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Monday 28 December 2015

2016 A New Year;




Hopefully it will be a sparkling  New Year for all and this New Year's whispers are happy whispers.

2015 through the year

January; I made an orange themed sitting place;




February; I bought a Thermomix;




March; a few clouds some with a silver lining;




April; every day chores;




May; doodling;




June; new car;




July; my lovely hens got even a bigger yard and a new fence.




August; Billy got a new toy;




September; in the bush garden, new life, ferns are growing;




October; spring wakes up;






November;  the B&B* Garden is flourishing; (bird-&butterfly garden*)





December; Christmas;




Yesterday, we know the past, tomorrow is always hope. Ts

Happy New Year.

Photos Text Ts




Sunday 27 December 2015

19/12/2015; Christmas;


A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all;

after a long rest and absence I am back again. 




I do love the old sepia tags, a smiling Santa takes center stage.


and here not so old; from 2006 my granddaughters decorating the Christmas tree.














Saturday 26 December 2015

Impressions at Christmastime in my garden;


Odd playful shapes of the soft, silky flowers of a tall fountain grass.




Eucalyptus trees are shedding their bark at Christmas time revealing beautiful, new colours. 




Beautifully coloured leaves on Cordylines.





Evening sun is gilding the leaves of  a Palm tree.  At the front the prominent christmas colours red/green of Mussaenda/Ashanti blood.




©Photos/Text Ts


Friday 11 December 2015

The hidden power of plants;

A most beautiful tree; 



When you see a tree and its awesomeness takes your breath away then you may feel,
the most beautiful in the world is a tree  in full flower, holding on to its place with an intrinsic stubbornness, displaying innocence and fragrance in an abundance of beauty. Colour, layer upon layer, humming and trembling with life. Ts


Brachychiton acerifolius, commonly known as the Illawarra Flame Tree. A large tree of the family Malvaceae native to subtropical regions on the east coast of Australia. It is famous for the bright red bell-shaped flowers that often cover the whole tree when it is leafless. Along with other members of the genus Brachychiton, it is commonly referred to as a Kurrajong.
 Brachychiton is derived from the Greek brachys, meaning short, and chiton, a type of tunic, as a reference to the coating on the seed. The specific epithet acerifolius suggests the appearance of the foliage is similar to that of the genus Acer, the maples.




How plants communicate; interesting reading, most of it makes sense.

http://zazenlife.com/2015/08/09/the-incredible-similarities-between-human-plant-consciousness/


The parasitic vine called dodder is the sniffer dog of the vegetable world. It contains almost no chlorophyll – the pigment that most plants use to make food – so to eat it must suck the sugary sap from other plants. Dodder uses olfaction to hunt down its quarry. It can distinguish potential victims from their smell, homing in on its favorites and also using scents emitted by unhealthy specimens to avoid them (Science, vol 313, p 1964).





© Photos/some Text/ Ts  

Wednesday 2 December 2015

Summer...


In Australia, the seasons are defined by grouping the calendar months in the following way: Spring - the three transition months September, October and November. Summer - the three hottest months December, January and February. Autumn - the transition months March, April and May. 




Summer may arrive with hot and humid days. Thunder, clouds and torrential rain.




Song of Summer;
The subtropics are  hot and dry; 
soil and plants are thirsty and get thirstier every day. 
Then the clouds roll in black and heavy with moisture. 
The first drops bless the soil; 
then the heavens open up in earnest. 
sheets of driving rain obscure any view. 
Earth  is caught in this wonderful dance of water, 
 soaked up quickly by a greedy dry soil, 
leaving no puddles.
When the rains come,
life is beginning again,
 this is summer. Ts






Roses and summer, petals burned, falling falling;  strong fragrance emphasized by heat and sun. No regrets, summer means summer..



©Photos/Text/ Ts

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Psst...I am reading...Endurance; This Australian novel tells the story of Australian Photographer. Explorer and adventurer Frank Hurley.



It is advised to read the following book in a warm and cozy environment...

Endurance by Tim Griffith



I quote; 
Hurley's photographs and documentaries of Douglas Mawson's and Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expeditions, and his astounding images of World War I have been so widely exhibited and reproduced that in many cases they are the principal means by which we have come to see those world-shattering events. His iconic images of the ship Endurance trapped in an ocean of ice, of men battling the most extreme elements in the Antarctic, and suffering under unthinkable conditions in ice and war are imprinted on the Australian consciousness. 
Here now is the man, Hurley, telling us of his part in the two ill-fated Antarctic expeditions and recounting tales of great heroism and suffering as he fights for his life among the ice and the elements, and witnesses as photographer the worst ravages of war on the Western Front. 


