CROSSING LINES

My apologies to subscribers, for not noticing that I had inadvertently published the photos a few hours ago, before I had started to write the text. 

As I stepped out of the back door last Monday a pair of King Parrots suddenly flew toward me, settling on a curving pole and a line. 

They were quite unafraid and seemed interested in me. Probably hoping to be fed. I went back indoors and fetched my camera taking the photo above through the glass door. The adult male, on the left in the photo, has a red head and breast. I am fairly sure the mostly green bird on the right is a juvenile male. It was also behaving like a juvenile, hanging upside down and swinging on the line while looking at me. 

When I stepped outside again I managed to take this photo of the adult who was clearly curious about what I was doing, or not doing, (feeding them). Their behaviour really surprised me, because they usually seem to be a bit timid.

A couple of days later we were delighted to see a Kookaburra while we were walking along the track along the rim of Iron Bark Basin. 

This view is of an area above the Basin that was burnt in the Ash Wednesday Bushfires on 16th February 1983. All of the Grass Trees Xanthorrhoea are the same height, having grown from seed after the fire. The grey-trunked trees are Messmate stringybark Eucalyptus obliqua. I have a vivid memory of visiting the adjacent Jarosite mine valley in the weeks after the fires. All of the standing tree trunks were black and the ground was covered in very fine light grey ash. In the following Spring all of the Xanthorrhoea flowered at once.

To Ikebana:

This week I returned to the creek to gather some more stems of Crocosmia aurea as they were still flowering prolifically. The bright orange of the flowers being hard to resist. I had used these flowers two weeks ago, on 19th January. This time, I arranged four stems in a 'mid-century' Japanese Ikebana vessel. I began by choosing the tallest stem for the principal line, then cut the three other stems progressively shorter. Probably half of the leaves have been removed to emphasise the crossing lines.

Greetings from Christopher

1st February 2025