Production line

Components of 10 Our Lady tea cosies, ready for assembly.And an early batch of ornaments getting their first coat of white paint, ready for decorating with paint and paper.It's busy round here.

Sunday scrapbook

As I was collecting all these pics for Dawn's Sunday Scrapbook, I realised they were all pretty much cliched images of Australian birdlife!
Ah well.
One of the kookaburras we often see in the plane tree in our backyard. So we hear a lot of this.A magpie (maggie) down south. It's nesting season now, and these get very protective and will swoop to scare intruders away, which can be quite something with that massive beak coming at you. They have a distinctive warbling song, which is one of the first weird and wonderful sounds I heard at dawn on my very first day in Australia.Mack meets an emu — keeping a safe distance!Black swans at Hyde Park, not far from where we live.Mack meets some twenty-eights, which are one of many Australian ringneck parrots and a very common sight around Perth and the South-West. Not usually as tame as these two.

For Caroline ...

... who wants me to post more often!I'm at work all day tomorrow, and then, at sparrow's on Thursday, we'll all be jumping in the car to head off to Albany and my parents' diamond wedding anniversary.
I have a thick envelope to take down, stuffed with important-looking documents bearing well-wishes from Julia, Quentin and Liz, and I think Colin might be in there as well.
There's a big dinner on Thursday night, for which David and I are taking our Hollywood gladrags complete with bling. You don't get many chances to pull on the full regalia, and if a 60th wedding anniversary isn't one such occasion I don't know what is.
So I shall see you again early next week!

Sunday scrapbook

wildflower
Originally uploaded by Lesley (Z).

More loveliness from last weekend down south.
If I've done this correctly, clicking on this pic should take you to my wildflower pics stored on flickr.

As I didn't grow up in this part of the world, I have a pathetic lack of knowledge of the names of these plants — and there are so many of them that appear for only a short period in spring. They'll all have Aboriginal names, of course, and it's a shame we don't get taught them.

As well, there are the utilitarian Latin names and classifications, but few common names that have entered the vernacular.

Further north right now, the entire landscape will be blooming with dense drifts of everlastings. We don't get called 'the wildflower state' for nothing.

Posted as part of Dawn's lovely Sunday Scrapbook series — thanks, Dawn!

Spring

I've been crook with a revolting head cold, which was much improved by taking this past long weekend away with David and friends down at the bay.

We played lots of cards, with the occasional pause for food, or a run to the shops, or a walk in the bush, or to light a huge bonfire and get rid of a big pile of dead wood on the house block before summer starts.

Thierry noticed a dugite, about 60cm long, warming itself up in a sunny spot on the concrete verandah downstairs, so he hustled it off into the bush. The warm weather's brining out the newly-hatched youngsters and the older ones from hibernation, and this is when they are usually their groggiest and grumpiest and in need of warmth and a feed.

The bush was absolutely bursting with flowers — I don't remember ever seeing it look so beautiful.

There was colour everywhere, from lusty swathes of golden wattle to the tiniest little blue stars all across the ground, with blooms just millimetres across. Spectacular.

I am unable to name almost all of them, apart from the obvious orchids, like those in this post.

:: I've taken the doonas off the bed and put on blankets and sheets — our hibernation's over too; we're in for the long, long warm, I think.

Mint-Ohs

Still life with steam iron and scissors.

Felt like a break from the tea-cosies — though I do still love 'em a lot — but I was curious to try a cushion.

The green Os are appliqued and the front is random quilted.

It's stuffed with a feather insert imported this morning from Little Stockholm.

I was very brave and good this morning. I did a lightning trip into Spotto for zips and batting and Little Stockholm for cushion inserts and was home by 10.15.

Sunday scrapbook

These were all taken by Will from the front of our house and in the neighbourhood, in March, when it's officially autumn but still really hot.

And clouds are a bit of a novelty. In the pic above, over to the left, you can see the silhouettes of the four h-u-g-e light towers at Subiaco Oval

For Dawn's Sunday Scrapbook.