Mystery solved

My little man playing the maraca filled with tiny silver balls turned out to be ...

Cisco the Cicada!

He was doing a sound check in our bathroom ...

No wonder he was trying out all those different riffs!!

I was right though, he was a really little guy!

UV gently scooped him up and deposited him outside, well away from any furry avengers!

But look who else was lurking above ....

Harold the Huntsman

Can you see the glint of one of his many eyes that I picked up with my flash?

Quite amazing really!

Hmm, spiders are not my thing, really not good with them ... but our ceilings are 3.6 metres and he's away up there, minding his own business (namely catching bugs) so I weakened my natural inclination to run away screaming while at the same time imploring UV to get him outside, but don't kill him!!!

(cue rolled eye!)

It was raining last week and I think he took refuge inside - I couldn't blame him really.

He's hanging around the kitchen at the moment, and I kind of feel like he wants to be one of the gang so as long as he stays up there, he won't get moved on - for now ...

You can see we are in the habit of naming newcomers to our place ...

Other regular wild visitors include Boris the Fruit Bat and Priscilla the Possum (who wears steel capped boots and likes to dance in our roof space from time to time. We hear her carefully lifting the wood on the side of our eaves and creeping in, but then she leaps around noisily from beam to beam. We open up our attic hatch, flick on the light and she melts into the darkness, then slips away the way she came in. We really have to seal up that spot.)

Both Boris and Priscila make regular sorties around about the gardens in the neighbourhood, when there are berries or nectar about.

I'll finish my wildlife post with a couple of cute shots of the boys ...

More glinting eyes from Jasper (enjoying one of his favourite mats, freshly washed)

 

 

Licorice

 Rufus

Aren't these tulips gorgeous? Thank you dear friends!

 

 

 

I have to work out how to stop the white out that happens when I use the flash, especially in these macro shots. It drains much of the colour away. More things to practice.

sunday

Sound. Right now I'm hearing a very overpowering cricket or maybe it's some little bloke out in the garden with a very big maraca (well, compared to him) filled with hundreds of tiny silver beads. He shakes it for a count of 6. Oooh, just then he did if faster, 13 times, then twice 9 times, still fast, then again 13, 9, 13!! Intriguing  ... right, I'll stop there. You are probably thinking I have had a touch too much sun this weekend. (but it is interesting - how does he decide how many to do?) Stopping now (he seems to like 9 the best) Over.

 Yesterday's sound was a bird, high up in the tree beside the deck. Dad could hear him over the phone. He had a most insistent call - apparently he's from Queensland and his name is something starting with K but for the life of me I cannot remember what Dad said. His name is like his call. These birds come south to nest. Apparently they're hard to see, but I got a great view of him, perched up there above me. He was a reasonable size, had amber or reddish eyes (I think) and a smallish beak. Very loud and very insistent.

It's quiet now (well, except for the odd maraca burst from the little guy) Evenings are nice when they are quiet. The day's noises have dispersed, evaporated. A deep stillness settles with the darkness. Night. It's a soft, dark sounding word. Fathomless.

>>>

 A moth and the moon

Flower

Rosebud potpourri

Finding my eye

Photography seems to be creeping up on me surreptitiously. It's in the family you see, well, my 2 siblings both photograph. In fact, one exhibits his work. Mon pere has always been a bit of a photographer too so I guess it had to happen. Not a bad thing at all. It's nice to look at things and think about how you would shoot them. I find I'm looking more at colour and form, shapes and the relationship of things to each other. This part of it is from my mum who loved to paint and draw and taught me lots about observation. Seems this visual art stuff is kind of in the stars. Nice.

So, I find that I am photographing more and more and I'm looking at more and more photos in all sorts of lovely blogs. Like these >>>

Les contours du silence and My funny eye are just wonderful.

And here are some of my shots of late >>>

 Walnuts

 

 Bookendish

 

 Operation face washing

 

Fireworks at my place

 

My first agapanthus

Things my camera taught me #1: The closeup

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't realise I could take quite reasonable closeups with my little camera. I just haven't really tried anything out and, unlike me, I haven't read the book yet. Quite unusual because I am the type of person that reads the assembly instructions v.carefully, committing key points to memory and then attempts to do the job without needing to look at the words again. Weird I know, but being a bit technical and working out how things work have always been quite appealing to me.
So, thanks to Jane, I discovered that all I needed to do was flip from the mountain symbol to the flower and hey presto! So, here are my first attempts. What do you think?

My beautiful hibiscus!

 

 

A strawberry flower

 

The Cecil Brunner rose, a climber, that smells like turkish delight.

