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.

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Weekly photography Challenge: Edge

This week, an image from the edge is the Photography Challenge. Last week I was in Brunswick for a few days (Brunswick is edgy, ask anyone!), where I took this photo of Ironbark trees growing in the middle of the narrow street. Both edges were lined with cars at the time.

On Monday, we had to make a trip to Ballarat, about one hours drive from home. There’s been plenty of rain this winter, and the countryside is very damp and green. There are plenty of edges in these photos, taken from the passenger seat as we drove. The edge of the road, of the paddocks, of the railway line in the distance and the brimming farm dam…

Since then we’ve had continual rain, a phenomenon we haven’t experienced in this part of the world for many years. Everything is very soggy underfoot, dams that were almost empty are now overflowing. And the bottom edge of our property is under water!

Friday Poem:Hope Springs

When we moved here over thirty years ago, it rained so much that we would joke about the aptness of the town’s name (Moyston, geddit?). Since then the area of reliable rainfall has slipped slowly to the South, and cropping is no longer the reliable source of income a farmer would like it to be. Last year there was some winter rain followed by a very dry spring and summer, and crops that were ankle high…This year…well, we are hoping.

Oh listen to that rain!
Rain all day, all night,
And farmers out all night
Ploughing and seeding and hoping,
Hoping that this time….
This year more rain,
Crops knee high, thigh high
Brimming and full of grain.
Maybe this year will be
A worthwhile harvest.

Here are some rainy garden photos – taken after, not during. I hate cold water on the back of my neck…The middle one shows an impressive lot of seedlings – about half of which are nettles. Luckily my late German friend Regina taught me to appreciate them as food!

Daily Post: Singing In The Rain

As soon as I read the prompt, I knew I had the perfect poem…somewhere. By some miracle, I found it in only a few minutes, and here it is…

Rain Song

There’s a frog in the garden singing
Because it’s raining
And the cat in her cage is complaining
Because it’s raining
And I’ve brought in the washing
Because it’s raining
And freshened up the fire
Because it’s raining
And we wont go for a walk today
Because it’s raining
Hallelujah! I hope it lasts
Because it’s been dry so long.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/daily-prompt-rain/

Daily Prompt: Turn Turn Turn

What’s my favourite time of year?  Quite often, it’s the one I’ve got, so long as , like Goldilocks’s porridge, it’s not too hot and not too cold.

A baking summer morning, windy, blossomy spring afternoons,  a crisp and bracing frosty winter dawn, love em all.

But it’s autumn I really love best, when the days get shorter and cooler, rain finally comes,

leaves turn and fall, autumn bulbs flower, and spring ones start to sprout.

The bare  paddocks change from  brown to green, almost overnight,

(which hasn’t happened yet this year).

The first calling card of autumn is the belladonna lilies sending up their perfumed pink blooms from the dust in February.

The days shorten, the magpies sing songs about autumn in the chill of later early mornings.

A few leaves here and there begin to colour.

If we are lucky, there are long, still, warm afternoons, clear and blue, followed by days of soaking, welcome rain.

The garden fills with flocks of little birds, attracted to the water – so scarce before the autumn break arrives in mid-April.

There are no birds in this photo – they were  too camera shy. But they were there.

This year has been hotter and dryer – climate change is biting – and I’ve resorted to using a sprinkler in some of the garden, for the Silver-eyes as much as the plants.

At the moment there is a horrible cacophony of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos, and Corellas. Earlier, the Currawongs  were calling en masse.

Rain or no rain, autumn is here!