BIRDS AND GOWNS

 

This week, I am pleased to report, I finally managed to get a few pictures of our local lorikeets..

I hear them in the trees along our back fence every morning...

But they are very shy, and I have not been able to get close at all (unlike the very cheeky birds we had at our previous address)..

This time, I stood in our doorway, and put the zoom lens at its furthest point, and this is what I got.  A bit blurry, but they are lorikeets at their finest - feeding, chatting, and singing, decked out in their colourful plumage..

This week, the Golden Globes were presented in Hollywood.

I had not really looked at the gowns, but had a request from a lovely blogger and follower, Kay of Georgia Girl with an English Heart.  I forget how to make a link, but do check out her blog, it has lovely music and musing about life in beautiful Georgia.

Thank you Kay for giving me a nudge, and I went right over and selected a few for comment:

As usual, I rarely know who these ladies are, but I think this is stunning.  More rusty than golden, but with real 50s glamour...

I do believe this is Elle Fanning, looking very elegant in a beautiful crinoline skirt, with a striking and unusual leopard bandeau top... (for the Red Cardinal, leopard never goes out of style.... I cling to a leopard top I made about 17 years ago)

Silver or pewter?  Interesting and asymmetrical..

This is just so baby-blue Cute...

Naturally, I like to show off the Australian ladies:

Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman, veterans of the red carpet.

Golden Cate is always Perfection, and Nicole is striking out on her own, and very daring it is.  

This is totally chic, and might be my fave for the night...

Australia's Rose Byrne, who won a Golden Globe for herself in bright lorikeet green with a train.  Well done Rose.

And onward we go to the Oscars...

Be good

XXX

OUR NEW NEST AND RETURN TO CULTURE

 

We have been about 10 weeks in our new nest, and I continue to explore on my daily walks.

Shady trees above the path are wonderful in our current hot weather.

Walking in the opposite direction to the view I showed on my previous post, I discovered this view, one that is very familiar to me:

It is the McPherson Range, on the border between Queensland and New South Wales.

I know these mountains very well, as my childhood home was in that region.

It is a faint picture, as the mountains are 147km away (and I was facing into the Western sun)...

On the very left of the range is Mt. Lindsay, a place we sometimes visited to listen to the Bellbirds.

The highest peak is Mt. Barney which my brothers liked to climb from time to time.  

I could not see this view from our previous house, but we are very high on our new plateau...

This was my birthday rose, and we planted it in early December.

It is thriving, despite some days of 36C heat, and now has eight new buds.

Some days I water her twice a day, a litre each time...

We have good drainage, but on some hot days, it drains a little too fast!

We have now finished unpacking over 100 boxes and our home is starting to look good.

And we have found time to resume some cultural activities.

I loved the film The Choral (as life-long choristers ourselves), starring Ralph Fiennes as a community choir conductor in England during WW1.

Beautiful choral singing, as they perform Edward Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.

I have been to a children's version of The Nutcracker ballet, with the Australian Ballet Company: as the guest of my only granddaughter, Little Miss Three and her Mum.  It was a treat to introduce her to the world of dance, and she sat entranced, holding her magic wand and waving on command of the narrator.

This week I return to GoMA as a tour guide, after time off to move house, and the Christmas break...

There is an amazing new exhibition, Presence, featuring work by Olafur Eliasson, an artist of Danish/Icelandic heritage.

He combines art and science in a fascinating suite of works evoking the land and light of Iceland:

Beauty brings a rainbow into the room: a spotlight shines onto a fine mist of water in a darkened room.  As you move closer, you might or might not see rainbows, depending on the individual eyes.  I can only see shades of brown but my husband can see green and blue.

This is only one of many extraordinary works taking you into another world.

Our mini Magnolia continues to give us one or two big white blooms each day.  I love it!

I hope you are having an interesting January, and are coping with the heat or the cold, whichever applies...

Have a great week

XXXXX

EPIPHANY

 

This week we celebrate Epiphany, the visit from the three Wise Men or Kings who came to see the Christ child.  

My choir sang 'We Three Kings' on Sunday: I always enjoy that.

As is traditional here, I took down the Christmas tree and decorations on the Twelfth Day of Christmas: Epiphany.

When we travelled to Europe last Easter, we overnighted in Dubai.  I found two little camels in the airport, and they are now part of my Christmas Nativity scene.

Our new house has an interesting garden, which was professionally landscaped in the past couple of years.  There is only one tree (remember the jungle we used to have!).  It is a mini Magnolia.

I have been watering it for weeks, only to have the buds die in the heat.

But at last today I found this:

So exciting to have these beautiful white floral giants to see in the back garden.  There is another one just about to open too.

The garden has few blooms, and a lot of the above: native Australian grasses which are tough, but a bit boring.

We are removing a few of them and planting some flowers we have brought with us.  We love roses and have added three new ones which are thriving, and have buds.

One flower which is dotted around is this unusual agapanthus, quite small and a variegated blue/white flower.  It can stay!

We don't know what this tree in a pot is, and wondered if it was dead.

However, it had a couple of white blossoms last week, and has tiny shoots all over.  

I am exploring the local area on my daily walks, and found this garden on a street corner.  It is called Kangaroo Paw, and is an Australian native plant.

We have always liked to live in an elevated position, and our choice to move to a ground-level house with no steps brought us to a suburb with a plateau with a lot of level plots.  And we still have elevation, high above local flooding and catching the breeze.

I passed these unusual trees today - I wonder what they are?

Today I was in a street which goes down hill from the plateau, and could see this mountain in the distance.  I have enlarged so you can see the TV towers in the centre of the picture.  This is in the view I saw up much closer from the back deck in our previous house, which has been in many blog posts.  We have moved about 10km and several suburbs away, so we still live in the same general social and shopping areas.

This week I also saw a curlew, this strange Australian bird with very big eyes.  It stands very still, hoping you can't see it.  This one was in a small shopping centre.  They are ground dwelling nocturnal birds, who in patches of long grasses and woodlands are active at night and their strange cry echos around the hills as they hunt for insects.

Have a good week

XXXX