

When I visit Tess’s Azalea, shown above, I yearn for my quiet, loyal, well behaved old dog, wishing she could still be the pup in my life. She’s been gone now for eighteen months, yet a visit to her grave usually has me with tears in my eyes, remembering. Don’t for a minute imagine that I don’t love and adore my three grand-pups, Porter, Bella and Forrest….they just aren’t Tess, they don’t walk at my pace, they don’t see the world through my eyes. They are not my pets.

For the last three weeks, just Forrest has lived here, the other two have moved away, and I’ve been able to encourage the birds back into the garden. They fall for bribes of mince and mush every day, and now they are seeing a minimum amount of Dog-Danger about, they are timidly taking their chances and returning to the bird food table.

The kookaburras are the bravest birds, along with the maggies. Nothing scares them away for too long, not even the pooches! And Forest pup is very young, and trainable. She’s beginning to learn the meaning of the word “no”, which is said often, when I see that little cheeky glint in her eye and suspect she is about to chase a bird!

(Now if I could just train her to stay out of my garden beds!!! Who knows how many “well-matured” dog bones I will find during my future gardening adventures!)

For my birthday this year, husband gave me a fancy new camera, and when I have saved many, many dollars and cents, I will be in the market for a zoom lens. The lens the new camera came with is marvelous, and the close up photos I have been taking are as clear as a bell, which is very exciting! But when it comes to taking photos of the moon, nothing beats the zoom on my little Canon PowerShot.

Last weekend I took a visit to our local garden centre to find some colourful flowers for the garden, and arrived back home with a car load. I planted a few, whilst weeding and mulching the new, long garden down beside the driveway, but ran out of daylight. Autumn and winter are wonderful seasons for gardening here, except for the shorter daylight hours!

I’m concentrating my gardening efforts on the front yard right now, as the back yard is a construction zone. An area of the paving at the back of the house had sunk, so a new retaining wall is in progress, the paving (and there’s a lot of it!) will be lifted and replaced and we may even be adding a covering for the patio area, all being well. (It depends on that little matter of the dollars and cents again!!)

My son and his lovely financé will be married this September, right here in our garden! So everything around the house and garden must be just right by then….Adam has lived in this house his entire life, and his baby will have the same address on their birth certificate as their Daddy, when they are born in November.

Last Friday, I had brand new carpet laid in the room which is to be the baby’s nursery. It was Adam’s nursery once upon a time, and now he and Mary are preparing the room for their own tiny baby.

How long will the new family live here? I’m not sure right now. They need security, they are so very young, and with the love and support of both families they should have themselves sorted within the next year or two.

With so much movement within the house recently, every room ended up in a state of chaos! With my daughter and her two dogs leaving, I took the opportunity to have most of the carpet in the house cleaned, so rooms were emptied. Then rooms had to be rearranged and reorganised. And some rooms ended up with the remains of “items no longer required”, which I have mostly sorted through this past weekend. The sorting, tidying and cleaning has seemed to be a never-ending job!

My work room/office/sewing room is the last room to clean and tidy, although it isn’t in too bad a state. I spend a number of hours every day in this room, and I simply cannot function in a complete mess, so the room stays relatively tidy. Just a bit of a quick clean should see it as good as before.

We’ve had a lot of rain here during the last week, with the valley being invisible behind a huge cloud of mist some days. I love living on higher ground, where the clouds sometimes find you, and you can hide away from the rest of the world. The temperatures are cooler here than ten minutes drive down the hill too, so I can enjoy a tiny patch of winter….my favourite time of the year. 🙂

I took the photo above at around 7 am one morning last week, when the low-lying mist sat on the floor of the valley, covering the sugar cane fields and looking as if the ocean had made its way slightly inland overnight. It’s a beautiful sight to see when this happens.

I miss blogging. Actually I’m missing a lot of things that are usually an important part of my life. Husband and I try to have an afternoon cup of coffee together every day, just to chat, and to retain some normality in our lives, as some days it feels like everything is moving too fast and spiraling out of control. Even if we don’t agree on all family matters, it’s good to have an ally, a person around the same age, who views things in the light of people of our vintage. By that I mean as opposed to the younger generation who, as much as we love them and have taught them right from wrong, can at times be strongly influenced by significant people in their own lives, who were not raised with our values, yet they wish to try and enforce their ways onto our family.

