This article contains material of a satirical nature that may offend some readers. Please note the photos are awful, but the story is good/scary/funny.
For months now I have been in serious training. Magpie training. It’s full on magpie breeding season here in Canberra (Australia) and for the unlucky few, a walk, cycle or broomstick ride, may lead to being dive-bombed by a rampaging magpie. As of a few minutes ago, the count on the number of magpie attacks that have occurred in Australia this year is 3798, with 466 injuries (see Australia’s Magpie Swooping Map 2020). The number of attacks and injuries are likely significantly under-reported. But have no fear, ladies and gentlemen, there are a couple of ways to mitigate the risks.
Every month, Brian from Bushboys World challenges us to post the last photo on our SD cards (cameras, phones, etc). Click on the link to see what others have posted and for the details of the challenge.
Here are my last photos for September. First, the last photo on my phone.
Canberra (Australia) – September keeps us guessing. We smell the spring flowers while we are still Covid-free. This requires a visit or two to the Australian National Botanic Gardens. It has been 80 days since Canberra (the national capital of Australia) has recorded a case of Covid-19. My month is filled with medical appointments, getting in while the going is good. Survivor-guilt sets in. The threat of magpies swooping hangs over our heads.
There is sufficient material for a blog post on each of those topics, so I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details of my September shenanigans here. I might have to say something in future though about the Prime Minister, who after consulting with the Property Council, has issued an edict that public servants should return to the office (where safe to do so, consistent with Covidsafe plans, blahdeblah) so they can spend their hard-earned dollars on coffee and lunch at CBD cafes. I don’t know how in heck, the PM expects the workforce will transport themselves safely to the office.
Now where was I? That’s right .. the Botanic Gardens. My friend convinced me that we should go out for coffee. So I went out. We went to the gardens. It was lovely but I couldn’t be so rude as to take copious photos, so I went back another day. And then another. We’ve had many grey rainy days, some sunny days too, so many of the photos from the gardens are dark and moody. All the photos in this post come from those visits, so I hope you like flowers and birds, and bearded dragons.
Some Enchanted Garden
Spring in the gardens. Cacophony of sound. Air vibrates and rumbles, zips and whirs. Colours flash and tantalise, the smell divine. Senses say stay a while. My mind wanders. A world away.
How green, or black and white, is your garden?
Purple invites a closer look and calms the senses.
Pink delights.
Yellow thrums.
Red is generous and racy.
This September, the world lost some incredible women, champions of gender equality and inclusiveness – Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Australian singer-songwriter, Helen Reddy; and former Australian senator and minister, the Honourable Susan Ryan. Ms Ryan is Australia’s equivalent to America’s RBG. Susan Ryan fought for and secured the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984. She also had significant public roles advocating against age and disability discrimination.
This is my response to The Changing Seasons – September 2020 photo challenge hosted by the lovely Su at Zimmerbitch. Why not check it out and join in? Su has photos of gannets nesting.
Sing it with me, ladies.
Stay safe, sane and kind, everyone.
Kind Regards. Tracy.
About The Photos I dragged my True Love to the Botanic Gardens one weekend. He is still recovering from his Achilles heel tendon tear, so he shuffled along with his camera. He took the photos of the bearded dragon with the purple flowers in the background, the bright yellow “Twistie” like flowers (Twisties are a type of cheese curl, corn-based snack food product), and in fading light, the shenanigans of a pair of gang-gang cockatoos. I took all the other photos.
Bird poetry – a pandemic distraction. Semi-infrequent opportunity to join in. Try it. Create a pingback to this post with your bird poem. Really awful poetry welcome. Good poetry welcome too.
As a bird lover, I feel slightly intimidated about venturing into bird poetry, particularly poems about gulls. This topic has already been covered by many famous poets over the centuries so I am unlikely to contribute any words that haven’t been written before. The inspiration for this short poem therefore comes not from those wonderful poets, but from the seagulls themselves and from my camera. That is as it should be.
As yesterday was a quiet day, I thought I would have a play with some photos for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge – Negative Space. The negative space is the unoccupied space around the positive space, the positive space being the subject of the photo. Now you are a probably thinking that a positive and negative make a negative, and I’m sure this is true in photography too, but overdosing on the negative in photography breaks that rule. You’ll see. In photography, harnessing the divergent properties of positive and negative space can create cohesion – a sense of calm, peace, contemplation, isolation and scale. Distraction and busyness are the enemies of positive. Hence I let these adjectives be my guide in selecting photos for this challenge. Of course, everything is relative and the relative can really complicate the selection process, especially if you have a mind as busy as mine. I’m speaking from experience, or lack thereof.
Canberra, Australia – Last days of winter. Mostly cold and wet. Still no Covid in town.
There have been no new cases of Covid-19 in Canberra for 51 days. Too good to be true or too good to last? As for the weather, it was mostly cold, wet and miserable with the occasional sunny day. It was a 3Cs month for me – cleaning, creativity and cranky. As usual, I took a lot of photos.
For Patti, who has always wanted to make a mosaic.
I always complain about not having enough space. The garage and my outdoor workspace are overflowing with stuff. My stuff. My mosaic stuff. Everything is covered with dust and cobwebs. I love it. It is a magical space full of wonder. Perhaps my affinity for tiles is instinctual, in my genes. My father was a builder in his youth. He loved concrete and his concreting skills were in high demand for major commercial builds. Funnily enough, my brother is now a tiler, a trade he came to later in life.
Do you like my title for this blog post? I like it, but I amuse myself. However that (thinking up pithy blog titles) is about the extent of my creativity in the time of Covid. Consequently, I’ve been thinking a lot about buying a new house – one with two bathrooms; one bathroom for the healthy people and one for the sick people. Not that we have any sick people yet, but you never know …. This (thinking about buying a new house) is what I do when I don’t spend time on my art projects. When I’m in the right frame of mind and the weather permits, fiddling with tiles is my passion. I’ve been inspired by a fellow blogger to be arty this month, so I’ve started the prep for a couple of mosaics.
It’s that time again — time for Su’s virtual afternoon tea. Once a month, Su at Zimmerbitch hosts afternoon tea in the blogosphere and we are all invited. You can bring something to share or just go along for a chat. I am also combining my visit to Su’s with my (early) Friday song day. My Friday song day happens each Friday (except when I post on Thursday night), and is where I pick a piece of music that reflects my mood or the times, to share with you.