 A few lines from the book…It is the better part of a year since we abandoned ship and it is four month we have been marooned on this piece of rock. Our stores are virtually gone…
My path is blocked by a fresh catch, a large blue whale…
Unimaginable that the blasted Norwegians could choose to sail to the opposite of the world to slaughter such extraordinary creatures and do so in such a barbarous fashion. They have turned this pristine harbour into a bloodbath…

…The image endures beyond the events we witness and the lives of all witnesses.


Ice Mask






The James Caird departing Elephant Island to seek rescue, Frank Hurley


Frank Hurley's  photos can be seen in the Australian Museum.

Well worth reading; the cold and hardships make you shudder and wonder what people can endure. Ts

Tuesday 10 November 2015

Bookshelf;






Elemental is a captivating story of a girl, fish Meggie; her life in a poor fishing village on a remote coast of Scotland. Born  in the 1890s her hard life, her will to learn, her life tender and brutal at times.

Meggie Tulloch writes her life’s story for her granddaughter. It begins in the first years of he 20th century in a place where lives are ruled by men and men are ruled by the witchy sea, ruled by superstitions. The only thing lower than a girl in the order of things is a clever girl with accursed red hair.

The Scottish dialect of her childhood gives  authenticity.  An expansive glossary of the Scottish words are at the back of the book.
Some of the words: 
Bonnie clip = a good looking girl
Clooties = rags bandages
Fulpie = a puppy dog
Gansey = pullover
Grunnie = grandmother
Hash= hurry
Half loaves= crude, thick sanitary napkins made out of old rags
Howdie wifie = midwife
Kist = a chest
Limmer = slut
Loon = boy, young man
Muckle =  big


I enjoyed this Novel very much. 

Thursday 5 November 2015

Why?



Trapped in seconds, minutes, hours; we never know why.Ts


Small children use the word WHY persistently, my grand children did, never stopped. Children are never satisfied with answers they ask ‘why’ constantly. 

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes;
he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

—Chinese Proverb


What is the universe made of?

Where do we put all the carbon?

What’s so weird about prime numbers?

What’s at the bottom of a black hole?

Some of science's unsolved questions.


©Photo/text Ts 

Sunday 1 November 2015

The garden bench;


This  garden seat was in tatters, broken, finished thrown away when former neighbours moved out a few years ago. I rescued and repaired it to a new life in my garden. 


The Garden Seat - Poem by Thomas Hardy

Its former green is blue and thin,
And its once firm legs sink in and in;
Soon it will break down unaware,
Soon it will break down unaware.

At night when reddest flowers are black
Those who once sat thereon come back;
Quite a row of them sitting there,
Quite a row of them sitting there.

With them the seat does not break down,
Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,
For they are as light as upper air,
They are as light as upper air! 




Poet Thomas Hardy's garden in Dorchester,


©Photo/Text Ts T

Saturday 31 October 2015

...being sentimental...



 I quote Thomas Huxley, The world is neither wise nor just, but it makes up for all its folly and injustice by being damnably sentimental.

Sentimental people are approachable, enjoy life, bear their heart on their sleeve. They are the people to have as friends as they can  laugh and cry at the same time. Being sentimental is nice.


To be sentimental needs not much stimulation, a song, a scent, a flower, or anything else may bring back pictures of he past. 

White Roses, Sweetpeas, the sweet smell of hay in June, the song of a lark high up in the sky on a hot summer's day; The Linden tree, my mother sang...our life is made up of sentimental memories. Lucky to have and hold on to them.



©Photo/Text Ts 






Tuesday 28 July 2015

Please a "sospeso"; an old tradition;



Have you heard about a Neapolitan tradition called the caffè sospeso meaning "suspended coffee". A person who might be feeling generous, or thankful because he experienced some good fortune, would order a sospeso, paying for two espressos but only drinking one. Then, later, a less-fortunate person who entered and inquired as to whether a "sospeso" was available could have the other espresso -- for free. 
This tradition allegedly began  a century ago, and while it was nearly forgotten in Italy, it has now experienced a revival and started gaining popularity in other countries around the world, including Spain and  France. In the  United States, it has been picked up by a coffee shop in Portland, Oregon, an anonymous Tim Horton's customer who paid for 500 coffees for others.
Large chain corporations taking it over,  changes the dynamic (the beauty of the original caffè sospeso is that, the donor is  anonymous -- the giver offers their gift without needing to announce it or show off, and the receiver gets their coffee with no strings attached and without feeling obligated to somehow repay the favour.
 It is  and was not an advertisement for a certain person or merchandise they sold. It is a beautiful custom and typically it is abused by big corporations until they lose interest or their efforts does not produce the wanted effects. In a way it's great, that this custom has started to regain interest. 