 

Not particularly wonderful shots, but nice to see that the little Canon does a pretty good closeup.

I have homework to do!

Rocking my world

Just discovered a fun new toy today, MixPod - it's right here on my blog now and I'm busily adding to it - just hit an 80s vein and started adding stuff like XTC and Style Council but I'm back to the now again, adding a new band, Them Crooked Vultures (Dave Grohl, the guy from Queens of the Stone Age and John Paul Jones from Led Zepellin!) as well as Perth singer Felicity Groom - I really prefer her song Treasures, sounds very Go Betweenish.
As you can see I'm a bit of an indie girl, but I'll be adding plenty of mainstream stuff too. What fun!!

The thing I really wanted to blog today is jacaranda. I'll let this picture gallery tell the story:
Jacaranda

 This great (local) shot is by schizophonia

Bloomtober

OK, so I'm mixing it up a bit but today IS Flower Day for me .... look what I discovered when I got home from work today:

It's my Melbourne grandmother's flower! I spied the buds a few weeks ago and now look what's happened ... KAPOW!

This is the most amazing bloom I've ever seen (well, in my garden anyway!)

Grandma, thank you for this, one more lovely thing to remember you by!

One more shot, I'm just so excited about this flower (I wish I knew what it was!)

2nd evening of blogfesting

OK, what to blog tonight? - my idea this morning was Flowers in my October garden. I sat on the deck this morning eating my mainstay brekkie, porridge with blueberries and yummy greek style yoghurt plus a cuppa, black and well stewed. There before me were all my current floral emanations, not a thing to be dismissed as I am currently a ghost in my garden when it comes to tending it - I gaze at it all ... then re-fill the cat's water bowls. I did finish weeding all the pots on the deck recently, something I had begun doing only about 3 weeks before. Grouping all the pots into zones on the deck was an improvement but I currently have a pretty sad and seedy collection of things, although the lobelia, self sown, is doing well and the succulents hang in there. Walking around, snapping my flowers did uncover a few unexpected things ... the shot (top right) is of a succulent I brought back in my suitcase on the plane from Melbourne (ooops, should I admit that?) It was a plant that my cousin had grown from a cutting, one that our grandmother had grown - kind of nice to have something growing that was my Grandma's in Melbourne. Two things I treasure that she gave me - the piano sheet music for Sheep may safely graze and the book The Little white horse by Elizabeth Goudge, one of my absolute faves, not only because I loved the story so much as a child but that she gave it to me. So this plant makes three things I have that she loved - kinda nice!
Anyhow, LOOK!!! there are buds on it (they are the long purply things) - first time I've had that happen. How wonderful, I will keep my eye and camera on this.

Other plants I took, just the better shots:

I like the owl looking at the single strawberry flower. The little blue flowers in the grass come up every spring. The orchid is also a first, never before flowered in my garden. And there's the cat's water bowl I regularly fill, beside the self sown lobelia. Not too bad for a wild garden.

I do have to give a nod to  Amy's Ideas Hub and today's theme of Rocktober - coz I have a v.fave song at the moment:



Just adore this, the steely feedbacky (very technical description there) sound of that guitar at the start, that amazing voice of Michael McDonald from Steely Dan and Doobies fame, the great song in itself by Grizzly Bear and their sublime vocals. WOW!!! Haven't felt this immediate zing for a song for a long time - thanks JJJ for throwing this in my direction on the way to work one morning!! Bought the album on the strength of this - a little disappointed this version is only on the b side of the single so will hunt that down, but the album is fab, interesting and quite addictive. This has kickstarted my desire to rekindle my music collection - a bit neglected over the last many years, compared to my obsession with music once upon a time. So, yay! This is a great thing to celebrate on Rocktober day of Blogtoberfest.

P.S. I've gone pink for October - Pink awareness month. It's 10 years last August since my mum died. She would love the idea of a pink month and she would love my post today, celebrating flowers, one of her favourite things. I miss you mum xx

Autumn sun

I love this photo. I took this about a year ago but it reminds me of the sun out on the deck today, although today it is much windier. The boys, from left Jasper, Rufus and little Licorice, the cat next door, hang out together all the time. Both Jaz and Ruf are tucked up inside in the office today, while Licorice is lounging on the flannelette doona cover on the sofa bed, still out after Dad's recent visit. I suspect it's a little too windy out there for them. I'll take some shots later when my camera has finished charging.
The orange flower bobbing in the backgroud is still blooming, a year later. It's some type of rock orchid and it just seems to send out new buds and re-bloom. Recently, a little pod appeared on the stem but whatever was within it had vanished by the time I checked again. I hope the contents spun off in the breeze to take hold in some new spot.