BIRDS AND FAIRIES

Faeries In My Garden

The Fairy Song

White coral bells

Upon a slender stalk;

Lilies-of-the-Valley

Deck my garden walk.

Oh, don't you wish

That you could

Hear them ring?

That can happen only

When the faeries sing!"

Sharon Lovejoy

I wish I had fairies singing in my garden!

I do have a fairy door and a new little pal to go next to it.

This cute hedgehog was a Christmas present from my daughter J who understands my love of fairies and toadstools.

J has just had an exhibition at Gallery 9 in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Here are a few pictures of her unusual sculptures on show.

This last one is called Gollum and sold on the opening night.

P and I took a drive to picturesque Shellharbour Village.

We stopped for lunch at a kerbside cafe on the main street.

I treated myself to 2 potato scallops.

They were the most delicious scallops I have ever had. Not that I have many. I watch my diet too carefully for that.


We went for a walk along the foreshore and came across this very precocious raven by the swimming pool.

It just sat on the post as we walked by. This type of raven is native to Australia.

Speaking of native birds, the lyrebird has been back at my back door again.......

...and the Catbirds have been picking my unripened mangoes and eating them.

These photos are taken through my lounge room window and not very good, but you get the idea.

I love to see the native birds that come to my garden.

And finally a lovely white toadstool that came up on my footpath.

Interesting sites


1.

 35 beautiful restaurants 

Photo source

There’s nothing like eating a delicious meal with a magnificent view. Here are
Click here to see 35 of the most beautiful places in the world to dine.

2.

36 Random animal facts 

Photo source

Earth is home to about 1 million known animal species, each one representing an ancient tome of biological trivia.

Click here to read 36 interesting and random facts about animals.

3.

 Beautiful wetlands

Photo source

Click here  to see 16 pictures of beautiful wetlands.

BUSY, BUSY, BUSY

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.  
 Colin Powell

Vintage Fairy

The last couple of days have been extremely busy with school work and there has been no time for blogging. 

Sunday was very pleasant. My wonderful daughter R and her partner B came around for a visit and brought me a set of solar toadstool lights.

I haven't had time to put them in the garden yet. I love toadstools and plan to put them near my fairy door.

Fairy door

This is the fairy door at night.

Fairy door at night

I love the glow of the fairy door at night when I come home and I am sure the toadstools will add to the effect.

Sunday afternoon was lunch at the Illawarra Yacht Club with P:-)'s two sisters and borthers-in-law.

Illawarra Yacht Club

I always enjoy eating at the Yacht Club. The food is great and well-priced and there is always a beautiful view to look at.

Sunday evening we went to church.

Music at church.

P:-) and I go to church at night because there is great music. It is a younger style service, with a lot of enthusiastic people involved.

Interesting sites

1.

Photo credit

 This cedar clad house is topped with a green, growing roof.  Click here to read more.

2.

Photo credit

  Click here to see 30 great inspirational black and white landscape photographs.

3.

Photo credit

Click here to find 2 interesting videos about living in a 1991 Volkswagen Westfalia. You will need to scroll down the page to find them.

WEATHERED BUT STILL ELEGANT

Time softened

I am reading through my Bible a chapter a day. I am up to Song of Solomon. In the first part of Chapter 1 a woman speaks. She says in verse 5:

 I am weathered but still elegant.......

time-softened like Solomon's temple hangings.

I thought that this would be a nice way to be thought of - weathered but still elegant and time-softened. I think I could live with that. That is how I shall think of myself from now on.

 
Top Enders

We are starting a thematic unit at school based on a DVD called Top Enders.

 

It explores a number of themes, but we will base the unit on the Top End of the Northern Territory. The students usually enjoy this. Most of them have very little general knowledge and very little knowledge of Australia, so it is really good for them.

We showed the students the movie today and they were well behaved, which makes life very pleasant. A lot of them have trouble with concentration and a lot of trouble sitting still for any length of time.

In maths we interpreted and compared graphs of rainfall in Darwin and Sydney.

Manna House


Tonight was Manna House. People come to Figtree Anglican Church for a free meal. I provide puzzles which the clients enjoy.

