SOME QUILTING PROGRESS

I'm finally making some progress on my disappearing 9 patch quilt.

 

I've sewn a large number of 9 patches and cut them in half both ways

 

 

 

and now I putting them together in a random fashion.

Each finished " square" will be about 5 inches - and I do mean about !!!

 

I have placed them all out on the bed to mix them around until I get the arrangement right.

 



 

Then I photograph them so I can check to see if all is OK.

 

In this way the glaring mistakes show up

 

- like the bit at the bottom where there is too much yellow together -

 

and I can make sure that the dark and light, bright and pale are evenly distributed.



I'll leave it there for a few days now walking past it often while I check it out, moving blocks around a bit till I think it is right..

 

Don't know whether or not I like it yet.

I wanted random but is this too random ?

I don't know.

 

Don't know about that geometric fabric among all the florals either.

 

But I do know that my back is aching from all that bending so I'll leave it now for a while.

 

~~

On another matter I've been trying to snap these dear little birds for a while now.

 

 

 

They are Fairy Wrens - in fact Blue Wrens as far as I can tell from my bird book though the females look a bit different from the illustrations in the book.

We have quite a colony of them frequenting our front and back yards.

Quite common in the south but not seen any further north than Brisbane apparently.

 

They are very quick and very difficult to photograph.

 

There seems to be one male - the pretty blue one - and quite a harem of plain brown ladies for each family group.

 

I think they are insect eaters and they seem to like the cover offered by our hedge type plants and their high pitched trilling is a nice change from the loud squawking of the Lorikeets.

 

Cheers.

 

 



FEEDING THE BIRDS

Recently I showed you photos of my attempt to feed Lorikeets, my favourite birds.
Australia has millions of them and often places that tourists visit, feed them.
This can be quite a spectacle when thousands of birds descend on the bird feeders.

At the moment there are lots visiting my garden to feed on nectar from the grevilleas that are flowering there.

So Tony has made me a bird feeder - a good sturdy one as I'm hoping they will eventually come in large numbers.

It's right down at the bottom of the garden on the second terrace.

Tony pruned the garden a few months ago  - with a chain saw !! - so we have a lot fewer flowers from the grevilleas than usual.

especially up here on the top terrace.


The new feeder is down among the bigger plants which were trimmed earlier and have recovered enough to flower quite well.





It hasn't taken long for the birds to find the new feeding spot.




Of course they are very wild and spook easily at the moment so I'm taking the photos from inside with my fantastic new zoom.

They make quite a racket. Screech and chatter and tell eachother off the whole time.

 

 These are all Rainbow Lorikeets - easy to see where they get their names

especially when you can see the colours under their wings.


Higher up on the first terrace we have a bird bath which, until now, has been completely ignored
 

 

It is fairly exposed at the moment while the grevilleas are so small but this morning I was so pleased to see a Lorikeet taking a bath. 

 

It was having a great time diving right under and splashing away

 

and was very wet by the time it was finished.

 

 

Hope it tells all its buddies about the great birdbath it found.

 

Cheers.

BIRDS

When we lived on acreage in our previous house I used to feed the birds.

They didn't need to be fed, I just liked to have them visit.

Specificly I used to feed the Lorikeets  - both Scaley and Rainbow varieties - and when they come they usually come in large numbers.

As the grevilleas are all flowering and so are full of Lorikeets at the moment I decided to see if I could get them to come to a feeder.

I placed bread soaked in sugary water down near the Grevillea bushes and it wasn't long before they found it.




The only problem was that there were a few other birds who wanted a share too.




Now Cockatoos are lovely birds too but very destructive.




They attack the tin on your roof or your garden shed and bend it out of shape, chew your wooden garden furniture so I wasn't too pleased to see four or five of them swinging in the nearby trees.
Anyway they like seeds.




The Magpie came to have a look too though he really prefers worms and such.


But I needn't have worried as Lokireets are bossy little birds
 

 

 and they soon chased the others away !

