Weekly Photo Challenge – Arranged

Once more, I don’t know how to do things – like the ‘pingback’, or get the Weekly Photo Challenge thing onto my site.  It’s all very frustrating.

But, I have found some photos:

These first 2 are arranged plantings of South Western Australian wildflowers, the Kings Park Wildflower Festival, 2011.

Winter, 2011, reveals how the branches of the winter-bare plane trees are fractally arranged.

A formal garden, arranged within an inch of its life, at Aberglasney Gardens, Wales, 2009.

An unexpected angle revealed how the walls and windows are arranged to allow a view of the Forest of Dean.  Tintern Abbey, October, 2009.

Could someone tell me how to do the pingbacks?  I have already seen some lovely photos.

Fat Kitty & camera: a wee photo essay

I am still not well, & not sure whether I’m better or worse at the moment, so I don’t think I’ll be doing any walking today either.  But it doesn’t mean my camera stays quiet.

After I returned from the hospital, my lovely cat greeted me, wanting attention.  Then she was happy to sit – until I got the camera out:

 

 

 

I finally got the camera strap back and fat kitty skipped off:

😀

In my garden

Little post – not flowers or trees, because I did no walking today & there are not many flowers in my garden.  There, is, however, a cat, a dragon, many bells (though I only photographed one) and leaves.  Lots of leaves.

I took photos and then played ….

the dragon:

 

The tree fern (in front of a painting):

 

 

the wee temple bell – can you see it?  It is at an awkward angle to photograph.

& of course – kitty:

now I better get back to work…

enjoy 🙂

quick photos

I’m not well, so no long walk in the park or anywhere else today.  I sat in a cafe on Beaufort Street briefly and took a few photos of a sunset swallowed by blessed clouds.  We might get some rain tomorrow – a light morning shower.  But the really good thing is that rain is forecast from Sunday to at least next Friday.  The bad thing is that I might be in hospital and will miss walking in the park with rain dripping off leaves, listening to the ducks quack as rain dimples the surface of what water remains.

I am glad I took photos of the cloud blossoms when I did and I will post them soon.

For the moment, just these, and I played with the editing suite a little …

I loved the look of the clouds building behind the buildings opposite the cafe, & making the photos black and white gives the clouds surprising power.

 

This photo, of clouds behind the city, was not altered, only framed.  But it is so grey apart from that patch of pale sky.

This is an old building so I made it into an  ‘old looking’ photo, and actually, the bricks in reality are only a little darker 🙂

And now – a couple of sunset photos.  I didn’t feel well enough to chase up and down street corners, and was a bit late for the subdued nature of it, all swallowed by clouds, blessed clouds 🙂

The colours aren’t altered, all I have done is frame them with a border:

   

Just a short post.  Hopefully, I will feel better soon.  Now I must get back to work.

Enjoy.

& I forgot!  Oh – how could I forget – Of course she was waiting for me while I photographed the sunset, but it was windy so she was all blurry, so I played with her photo too:

Black & White

The idea for these came from a blog post by Don Cuney in his blog: Bad Puppet Productions – http://badpuppetproductionz.com/2012/03/28/my-garden-in-bw/

His black & white flowers were so striking.

I have no flowers in my garden at the moment, only green, some of which are ferns, and beneath some:

 

 

I like the top 2 best.

Trees: in a small section of Mt Lawley Shire.

When we first moved to Perth in the 1970’s, Hyde Park had many of these huge pine trees: Norfolk Pines.

That was around the time the amount of rain the South West of Western Australia, including Perth, began decreasing.  Over the years, the level of ground water has dropped, and the pines have mostly disappeared.  I don’t know which drought it was, but there were not as many.  The ones at the William Street corner at the moment are being raided by the black cockatoos for their pine cones. The remains of the cones cover the ground and next time I walk that way, I’ll try to take decent photos.

This is one of the few pines remaining.  I don’t know how old it is, but it now has to be lopped to keep it clear of the heavy transmission lines (that I was able to keep out of the photo).  Despite its disfigurement, it’s still beautiful.

    

 

The Morten Bay figs of Hyde Park.  There are so many, all of them huge.

 

 

 

 

 

Some photos of the huge buttress roots of the Morten bay fig:

   

Branches – these are as fascinating, beautifully sculptural:

   

   

That’s enough of those for the moment (though I can never get enough of them). The next is, I think, a dead cloud blossom tree, all tangled in with a Morten bay fig.

It’s bark is filled with fascinating sculptures.  One looks like an ear to me 🙂

 

Then we have the beautiful plane trees.  No, not native, but lovely all the same.