It was a fairly busy night with lots of children. P:-) often comes with me but he was busy working on his daughter's Helensburgh house.


As I came out I thought how pretty the garden at the front of the church looked with its standard roses.

 

Manna House is held in the left of the building above, and the children come out and play in the area behind the fence.

I also liked the look of the pink sunset as I walked towards my car.

 Fairy door

When I arrived home tonight and my fairy door was shining, the light was just right so that I could photograph it without a flash and you can see the effect. I love seeing this little light shining a welcome when I come home in the dark.

The fairy door

Mystery photo

Did you guess the mystery photo in the last blog?

Mystery photo

It is actually a photo of ice in a glass. P:-) had his glass filled with ice and the rainbow colors sparkling from it inspired me to take some photos. So I zoomed in really close and this is the effect I achieved.


Interesting sites


1. 

  This is Brooklyn Grange, the world's largest rooftop farm. Click here to read more.

2. 

Click here to have a look at lots of examples of pollen close up. Very interesting and pretty.

3.

Melvin the machine begins with  the ringing of an alarm clock which triggers a chain of events that opens umbrellas, spins paper windmills, starts a fire and releases a set of parachuting toy animals.  Click here to watch Melvin in action.

AND PIGS MIGHT FLY

One handful of restful repose

Is better than two fistfuls of worried work.

( Ecclesiastes 4:6)

This verse from to day's Bible reading certainly makes sense to me. I am rather fond of restful repose. And not so fond of worried work. Unfortunately worried work begins again on Monday. But it will be the down hill run. The last term at my school always goes very quickly.

The fairy door

I added a couple of toadstools and a frog that daughter R gave me to my fairy door. They are ceramic.

This has given me an idea for the rest of this garden. It is just a very narrow strip a couple of centimeters deep that runs between the bottom of a wall and the edge of the drive way.

Mondo grass planted there struggled for a few years and just looked so scrappy I pulled it out. I have managed to grow some nasturtiums in part of it but even they will not grow up one end. So I may keep an eye out for other fairy items and "fairyscape" this bit of garden.

Miniature coriander garden

The miniature coriander garden has grown. Only two of the three seeds appear to have germinated.

So far so good. I don't even know how large coriander plants grow but I intend to keep snipping them so they stay small.

 Flying pigs

I bought this pattern for a stuffed flying pig. 

I came across it at Wilsons Etsy shop. I just couldn't resist it. It is just so cute and links up with the flying pigs Daughter R created for my banner. 

I don't think I've used my sewing machine for close to 6 years so I am hoping that it still works. I plan to set up a permanent place for my sewing machine up in my craft room, but at the moment there is a lot more "craft" than "room".

I plan to make flying pigs for everyone for Christmas!  (And pigs might fly I can hear you saying.)


Interesting sites

1. 

Artist Billeos Achilleos turns Loius Viton handbags into a range of animals. He doesn't appear to damage the handbags at all. See this at http://www.ecouterre.com/artist-billie-achilleos-turns-louis-vuitton-bags-into-amazing-animal-sculptures/billie-achilleos-louis-vuitton-animals-1/?extend=1


2.

With the sad passing of Steve Jobs from Apple there has been tons about him on the internet, much of it very repetitive, but I really found this article In Remembrance of Steve Jobs: 11 Life Lessons We Can Learn From Him very interesting and inspiring.

HARBOR LUNCH

It is raining this evening and there is some fog up on the mountain.

View from my back room window

The weather doesn't look good for the weekend.

This morning I cut up some of my twisty old vines and put them around my fairy door.

I had just driven my car down the street this morning when I felt something moist near my ankle. I knew that feeling! It was a leech! I pulled over and parked. Sure enough when I checked that was what it was.A leech.  It must have come from my front garden when I had been doing some weeding. 

Leech near leg of glasses

I pulled it off my leg and threw it in a bowl I had on the seat of the car.

I was on my way into Belmore Basin, the little harbor in Wollongong to meet a friend for lunch.

We had coffee in the Nonabel Cafe in the complex in the left of the picture below.

 

My friend J and I usually meet every school holidays for lunch. As usual we had a very pleasant time. We usually talk on the phone a couple of times a week during term time. We met at church a few years ago and we are both teachers.