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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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Grey Days

The carnivores have moved into the neighbourhood.  Over the last couple of years, we have had the occasional grey butcherbird visit but they don’t normally stick around.  February has been the exception.  The butcherbirds must have a nest nearby because a juvenile has been practising its maniacal cackle.  It is very endearing.  On the other hand, there have been few smaller birds around.  Too tasty, I guess.  Read more

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Turning Flowers into Pumpkins and the Death of Holden

I got very excited this morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Looking out the back window, I could see that there was a male and female pumpkin flower open at the same time.  Because of a hail storm last month, my pumpkin vine has only one pumpkin growing at the moment.  So I took this fleeting opportunity to fly outside and manually fertilise the lady.  I found the flowers crawling with bees, which was also very exciting, because the numbers of bees have been much fewer due to the recent hot weather and smoky days.

It was lucky I did because a bee was trapped below the stamen of the boy flower! Read more

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The Future Is Ours

I am not a curious person, ladies and gentlemen, so it is well that I ended up sharing my life with my True Love and that we had two lovely, inquisitive boys.  It is a truism, but without them, I would be the lesser.

mating dragon flies

There is much to be learnt from the curiosity of children. Read more

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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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What a Difference A Date Makes

Australian flag
Australian Flag (source – Australian Parliament House website)

It is Australia Day so I had better say something.  If you don’t already know, there has been much debate in the Australian community about whether Australia Day should continue to be held on January 26.  On 26 January 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip sailed into Sydney Cove to establish a penal colony for the British Empire. Read more

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Lead The Way

There is not a lot of leading the way happening in Australia at the moment.  So rather than throw up my hands in disgust, I thought I would participate in this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge — Leading Lines.  I don’t want to lead you astray so I’m going to try to follow the brief and let the lines take you on the journey. Read more