©Photo/Text Ts /Titania Everyday or..

Thursday 28 May 2015

Why did brides wear a black dress at their wedding?






My aunt Gertrud Martina and My Uncle Erwin Joseph at their wedding in the 1930's

Does the tradition of the white wedding dress come from the colour’s ancient symbolic association with virginity and purity? This is a myth, in reality, the white wedding dress is a much more recent development. It was Queen Victoria who made it popular and a tradition for brides to wear a white wedding dress. Royalty typically wore embroidered brocade and crimson robes for weddings. Victoria wore a white satin gown with layers of lace made by two hundred women and a white veil. The lavish dress and the wedding between Victoria and her cousin Albert in 1840 were written up and illustrated in thousands of publications worldwide. Soon, American etiquette books decreed that the white wedding was the "proper style." The white wedding dress became a symbol of wealth and social status—after all, white could not easily be cleaned or worn again outside of hot summer months, and very few women could afford to buy and wear a dress solely for one occasion. 
Generally bridal attire was simply dictated by what a woman had in her closet and by what was au courant. So, while brides in the Western world have worn white, they’ve also donned every other colour of the rainbow and black! 
By the late 1800s, American and European brides loved wedding dresses in the bright, rich colours created by new synthetic dyes. 
During WWI, many women considered it their duty to give up a "white wedding" in wartime, and during the Depression most brides had no choice, simply making do with their best dress or suit. 
Garment manufacturers began specializing in making wedding dresses, and bridal magazines filled with photographs began marketing the white wedding dress as part of a romantic ideal, a custom from "the earliest ages." Marketing, rather than any ageless tradition, that has made the white wedding dress a ubiquitous part of our visual culture.  (excerpts Smithsonian history)


Photo/Text Ts Titania-Everyday..

Friday 15 May 2015

Bookshelf; May;




La bibliothèque abandonnée dans le château de la Forêt, Belgique.Désolation. Quel désordre et quelle tristesse de voir tous ces livres s'abîmer.


How sad!


A handful of books to read, today, tomorrow and after tomorrow;


The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther

In northern Iran, on the plains of Khorasan, there is a village called Mazareh. It is a honeycomb of brown mud walls, where the foothills meet the plains, far from the nearet city of Mashad...
and so the story goes, such a wonderful Novel leading you into another place, another time...


THORNWOOD HOUSE  by Anna Romer

An enthralling haunting tale of obsession, love and courage.


THE TROUT OPERA by Matthew Condon

One small boy, one big country, one hundred years of life.
Flamboyant, operatic, and funny, shows a mad world of history, war, bushfires...the resilience of nature.


and
HAUNTED  by Kay Hooper

How do you make peace with the dead if the dead are not ready to forgive?

and
HARBOUR STREET by Ann Cleeves

A silent community. A murderer among them...

Sunday 15 March 2015

Library cat; March;



A stash of books to read;


The Tournament
by Matthew Reilly

"Chess, Aschan claimed, taught many important lessons: to flatter one's opponent, to lay traps and to see them laid, to be bold and to restrain one's tendency to boldness, to appear naive when in truth one is alert, to see the future many moves ahead and to discover that decisions always have consequences,

A rumour persists, that the first chess tournament was hel d in the 16th century, long befiore the one in  London took place in 1851.

Currawalli Street
by Christopher Morgan
a powerful and moving dance through time.

We all have secret lives and we are all pretty good at keeping them secret.
In 1914,Thomas the young rector, questions his faith and falls in love; his sister Janet adutiful spinster, hides a surprising secret; and their neighbour Rose is burdenend with visions of the coming hell. In 1972, Jim, a soldier fresh from Vietnam, returns home to Currawalli street...
and always there is the boy up in the tree watching them all..


The Book Thief
by Markus Zusak
...the day had been sweaty and hot...In :The Last Human Stranger" there was a quote near the end page 211,
The sun stirs the earth, Round and round, it stirs us like stew. At the time, Liesel only thought of it because the day was so warm.

Flowers of Baghdad
by Bruce Lyman
...bringing the lives of ordinary people in strife-torn Baghdad into focus.

...I see the distinctive kick of dust...the boiling cloud of dust and smoke that lifts like a small Hiroshima cloud over the suburbs...my stomach churns...two bombs, two big blasts near the hospital.




From the first picture books  held in chubby toddlers hands a long lasting friendship with  books is forged. Ts

Wednesday 21 January 2015

Bookshelf;



Cats paws in a 15th Century Manuscript.