 

Their branches are beginning to show as the leaves lose their full thick green and begin to thin,

 

This is neither plane tree nor Morten bay fig.  I don;t know what it is.  There are quite a few of them in the park.  It’s huge and beautiful.

Now we come to the Jacaranda trees.  Beautiful things, in all seasons.

 

I love the tracery of their branches against the green of their feathery foliage and the intense blue of the sky.

And that’s where I will leave it for the moment.  I can take photos of trees for hours.  Can sit and look at them for hours, but I don’t really mean you to have to go through the same thing 🙂

Still, I hope you have enjoyed these.

Keira 🙂

Flowers in the afternoon

I went for a walk (again) today, and along with trees & Hyde Park, I photographed flowers.

A selection of my photos follows.

First: bottlebrush.  I was a bit windy, but I managed to catch them in a still second.  I love the scarlet of these.  In Spring, which it isn’t, the trees are almost completely scarlet, but it’s Autumn and they really shouldn’t be flowering.

 

A frangipani flower blown off its tree.  It was way to windy to photograph the tree.  Next time.

The perfume as I walked beneath it was simply heavenly.

These little blue flowers generally grow as hedges and look very pretty.

A pale beautiful Grevillea on a tree I passed.

 

The seed pod left after the flower has gone.  It looks so much like a caterpillar or inset of some kind 🙂

More bottlebrush – a slightly different flower & on a different street.  It was on the way home after some fairly fruitful work,

  

& I was so lucky to catch this as I was looking at the purple lantana (below) – a new holland honeyeater in the bottlebrush flowers.  These were the best 2 shots.

Lantana – a whole verge full.  And white everlastings.  In Spring, this is full of friesas & it’s gorgeous.

Lantana is actually a very invasive weed, and in the bush, runs rampant & while it looks pretty, it kills native vegetation, changes the ecosystem and all the animals and birds suffer as well. It’s a huge problem in the Eastern States.

 

 

the red trumpet flower is on a huge tree that when in full flower can almost rival bottlebrush for sheer spectacle.

Pink jasmine on a white fence.

I hope you enjoyed these.

More posts later – more trees 🙂

Urban Sunsets

These were mostly taken from William Street.  I call them ‘urban sunsets’ as telephone wires and buildings also – um – ‘structure’ the view.

The last 2 evenings have had wonderful sunsets.  Both had clouds which ‘structure’ the sky & we’ve had very few clouds recently.

So even though there was no rain (& we are in sore need of some), they were very welcome.

Here is a selection:

It started out quiet, with the clouds,

 

got more violently coloured and powerful:

 

and when the sun went behind the land, it left behind spectacularly coloured clouds.

                               

& it was echoed in paler pastels in the eastern sky – also urban, so telephone wires & poles

 

The next day – or rather evening – was quieter.  No sign of the promised rain.

 

clouds leading the sunset over the western sky, suffusing it with gold:

 

 

 

Tonight’s sunset was altogether more subdued.  No clouds, nothing to fling it wide, sink it into the skin of the sky, but there was a lovely surprise at the end of it:

 

and here is the surprise: the new moon so pale against the pale sky

and then, it was not alone, this curved sliver of whitened silver:

and later:

and here she is, waiting for me:

Trees

Today I photographed some trees and some bark.  The bark of the paper bark is intense and fascinating & has been used in artwork by the indigenous people.  I was a bit experimental as the trees are too damn big to fit in my little camera 🙂

A selection (of the photos that worked!):

These 3 are of a ghost gum (I think) on the Mt Lawley ECU campus.  It’s a young one so not very big, but still seems a giant in these photos, striding into the infinite blue of this unending summer.

    

Sunset colours on a large gum tree on a corner on William Street.

  

The paperbark or cloud blossom – & the flowers & bark explain the 2 names.  I don’t know which is correct – or if, indeed, either is correct 🙂

 

The bark of these trees is truly amazing & my photos don’t do it justice.  I will have to try again, but I offer these anyway:

 

 

Only a short post – I have so much work to do.  But I will definitely be taking more photos of more trees.  They are amongst my favourite things, trees.

I hope you enjoyed these photos.

New appearance

yes, I’ve changed the look of MtLawleyShire. Hope it works. The other made images look so cluttered. Now all I have to do is figure out how to make the photos line up reasonably – and I shall post the sunsets tomorrow.
For now, here are some flowers I took yesterday and this evening.



Sunsets tomorrow – there are a few photos & it will take time to organize.
Goodnight