the dying days of summer (30)

is that brown appearing on the tips of the lush summer leaves already? signalling the end to a topsy-turvy (hot/cold, sunny/rainy) season? say it ain't so!! i do love autumn though. more moderate in temperature (and i do prefer cooler weather to be perfectly honest) and the most stunning colours here in canberra where there are a lot of desiduous trees and plants.

ooo summer rain (29)

i have had belinda carlisle's 'summer rain' in my head for weeks now, thanks mainly to the lead-up to and then post-concert last weekend, but also because it has rained so much here in canberra over the past few months. it has been a wet steamy spring and summer. it has rained so much that all the dams are overflowing. for the first time since i moved here over a decade ago, the dams are full and there are no water restrictions. the greenery throughout the city is something new and wonderful to behold, not to mention the amazing growth spurts observed in our plants in our courtyards. there are mostly camellias which were here when we bought the place. now i know they're hardy plants but between the ongoing drought and the fact that both mands and i are rubbish when it comes to gardening, they've been lucky to survive - in fact only one out of about ten has died. however the difference in them now is amazing! i would say that they have grown as much over the last 6 months as they did in the entire 5 years preceding that. that's how much rain we've had. mands doesn't like the camellias (not sure why) but i have a soft spot for them. my sisters and i used to use their leaves for 'money' when we played shops on our bmxes in the driveway when we were growing up. they're a sentimental plant for me, not to mention i admire their resilience.

web of religion (26)

i'm back at the same turner orthodox church trying to take a photo of the lovely eastern europe rooftop. but none of the angles are working out because the trees are in the wrong places and the fence stops me from getting closer, and it's then i notice the spider in the web in the fence showing the church in the background, and it's so symbolical of how people get caught up in the beliefs framework that religious institutions offer them, something they are attracted to or fly into unknowingly and don't realise the trap until it's too late....

nothing like a torrential downpour (24)

the weather when i got home was hardly conducive to photography, let's not forget there was a waterfall in the kitchen just a few days ago. and here i was thinking the most extreme and sudden magnitude of rain i've experienced so far has been in the wet seasons of tropics like featured in this file shot of cambodia (on the south coast just out of sihanoukville) but the weather this summer in canberra has been mad. sunny and fine when i ride into work in the morning, and thundering and pelting down like nothing else in the afternoon when it's time to go home. so much for living in a rain shadow!

it is not a bird (21)

i love looking out the window at clouds on plane trips, and i tend to take too many photos of them. looking upwards at clouds isn't even nearly same, somehow they lack the third dimension which is spectacularly obvious when you are up amongst them. this plane flying over our house is, i assume, en route from sydney to melbourne. i have been on a helluva lotta plane trips in my life, fortunately flying doesn't faze me at all. i have a new plane trips coming up. my next flight is this month to melbourne for work. the trip after that is next month to brisbane for fun. then the month after that to tasmania for my niece's first birthday and my sister's wedding. and the one after that is to wing our way to berlin for some long service leave. now that is a flight to look forward to!!! a final thought in this fairly random stream of consciousness about planes.... i read a fascinating article last year about a tribe in the midde of the jungle in south america, a community completely untouched by modern civilisation. the article was accompanied by a photo taken from a plane or helicopter with the tribesmen shooting arrows up at the cameraman. can you even imagine what the tribe thought the plane and its inhabitants were? invading tribe? aliens? god? imagine not knowing about the modern world at all, not knowing about the history of the world, other cultures, science, electricity, computers, planes, trains, tv et cetera. it blows my mind. i hope that the tribe is able to continue living their lives untouched.

two seasons in one photo (17)

i upped the contrast with a heavy hand to accentuate/exaggerate the colours in this shot but believe me, it was dramatic enough even in real colour. i stopped to take this photo on my ride home from work along the bike path. i love the contrast of the foreground coloured by blasting summer heat and the background with the dark cool of the approaching storm front. what a relief the weather change was!! a cool wind noticeably dropped the temperature as i finished the last leg of my bike ride home, and the pelting rain started literally as soon as i stepped in the front door at home. it's been a strange summer with a lot of summer rain. belinda carlisle will surely love it when she comes through canberra next weekend.