 

 

 They're very noisy and bossy but I love them.

 

 Looks like Tony will have to get a move on and build me the bird feeder that he promised.

Cheers.

GREEN AND GOLD

 

Back in 1988 it was the year of Australia's Bicentenary.

 

That is, we celebrated 200 years of European settlement of Australia.

 

Way back in 1788 the First Fleet arrived with a cargo of convicts, their keepers and a handful of Free Settlers who went about the arduous business of carving a settlement out of the bush around what is today called Sydney.

 Two hundred years later we celebrated that beginning and Australia's growth into the multi-cultural nation we are today.

  

Up here in Queensland our major contribution to these celebrations was the staging of a World Exposition.

We called it Expo '88 and it was set up on the South bank of the Brisbane River in the city.

I found these pages in the family photo album.



Of course it was 25 years ago so you might not recognise my family in these photos !

 

 

( sorry they are not clearer - photo of a photo ! )

To commemorate Expo 88 a special plant was created by those clever people who do such things.
It was christened Expo Gold  ( Xanthostemon chrysanthus or Golden Penda ) and it greeted visitors to Expo 88 with a lovely show of large pompom-like yellow flowers that our native birds love as they are full of nectar.



Now, 25 years later Brisbane gardens are reaping the benefit of this lovely plant.

Hidden at the bottom of our garden is one of these, grown tall but almost hidden by grevilleas and covered in buds.

 

 

Expo Gold plants have been widely used as a street tree and many neighbourhood streets are now lined with them. After the huge amount of rain they have received lately, they are putting on a fantastic show all around us.

I set out today with my new LUMIX camera to see how the 20x  zoom works taking photos of Lorikeets feeding in the Expo Golds in a nearby street.

 

They are only just starting to bloom but already the trees are thick with birds feeding on the nectar.

 

Despite their bright colours Rainbow Lorikeets are not easy to spot amongst the foliage.

 

but the zoom was great.

 

I couldn't get close to the tree or they would fly away so I stood across the road, pointed where I could see the leaves moving and snapped away.

 

 

 

The bird below is a Scaley-Breasted Lorikeet and doesn't have the bright blue and red markings of the Rainbow Lorikeets which makes it very hard to see.

 

Can you spot him? 

 

I'll make it a bit easier for you !

 

 

Well the new zoom is a big success.

 I worried camera shake might come into play as I suffer very badly from that at times but I think these turned out well.

 

Cheers.



SPRING MEANS MAGPIES

Magpie Fact 1:




Magpie Fact 2:

 Australian magpies differ to those in other parts of the world. The magpie feeds mostly on the ground and congregates in territorial groups. They skirmish and play quite noisily. Their habitat is almost anywhere there are trees and open areas of bare, soft ground or grass; orchards, parkland, playing fields, golf courses, suburban areas and gardens.


I know I have posted   here   before about Magpies but I couldn't resist writing about them again.

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It's not safe to walk or ride near trees at the moment for fear of the swooping terrors.

 

 

You never know when they will swoop on you from behind !!

Scarey aren't they?

They do have a lovely characteristic call... called a carol

(click here to hear it.)

and a group of magpies singing together is called a Madrigal of Magpies.
(click here to hear them)

Lovely isn't it?

So we put up with the swooping
 and take another route when we walk
'cos it only lasts for a little while
and the rest of the time they just sing to us.

Most Aussies love them.

Cheers.

WHO NEEDS AN ALARM CLOCK ?

I'm a bit weary to-night.

You see, I had a very early wake up call this morning.

About 4:30 am to be exact!

It was the local Kookaburras.

They decided to have a bit of a dawn chorus in our neighbourhood.

One of them on its own sounds

Like this!

But when a group of them gets together

and they decide to stake out their territory by flying from tree to tree and performing a chorus at each stop,
 it can be very noisy indeed !!

Like this !!

So I'm off to be early in case they decide on an encore performance tomorrow.

Cheers.