Tempus fugit

...it seems to fugit something awful lately, here we are a third of the way through another year, and I have a very large birthday looming in a few days which is a depressing thought, but at least I'm still here having them, which isn't as depressing as the alternative.

I still haven't totally converted this blog, whilst I changed over painlessly I still am not using their widget thingies because I'd have to copy and paste all the links I have in the side panels and I just haven't felt bothered enough to spend the time, I think that's why I kept putting off writing here.

My garden suffered terribly through summer (as I did!) neither of us handle the heat well, but now we've entered autumn, had a few cooler days and a good drop of rain to boot.
So because I haven't been blogging here, I've a little backlog of trips to post about, we visited Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens in the Blue Mountains and had a walk around the old brick pit at Homebush (doesn't that sound exciting!!)
Over the next week I'll sort out the pictures and get going here again....
Meantime..
Our first solid rain in months had me out with the camera..




and you know those jobs like cleaning the gutters and installing rainwater tanks...well they didn't happen, so here is my patented rainwater catchment area, right under the leaky gutter

Blue Mountain fires

As I've been uploading the shadehouse photos to flickr and writing the last entry, I've had the radio on, the bushfires raging in the Grose Valley of the Blue Mountains has again jumped containment lines and is threatening the small towns of Hazlebrook and Linden. It started 10 days ago from lightning strikes in inaccessable country.

The sky over Sydney is brown with smoke and the wind is hot and fierce.

So far no properties have been lost but it's getting closer to built up areas.

...and the native animal losses we will probably never know, except for those who are found with burns.

It's not just the Blue Mountains, there are about 60 separate fires being fought around the state.

Summer in Australia isn't all surf and beaches.

reports on the Sydney Morning Herald site

Full moon

Went out and braved the cold tonight to watch the brilliant full moon, the wind was gusty and the clouds moved so fast across the sky.

I haven't done any night photography before and didn't do too well with the settings which is a pity because the whole scene was special, and fruit bats were flying over but they were too fast for my camera.

......full moon and bats, what more could an Anne Rice fan ask for.



reflecting in the pool:

nephelococcygia

On those days when you've laid on your back and found horses and castles and dragons in the clouds, did you wonder if there was a word for what you were doing (no - "skiving off on the back lawn" is six words)

The word is nephelococcygia - apparently thought up by Aristophanes for his comedy, "The Birds" (414 BC). In the play, two characters turn into birds and plan a cloud city which they decide to call "Nephelococcygia." another character in the play calls them mad so the word came to mean Cloud Cuckooland
You can hear it pronounced here

This cloud is called "Betty eating her green chew stick"

on a cold wet winter day

We haven't been doing any thing in the garden, it's been too cold and wet and I've been spending solid time on the computer setting up my Etsy shop

This morning the sun was shining after a wet night, so I dragged Betty from under her blanket and we had a quick wander around the yard.

Lovely little raindrops on each plant:




the freesias and bulbs are all shooting:


bromeliades are blooming:


then our little patch of blue sky disappeared so we scuttled back inside:

pea soup

Not frequently, but now and then through winter we can expect a pea soup fog to descend on us, it closed Sydney airport and disrupted the ferry services on the harbour, the Sydney version can be found here but out in the 'burbs it was enough just to be able to make out the birdbath in next door's front yard - end of the street was shrouded away - I like it, has an ethereal 'werewolf on the moors' feel about it,

red clouds at night

tags: clouds

I was bringing the washing in off the line just as the sun was setting and a flock of noisy cockatoos made me look up at the sky where this was happening:





Our house is in a dip so I never seem able to get a clear sky shot, too many roofs and wires overhead,
I just had time to run inside and grab the camera, the sun slipped away as I was watching.





technorati tags: clouds

rainbow

I meant to post this photo last week on the first day of rain, it seemed like a promise of what was to come - the view through the telegraph wires isn't the most aesthetically pleasing but it was a superb full rainbow



and it wasn't a bad sunset either, through the bare tracery of the crepe myrtle (not as good as Alice's sunsets, but it's the best I could do from the backyard)

Rain, rain..don't go away

tag: flowers

We've been having some nice steady rain around Sydney, gardens are lapping it up, unfortunately not much is falling in the catchment areas at the moment but it's predicted that those areas should get some falls through the coming week.

Today we had a short sunny spell between showers and the rain drops were glistening on all the plants





The bromeliads have some nice flowers appearing, I like them for their low care and splashes of colour when not much else is happening.



The zygocactus was looking lovely a few days ago when I took this photo but now after the rain its flowers have a decidedly soggy compost look to them.

Flood prone

We've just received a letter from our council to say they've rezoned our street "flood prone".....



can't imagine why......





do they think maybe we haven't noticed before....



aahhh...those were the days.....rain......