I mentioned last week that we were hosting some friends visiting from the United Kingdom. Their visit coincided with an unusual weather event. Warm, moist air coming down the east coast of Australia was swept in a southwest flow across Victoria. This weather pattern results in easterly winds and persistent rain that will last, on and off on this occasion, for several days. From the point of view of gardening the rain was most welcome and has topped up our 13,500 litre garden water-tank.
For our visitors it was not the version of Australia they usually see on their TV screens. However, one of the interesting sights was a huge number of small bluebottle jellyfish * being washed up on our beach because of the unusually choppy seas and easterly swell.
To me the two most surprising features of these organisms are their intense blue colour and their extraordinarily long tentacles, as you can see above.
The photos above show a small number, among the hundreds, of jellyfish we saw on the beach scattered among little brown pea-sized air-bladders that have detached from seaweed in the stormy weather.
Speaking of the sea reminds me that I recently gave a class about 'focusing on water' in an arrangement. My student, Leonie, made this work in a glass cylinder using shredded New Zealand Flax leaves and a single yellow iris-like flower of dietes bicolour.
At the same class I made the work below, to show how two arrangements may be combined to create a single arrangement. In this instance I used suibans, shallow tray-like vessels, but any two vessels may be used. This work also 'focused on water', in this case the surface of the water.
Greetings from Christopher
13th December 2014
* click on the blue text for further information
I really like your two suiban arrangement. To me it looks very proportional with the water being highlighted but in equal strength to the floral part.
ReplyDelete