you would look better in a beer (4)

grow, little lime, grow big and juicy!! hopefully you will be big enough next week to pluck and slice then i'll pop you in an icy cold corona to celebrate the end of my traditional january detox. i hope you don't mind ending life in such a manner. as a reward for such a worthy sacrifice in seasoning my drink, you are surely destined for greatness in the next life. maybe you'll come back as ... what? any kind suggestions from blog readers?

advice: don't buy plants when hungry (3)

or you may end up buying a choc-mint cordyline like i did. in case you were wondering - yes it was actually labelled that, yes that was actually why i bought it, and no it doesn't actually match the royal blue pot it was destined for. blue and green should never be seen, and it's true in this case. however it does grow healthily with zero care, which is the numero uno rule of survival for plants at our house.

red white and blue

the australian flag as viewed through an autumn kaleidoscope. i love autumn in canberra. it's a real struggle to choose my favourite season between autumn and spring. both are delightfully refreshing cool and crisp, and an utter relief from the extremes of summer and winter.

i would like to come back as a tree in the next life

and spend my days swaying in the wind, providing a perch for chirping birds, a playground for possums, dripping rain down over and off my leaves, and growing reaching stretching up towards the sun. how lovely that would be.

no sign of miranda

an outing or event that fulfills a lifelong dream or wish is always charged with some excitement or emotion. i finally got to walk around and up into hanging rock in victoria last year. and the sight of it struck a real chord in me. it felt truly truly eerie. so quiet, no noise except the wind through the trees and an occasional bird. we were the only ones there at the time. it was easy to imagine being a schoolgirl wandering through the ancient rock formations....

bouncing off clouds

a bright sun reluctantly setting on the end of a long summer day in lyneham. view from our back courtyard.

serenity now

mossy trees, misty rain, still waters of dove lake, cradle mountain location, not a single person to be in seen, complete natural serenity. these are more than a few of my favourite things.

protect old growth

a grand old dame in the tahune region in south eastern tasmania.

butterfly orgy

i don't know what was in this muddy puddle of water but these laos butterflies were going crazy for it! there was a literal cloud of them above it and they littered the ground as they bustled for pole position, taking little notice of me even when i reached out to touch them. we came across this amazing sight by a natural spring after hiking for hours through the beautiful countryside just outside of luang prabang.

brazilian flutterby

one of the countless stunning butterflies by igauzu falls on the border of argentina and brazil. this is one on the hand of elard, our guide originally from peru. butterflies are cool. i wonder how they got their name?

it was as cold at it looks

as i have said before, one of the things to love about canberra is its distinct 4 seasons: fresh new springs, colourful cool autumns, blasting hot summers, and freeeeeeeezing icy winters. we get hardcore frosts on some mornings and this morning was no exception. this is a closeup of the outdoor setting in our back courtyard with a spikey front layered over it.

where life moves slowly in a good way

one of the most stunning sunsets i have ever seen was watching the sun set behind the mekong river, sitting on the top of a hill in luang prabang, in northern laos. life is laos moves at a slow and leisurely pace compared to other south east asian countries, you truly cannot help but feel relaxed there and just happy to be. what a wonderful place it would be to live.

the turning of the leaves

one of the things i love about canberra is the distinct four seasons we experience. i think it would be perfectly dull to live in a place that was warm all the time. autumn in canberra is crisp, bracing and visually stunning thanks to the proliferation of european desiduous trees.

closer still with zah zoom

i don't know what these little plants (some kind of grass i would venture) are called but they numbered the thousands if not tens of thousands on the walk along the bay of fires. they were soft to touch almost like cotton wool - and certainly looked like swathes of cotton balls to walk through, with the wind blowing them about. it's hard to explain but i really liked them, it think because the way they moved about in the wind they looked like a sea of little furry white creatures happily bobbing about.