Weekly Photography Challenge: Prolific

I’m visiting my daughter and her little family this week (which is why I’m running late on this challenge!), and I thought of sharing some of Juniper’s prolific artwork, or toys, but I’ve been too busy playing (or resting up after playing).

Canberra is blessed with a proliferation of walking tracks and community sports grounds. One morning we loaded up the pram with a picnic and went to a grassy oval to enjoy the autumn sunshine (also prolific, much as we would like to see some rain). Juni was all set to walk the whole perimeter, but a reminder that Mummy had packed biscuits changed her mind! She raced me back, and I didn’t have a hope of catching up.

Weekly Photography Challenge: Awakening

The awakening theme is inspired by spring’s arrival in the Northern hemisphere. Down here in  Southwestern Victoria, autumn is arriving on the tail of a long dry summer.

We had some actual appreciable rain yesterday, but even before that, bulbs have been awakening and pushing up from parched, bare soil.

This little patch of Sternbergia lutea has had no watering at all, yet there have been frail-looking golden cups appearing for weeks.

The Vallota speciosa lives in a pot and gets regular watering – it hasn’t often flowered for me, but I think I might have it in the right spot now. I hope so, anyway!

After the welcome bit of rain on the weekend, grasses have awakened and turned green, to the relief of hungry grazers like this Red-Necked Wallaby in our driveway this morning. I’m hoping that once the grass gets growing, the wallabies will lose interest in my garden. They are browsers as well as grazers, with a taste for exotic plants like rose bushes and strawberry leaves…and the leaves of the spring bulbs that have started to shoot in their autumn awakening.

Weekly Photography Challenge: Smile!

Smiling for the camera is such a cliche – but catching a genuine smile on film (or in pixels) is lovely. I like to take unposed photos of my grandkids (and my kids, back in the day), with them going about their business. The “look at the camera and say cheese” variety have their place, but I like more natural portraits – and if I capture a smile – bonus! We are going to visit Juniper and Banjo next week – we haven’t seen them in person for months, so whatever next week’s challenge theme is, I may have to work them into it!

Portraying a convincing smile in a painting is harder than catching a smile in a photo, which is why this acrylic has pride of place on my wall. 

Weekly Photography Challenge: Sunset

Sun up, or sun down, that is the challenge…I’m not a morning person, I prefer to avoid dawn, except in winter when the sun also gets up later…

So here are some late-in-the-day spectacular skies. The street scene is in Horsham – not a colourful event, but I liked the quality of the light. The three on the right are all of the same evening, an apocalyptic looking cloud-scape over Ararat. We came out from a movie at the Astor Cinema, to find the light weirdly yellow, as it sometimes is with a storm brewing .The last is taken from the car on the way home – sunset over the Grampians, not that you can tell! It reminds me of a Tim Storrier painting, though.