Recently, I’ve had to put my foot down, so to speak, on a number of issues, which goes against the grain for me! I rarely raise my voice, let alone yell, and a couple of family members have pushed my patience to the nth degree recently, seeing a side of me that is rarely shown to anyone. I don’t apologise for being slow to anger, I would hate to be a hot tempered person, and my family knows I’m serious when I do yell! And sometimes, unfortunately, yelling is called for, when a quiet voice is not being listened to.

Now that peace reigns supreme in the household again, I don’t ever want to be placed in an unpleasant situation like that again!

My two cats have remained my constant, cuddly companions this year. My old Phoebe girl, who turned sixteen in February this year, has the most beautiful soft fur, she’s half Persian, half Tortoiseshell, which often blurs in a photo, but my new camera shows her cuddly coat in photos looking just as it does in “person”, so I’ve been taking more photos of her lately. My last photo shows Phoebe in one of her favourite positions, right in front of the window, where she sees the outside world, which she no longer ventures into, yet I’m sure she remembers.

Last Wednesday I posted a “Wordless Wednesday” photo, just to keep in touch. I can’t promise that I will return to regular blogging yet, what with all of the “happenings” in my world, but I will try to add a short photo post occasionally. “Silent Sunday” may be another option for me whilst the craziness continues. My mind is a-buzz with the things that I want to do, yet many a day my body travels through the hours taking care of all the things I have to do!

Until next time, take good care of yourselves, be happy, and I hope events in your world are treating you kindly. xx

autumn · gardening · photography · rain

Wordless Wednesday

June 24, 2015 Joanne2 Comments

A Sense of Spirit · Australia · blessings · gratitude · photography · sisters · summer · unbreakable bonds

After a Twenty-Two Year Wait ~ Photos of a Pheasant Coucal.

January 10, 2015 Joanne14 Comments

“I saw the most magnificent bird on our land!”

I couldn’t wait to tell my eldest sister, who I knew to be a bird lover, about the most incredible sight I had seen. But it wasn’t just the sight of the bird that had me intrigued. The way it took off from the ground, with a massive flap, flap, flap, whilst running, using its wide expanse of outspread wings to become airborne, was completely different to how other, smaller varieties of birds took off from the ground.

“It was absolutely massive!” I exclaimed, “but with the face of a dove. The tail feathers alone must have been eighteen inches long. And the bird was predominately brown, of all colours. There was some mottling around its tail, but I didn’t get a good look at all the details. I can’t wait to see it again, it really was a sight to see, like no other bird I have ever seen before.”

My sister rolled her eyes. “Really, Jo, you do exaggerate….what did this miracle bird really look like?”

As far as my sister was concerned, I always exaggerated. If I said I was freezing cold, boiling hot, or couldn’t wait to visit mum, Anne regarded the statement to be an exaggeration. (If you were freezing cold you would be solid and unable to speak; if you were boiling hot you would be dead; and you will have to wait to see mum, but why the rush?) To my sister, I was the Queen of Exaggeration. In my eyes, Anne was a painful stickler for details.

But I knew this bird was big, and brown. It also had a pretty dove-like face. I had never in my life seen such an elaborate take-off either, thinking that all birds simply went flap, whooshka….up into the sky! This one didn’t.

Twenty-two years have passed by since that day, of my first sighting of what I now know to be a Pheasant Coucal. The next one to sight the bird back then was my husband (who hadn’t doubted my description for a minute!) We searched bird identification books, asked the locals, tried to see the bird again, all during which time my sister occasionally thought to question whether I had seen this Feathered Colossus again, using the most sarcastic tone she could muster.

After my husband had sighted it as well though, she had to accept that maybe, just maybe, Kid Sister really had seen an unusual, and unusually large bird.

During the years between building our house on our land and now, we have sighted the Coucal’s many times, but we hear them more often than see them. They are a very shy bird, nest in the long grass right down the bottom of our yard along the fence line, between us and the farm-house behind us, but we know they are there when we hear their cries, echoing through the garden. It’s a low-pitched sound, a constant “coo-coo-coo”, vibrating through the yard and around the valley. The sound is as magical as the sight of them.

