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Suck It Up

For Sunshine’s Macro Monday #32

It was a public holiday in Canberra today to mark the anniversary of the official naming of Australia’s national capital in 1913.  And a beautiful day it was.  It is such a privilege to live in this gorgeous city.  As well as being the seat of the Federal government, Canberra is the home to a number of research institutions and universities, so we have an abundance of very clever people living here.  Some of those people have developed and maintain the Canberra Nature Map, an online map of Canberra’s diverse flora and fauna.  It is a live map updated regularly by members.  As a result of this wonderful resource, we now know the name of the funky fly I posted photos of recently (see original post). Read more

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Bee-tiful

My contribution to Sunshine’s Macro Monday #30.

Hello readers, you all know how I love to share my True Love’s beautiful photos.  He took this photo a couple of months ago.  The photo was lovely in colour but someone else invited me to participate in a monochrome photo challenge, so I played around and converted it to B&W.  I’m not sure if B&W conversion is allowed in macro photography?  Any idea?

Anyway it was a very windy day so the photo is a little blurry, but still turned out nice, don’t you think?

bees

Kind Regards.
Tracy.

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Just A Dabbler (And I Don’t Mean Duck)

Too many posts from me lately, ladies and gentlemen.  Not sorry.  Today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is masterpiece.  I thought I would join in, because I can.  I’ve written some stories and very bad poetry in the past, and dabbled in mosaics.  Not every piece has to be a masterpiece.  In fact, most of my written pieces are full of grammatical and spelling errors, but you probably already know that. The moral of this story is go where your heart takes you (including to Yass to buy a raffle ticket).  Take that logic!

Here’s my Finnish Lapponian Dog mosaic of which I’m very proud.  That’s allowed, isn’t it?  Months of work were involved so it was very satisfying when I finally got the last tile stuck down and the grouting (approx 5 different colours) finished. Read more

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In The Red

It’s summer in the southern hemisphere.  In southeast Australia, it has been a shocker.  In Canberra (the nation’s capital), we have had drought, a huge hailstorm and now fire in the Namadgi National Park to the south and west.

We also had a small colony of Little Red Flying Foxes take up residence in one of our town parks.  When we first discovered the colony, we asked our son whether we should report it in.  He told us that the ACT Government (that’s our local government) most likely already knew about it.  They didn’t.  Turns out the Little Reds haven’t been seen in Canberra for 23 years.  Imagine that! Read more

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When Things Go Wrong

sky

Namadgi burning / Canberra burning / Australia burning

Sometimes sh*t happens, ladies and gentlemen.  Or accidents happen, to be more polite.  Canberra’s beloved Namadgi National Park is on fire and the fire is heading towards Canberra’s southern most rural settlement, located just beyond the city proper.  It’s just been one day after wretched day for over a month now.  Many Canberrans will spend an anxious night and next few days.  Some southsiders in the path of the fire have already evacuated.  My family lives on the other side of town to the fire.  We are fine for now. Read more

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Gone Batty

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen.  Welcome to my regular Friday song/tune day, where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.

I don’t know whether the bushfire smoke is getting to me, or whether I’m just going a bit batty, or maybe both.  Either way, I sure don’t feel well.  Depending on the way the wind is blowing, my True Love and I will nip outside for a breath of fetid air.  On one of our brief walks, we saw a tiny colony of flying foxes (fruit bats) with what looked like several babies clinging to them.  Flying foxes have been having a tough time of it over the last few years.  They have been dying in their thousands from heat stress during increasingly frequent heatwaves.  I can relate.  I think I might drop off my perch too if I don’t get air-conditioning.  Seriously though, it is a real problem. Read more

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Stir The Mountain Pygmy Possum

In Australia, the expression ‘to stir the possum’ means to stir up trouble, controversy, or interest in an issue.  So I thought I would use that expression to generate awareness of the critically endangered mountain pygmy possum.  There are less than 2000 mountain pygmy possums left in the wild and their survival is on a knife’s edge.  What a tragedy it would be if they were lost to us forever.  I have just completed my mountain pygmy possum mosaic and am excited to share it with you.  Then, one thing led to another, and I had to write a poem for them too.  There is always hope and as usual, good people are working hard to save them.  Find out more about these incredible little marsupials and how you can help them here.  Now for the poem. Read more