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Hidden In the Rushes

I am posting this again in memory of my mum’s dog, Ashie.  He died today from a serious illness.  There is only one line and photo in this poem-ish photo-essay that relates to him, but it sums up this beautiful dog so well, at least in my opinion.  Farewell, lovely boy.  You will be missed.

***

When our family ventures out to our beautiful natural areas, we go slowly, for it is only then that nature’s hidden treasures are revealed.  We take out, what we carry in.  We tread lightly and with care.  There may be no houses, but we are nevertheless going into someone else’s home.  This is what we taught our children from a very young age.

Let’s see who is home today – in the rushes.

moorhen2

The little family is well camouflaged.  It is a Dusky Moorhen with her chick.  

moorhenchick

The chick leaves the safety of its nest, but mum is not too far away.

swan2

The black swan and her signets weren’t expecting visitors.

swanb

But all is calm, so peace is soon restored.

Ashy

Come out of there, Ash, and leave those ducks alone.  Ash is a farm dog.  He knows to not hurt the wildlife.

No comments necessary.

First published in 2018

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When Am I Too Much For This Place?

This week’s theme for the Lens Artists Photo Challenge is Sanctuary.  I’m not sure what more can be said about this topic that I haven’t said already, so I’ve decided to re-post my earlier discussion/photos on this subject.  At that time, I said that I didn’t feel safe anywhere.  That is not quite true.  I do feel safe with my family.  Thank goodness for that because in these days of Covid and being confined to home (provided you are lucky enough to have one of those), there are many people fearful of the ones they should be able to trust the most.

WordPress (and now the Lens-Artists Challenge) has asked us to explore what it means to find your place in the world.  Where’s your safe space?  Where do you go when you need to feel inspired or cheered up?  Do you prefer the city over a small town?  I have to admit I find this an incredibly difficult challenge because I feel very ambivalent about my place in the world.  I don’t feel safe, or comforted, or any of the things that WordPress has asked us to explore.  I feel that I am possibly too much, that we are too much.  However, I am here.  I live in a wonderful place and I’m grateful for that.  The issue of whether I, and we, can live sustainably is a complex one.

Read more
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Corvid-2020 Weekly Challenge #10

Welcome to Week 10 of my Corvid-2020 Weekly Challenge.  Corvids are birds belonging to the Corvidae family, encompassing ravens, crows, magpies, jays and nutcrackers.  So peruse your corvid photo, poetry, music and story archives and join the challenge.

You can participate in the Corvid-2020 Weekly Challenge by creating a pingback to this post (my pingback approval settings are set up for manual approval, so it may take a little while for your pingback to appear) and/or by leaving a hyperlink to your submission in the comments.   Tag your post Corvid-2020 or C20WC.  I really do hope you will join in.

My turn 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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How Deep?

It is time for my Friday song post.  Where did the week go?  I’m relaxed and comfortable (in-joke, a little Aussie humour) at the seaside.  However, at the back of my mind, there is still this ominous foreboding that we are in too deep.  It’s a feeling that Australian singer-songwriter, Richard Clapton, writes so well about in his song, Deep Water.  So I thought it should be my Friday pick. Read more

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The Choice

Australia — Stop Adani.  No coal.

So often novelist, Richard Flanagan, speaks for me on matters close to my heart.  He is spot on when he says the fight to stop the Adani Carmichael mine is not just about Adani.  (Read Richard Flanagan’s speech to the Stop Adani rally by clicking on the above link.)

The Adani mine infrastructure is needed to make other prospective mines in Galilee basin viable.  Political power broker, Clive Palmer, also has mining interests in the Galilee basin.  Mr Palmer’s political party, United Australia Party. has just signed a deal to direct preferences to the Liberal and National parties.  The tag line for the United Australia Party is “Make Australia Great”.  Seriously!  In addition, the family of Matt Canavan, the Minister for Resources in the Morrison Government, also has interests in the Australian coal industry.

Several years ago, I attended an event where the Australian Council of Trade Unions had an information and merchandise stand.  They were selling T-Shirts advocating for wind power.  I remarked to the woman on the stand that there was an inconsistency between what she was selling and the views of then leader of the Australian Workers Union (AWU), who was concerned about the how the shift to renewable energy would affect his members.  She said to me that the AWU does not represent the views of her union or the union movement as a whole.  The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (rivals to the AWU), has recently been applying pressure to the Australian Labor Party to support the Carmichael mine.  It should be noted that the PM-in-waiting, Mr Bill Shorten, was once head of the AWU.

Do I need to remind Mr Shorten and his party that the AWU and the CFMEU do not represent the views of the entire Australian labor movement?  Voters, if you come across representatives of the ALP door-knocking, remind them of this and send them a strong message that the Adani coal mine must be stopped and our environmental legislation amended immediately to ensure that the carbon footprint impact of projects is taken into account.  Carbon neutrality must be a minimum for project approval. Read more

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Lens-Artists Challenge – Less Is More

This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is hosted by Amy.  Her chosen theme is “less is more“.  Amy’s inspiration for this theme is a quote by Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” 

Now that is a very intriguing notion to me, because it seems to me that there is nothing more perfect than nature’s design. Read more