Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons

After my last post of my calendars of Hyde Park for 2013 using photos of Hyde Park through the seasons of 2012, I had thought this Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons would be difficult.  And it is – because I need photos that epitomise this time of year when Spring evolves from late into early Summer.

Capturing heat and the varied weather over this time is difficult on camera – well, mine at least – and in Australia, the signs are subtle apart from the increasing heat.  All the blatant signs of Spring are gone: new green on trees, fledglings that have left nests, swathes of wildflowers.  These are all finished now.  They finish before Spring is really over.  But there are some signs of late Spring/early summer, and some are beautiful while others are less so:

These first three are taken in Hyde Park recently: water levels dropping drastically and one with a young coot picking its way through the noisome muck that edges what water remains.

 

This is even more devastating as it also reveals the ‘restructuring’ of the eastern island – everything but the palm trees gone.  As they are intending to make it purely ‘native’ – hence removing even the bottlebrush (apparently they were not a species native to Western Australia), I am not sure why the palm tree has been spared.  Palm trees don’t seem to be native to south-western Australia (seem to be from the top end, and QLD/NSW) so why were the bottlebrush removed?  I am sad, there will be no banks of amazing scarlet next spring.

onto more cheerful things: I don’t know the name of this tree, but it flowers most spectacularly at this time of year.  This specimen, smaller than others I have seen (& they are magnificent) but I don’t have photos – sadly.  This is on the edge of Hyde Park:

 

This is another tree that flowers at this time of year.  It was a really windy day so I couldn’t get close-up of the fluffy, quintessentially gum tree-looking blossoms, but it is beautiful.  And full of birds 🙂

Box trees in flower.  Box trees are normally ugly as they are continually lopped because of telephone wires.  They are from QLD, but are used as street trees.  in later summer, they drop leaves and gum nuts which make walking in bare feet dangerous as they are incredibly painful to step on.  But in flower, they are surprising, especially as the flowers are quite delicate and lovely.  And – when the tree isn’t lopped, it is gracious and verging on the magnificent.

 

Individual blossoms:

The Jacaranda are finishing now.  The green of the leaves are coming through:

Two more eucalypts in flower, the first in West Perth, the second in Hyde Park:

 

Cygnets are growing much larger (the Swan River/Matilda Bay family)

and then – it is the time of thunderstorms and wonderful sunsets:

and clouds (these were from a  thunderstorm that never happened):

all next week there are thunderstorms forecast but sadly, I am working every night.  Great for finances, sad for sunsetty photos.

sigh.

It feels a tad light on, my entry for this Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons.  In Perth, the seasonal change is marked more by an increase in temperatures rather than anything else, the signs are subtle and often not suitable for photography.  I’m not sure I’ve been able to capture it.  But then, summer is not a season I enjoy with its heat and the increasing humidity and knowing, with the increasing temperatures, more trees will die this year.

 

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