Time's Echo by Pamela Hartshorne



York 1577 Elisabethan time, mainly women are tortured, burned, drowned or hung as witches.  Hebalists who were able to help  and ease certain diseases were also victims. They have been accused to be witches and casting evil spells for which they have faced trials and have been condemned to death.,  
How horrible and sickening have these trials been, accused and executed by
moral panic and mass hysteria.
Cats and dogs which were kept as pets, were accused to be a familar of the accused witch and were also destroyed.
In European folklore and folk-belief of the Medieval and Early Modern periods, familiar spirits (sometimes referred to simply as "familiars" or "animal guides") were supernatural entities believed to assist witches in their practice of magic

  
This story has got a twist to it, it weaves from the present to the past.

Chapter One
I feel no fear, not yet......I am somehow suspended between the sky and the water....between disbelief and horror. It is All Hallows Eve, and I am going to die...now I struggle as horror clogs my mind, but my thumb is tied to my toe and I can't swim, even if I knew how. 

 The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In the Kingdom of Great Britain. Witchcraft ceased to be an act punishable by law with the Witchcraft Act of 1735. In Germany, sorcery remained punishable by law into the late 18th century. Contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Papua New Guinea. Official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon.



Thursday 8 January 2015

Toowoomba...Darling Downs;




Toowoomba is a picturesque mountain city located in south east Queensland some 127Km west of the states capital, Brisbane.



Clinging to the edge of the Great Dividing Range escarpment at an altitude of seven hundred meters above sea-level, the city affords breathtaking views of Table Top Mountain and the Lockyer Valley region across the east.





Toowoomba's climate is pleasant, temperature averaging a cool 5°C to 16°C in winter and a mild 17°C to 27°C in summer.
Toowoomba is Australia's largest inland regional city and is the commercial and economic hub of the Darling Downs.

The Darling Downs is a farming region on the western slopes of the Great Dividing Range in southern Queensland, Australia. The Downs are to the west of South East Queensland and are one of eleven major regions of Queensland, Area: 77,389 km²





There are many theories regarding the naming of Toowoomba. In the final analysis though, Toowoomba became "Toowoomba" regardless of which theory is correct.


In its earliest time of European settlement, Toowoomba was known as the ‘Drayton Swamp’ and was called   ‘The Swamp.’ It is believed, that Aborigines  pronounced the word  Swamp to sound  like ‘Tawampa’, which easily becomes Toowoomba.

Another  version features a letter to the Toowoomba City Council from Steele Rudd claiming that his father had told him that in 1848 he first saw Toowoomba and in 1849, attached to J C Burnett, he assisted to lay it out. He believed that it was derived from the Aboriginal name of ‘Toogoom’ because of the reeds that grew here.

A third version and  theory of the use of Toowoomba's name comes from Mrs Alford. It is believed that Mrs Alford asked the local Indigenous people what they called the area. They replied 'Woomba Woomba' meaning 'the springs and the water underneath.' The Alford's realised that two woombas would not be a suitable name for their house and store but by using TOO which is also a type of plural it would become Toowoomba.

This theory  of the name  Toowoomba  came from a botanist by the name of Archibald Meston.  In 1895 Meston wrote a book titled “A Geographical History of Queensland,” which included his explanation of the name “Toowoomba”. “Toowoom” or “Choowom” was the local Indigenous peoples’ name for a small native melon (Cucumus pubescens) which grew plentifully on the site of the township. The terminal “ba” is equal to the adverb “There,” so the whole word means “melons there,” or  “the place where the melon grows”.  This melon still exists and can be found growing in the Balonne and Warrego areas as well as areas closer to Toowoomba however there is no evidence that the melons grew in or near the Toowoomba swamps.

This version came from a man called Enoggera Charlie who wrote his story in the Sydney Morning Herald. He claimed when he was looking for work as a tar boy, he had camped overnight near the Toowoomba Swamp. Questioning an old shepherd sage of the naming of the Toowoomba Swamp he was informed that near the junction of the East and West Swamp there was a log with the inscription informing tramps the way to a well-known homestead where there was a certainty to rations. The inscription read 'To Woombrah.'

At around the same time that Enoggera Charlie wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald another man by the name of Ardlaw Lawrence put forward his theory. He suggested that the name Toowoomba may be an Anglicised version of the 'Boowoomga' which meant 'thunder' in the dialect of the Upper Burnett and Gayndah tribes. However he could give no reason for the name being transferred to the Darling Downs.

Writing in a pamphlet in 1899, George Essex Evans wrote that the name Toowoomba meant 'meeting of the waters' however this was again written without authentication.



Sources:
Dansie , R.A.(1989) "A Melon, a Swamp and a Piece of Red Calico."
Marriott, R.S. (1960) 100 Years of Progress: the story of Toowoomba.


©Photos/Ts