Occasionally, I spot a Coucal, usually way down the back yard (we have one acre of land), or taking off in their laborious way, disappearing into the trees. Unfortunately, due to their inability to fly easily, we often see them on the main road leading to our village, victims of the cars moving faster than the coucals can fly across the road. They also walk a lot, another hazard for these beautiful creatures.

Enjoying the rain.... — Enjoying the rain….

Pheasant Coucals are members of the cuckoo family, although unlike cuckoos, who invade the ready-made nests of magpies and currawongs, Coucal’s lay their eggs, usually three to five in number, in the long grass, caring for them themselves. And according to my book, “Guide to Australian Birds”, Pheasant Coucal’s are about fifty-five to sixty-eight centimeters in length. Conversion ~ twenty-two to twenty-seven inches long.

Large long-tailed cuckoo with body black (summer) or brown (winter and juvenile) and rufous barred wings and tail. Usually seen running across roads or perched (particularly on wet days) on fence posts or dead trees near long grass; when flushed flies heavily with laboured wing-beats. ~ The Slater Field Guide to Australian Birds.

For so many years, which now seems like forever, I have tried, unsuccessfully, to take a photo of a Pheasant Coucal. Although their presence is felt, they remain hidden.

Earlier this week though, my daughter took breakfast outside, to be enjoyed in the cool morning air, just before a few spots of rain hit the ground. Before coming back indoors, I heard her calling to me, in a low, quiet, yet urgent voice. I grabbed my camera; I knew by her tone this must be important.

There, sitting in clear view, right on top of the shed, in all its glory, sat a Pheasant Coucal!

It didn’t stay there long enough for me to take a photo, (typical!) and flew down to a low tree in the garden. I sneaked around to the side of the tree, camera poised, but must have disturbed it, as it flew up into the branches of the pecan nut tree, which it seemed to decide was a safe place for its morning bath.

I took refuge from the now-steady rain, standing in the shed, happily clicking away at one of my mysterious, seldom seen, Coucals. It posed and preened, whilst I held my breath and quietly clicked. What a joyful few minutes it was.

I would like to think that Anne looked down on me from heaven, watching me with my camera that morning, in my (unexaggerated!) moment of glory.

Maybe she even arranged for the Coucal to be there for me….who knows? It’s a lovely thought, and a brilliant beginning to 2015.

A Sense of Spirit · authenticity · gardening · gratitude · photography · remembering · spirituality

My Year in Review, Through Authentic Eyes.

December 31, 2014December 31, 2014 Joanne14 Comments

A continuing joy to my every day is the visit from my feathered friends.

Deja vu closely followed the thought, “It doesn’t seem that long ago since I last decorated the house for Christmas”. I thought the exactly same thing, whilst decorating the house during December 2013. Where has the year gone?

In May, this tree flowered profusely, to the delight of both myself, and the Rainbow Lorikeets.

And now, it’s the last day of 2014, and as I ponder whether 2014 has been either a good year or bad, I realise that, for me, it has been a year of learning. Everything has happened for a reason. And I haven’t resisted the changes that have occurred, realising that I am in the right place, at the right time, and everything happens just as it should, when it is ready to happen. The way it is meant to be.

I love taking photos in the rain, the moody light adds so much warmth to the photos.

I re-read my first post of this year, remembering, as I have continually remembered throughout 2014, my chosen word for this year ~ “Authentic”.

I have planted a lot of old-fashioned hydrangeas in the garden this year.

We are old friends now, this word and I. At the beginning of the year, I felt their presence constantly. We had to get to know each other; we were virtual strangers, passing each other throughout my life thus far like ships in the night.

Cockatoos visited my garden on the morning of my birthday in May, when my dear friend, Keith, was visiting Australia and staying with me and my family for a few days.

Oh how I had wished to jump on board that ship! My authentically beautiful friend must have known the feelings and longings of my heart, as this year, they did not give up on the hopeless cause of this mere human, filled with faults and uncertainties. No, this year, when the ship of authenticity drew up beside me, and threw out a life-boat, with just a molecule of trepidation, I dragged myself into the calming warmth of their being. And how quickly we noticed the way we could co-exist, half way between my physical life and the true soul of my inner being.

I have decided that Allamandas are the single most photogenic flowers in my garden.

In contemplating a new word for 2015, I feel myself continually pulled toward my Authentic self, not wishing to leave this relatively new friend behind, as I venture into another year on earth. And whilst I know that my Authenticity will continue into tomorrow, and all the other tomorrow’s that in my life I will enjoy, next year will see a progression of my new-found contentment. What that word will be, as yet, I do not know. My word is still searching for me. Authenticity is screening every word that crosses my path, so when my word arrives, I can feel assured that the right extension of this year has found me.

When I added a hanging basket to the back veranda, a Noisy Minor thought the basket insert would be just the thing to add comfort to her nest.

As I cast my mind back over this year, the day before it changes its status to “last year”, my first thoughts are of Tess. Her gentle canine soul has warmed my heart during so many moments this year. I still feel the sting of tears when I remember her physical presence is gone, even though my Black Velvet girl sits beside me as I remember her love and loyalty.

My Begonia sits in a pot on the front veranda, and amazes me every year, as I watch the brown soil shoot new green growth into the world! — My Begonia sits in a pot on the front veranda, and amazes me every year, as I watch the brown soil shoot new green growth into the world…and further, produce the most brilliant flowers!

I know with every ounce of love in my heart that when my next fury friend is ready to find me, she will. But she isn’t ready to come to me yet, and I believe there is a reason why this is so. This year, in September, my son Adam brought home his girl, Forrest, and whilst I love this baby girl dearly, I know she is not for me. She is a loan-puppy, just the same as Porter and Bella, who moved back home with their “parents” in August. They will be leaving again when their new home is built, and the “family of five”, which includes the gorgeous Sammy cat, will settle into their own little spot of Paradise.

Tess has her own garden now, in a shady area beside the pool. I planted a Fushsia in Tess's Garden a few months ago, hoping it would be happy there, and as you can see, it is. — Tess has her own garden now, in a shady area beside the pool. I planted a Fuchsia in Tess’s Garden a few months ago, hoping it would be happy there, and as you can see, it is.

A part of my Authentic year has kept me away from blogging. My Muse completely disappeared for a while there, although for the first time, I have consistently kept a daily diary, the old-fashioned, hand-written kind, recording events of the day, both mundane and significant. A personal record of my year, which I will continue into 2015.

Father & Son ~ The mottled Magpie is one of three baby birds I had the pleasure of hand feeding during this year.

My Muse has pulled up the most comfortable chair right now, and is making themselves feel right at home on my right shoulder, (Tess is to my left,) sharing the words and feelings that have often escaped me during this year. Will they remain? Will 2015 be The Year of The Muse? Only time will tell.

During May, I helped my son, Ben, renovate his investment unit. The Tweed River runs behind the block of units where I found a peaceful and welcome oasis from the chores.

Dear friends, as I feel my way into a New Year, I will share a small verse that I discovered the other day. The words struck a chord of love for me, as in spending the last year being true to myself, my feelings, my thoughts and desires, I have also learned to accept the flaws in myself, as well as in others. Mostly in others. Authenticity has invited acceptance into my world, acceptance of both people and events. Furthermore, a knowing that I create my own happiness, my own contentment, my own world. And so do you.

Another new plant in Tess's Garden, a sweetly fragranced Gardenia. — Another new plant in Tess’s Garden, a sweetly fragranced Gardenia.

This is ME….
I am not perfect
I live on the planet Earth where humans live
Humans are not perfect
Never have been, Never will be
So I don’t always wear the right clothes
I don’t always use the right shoes
My memory sometimes fails me
I don’t look like a fashion model
I don’t cook like a French chef
I don’t always do what people expect of me
I am human, I am IMPERFECT
But there is no one else like me in this whole wide world
I am unique, I am a MIRACLE
I am what I am
Nothing more, Nothing less
So therefore; Love me for what I am
Not for what you want me to be!
~Yvve Berglund~

Our pets live their lives true to Authenticity ~ we can learn so much from them, and they accept us, just as we are. :) — Our pets live their lives true to Authenticity ~ we can learn so much from them, including acceptance. 🙂

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16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28

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