Category: Patho

Sunshine at last

August 25, 2020

and pesky shadows

Introducing a friend of mine.

When I began my blog I wanted to merge two of my passions, one for gardening and the other for my creations. I don’t call them ‘dolls’ because not all of them take the human form. They are very impressionistic. They’re not perfect in proportion and my sewing can be impatient. I still haven’t found the language to express my ideas, (I don’t know what to tag them), but the images might tell my story.

When I began my blog I was frustrated with the quality of my photos. I have been fixated on trying to improve them. I’ve studied lots of other blog and watched countless videos. Now, I have a new challenge taking inside photos indoors. I cheated and went outside in the brief sunshine we’ve had. Who to take first? This one seemed appropriate for the sunshine.

You might be shy too, in this outfit
Look at me up here

As I was playing around with the sun and the pesky shadows, (there is a downside when the sun comes out), I noticed something through the viewfinder. Oh wow, blossom. Here, as I’ve said often lately, it’s the end of Winter. Wait on, maybe I should say the start of Spring

Look what I found
Cheers

Details about the doll on My Friends

Saying goodbye to winter

August 24, 2020

Today marks the start of the last week of winter. The wintry weather is persisting, but I’m looking forward to the start of Spring.

Yesterday I took some pictures from my upstairs window and noticed a little dot of colour down below in a pot. It was a bit of a mystery. Being winter here, there’s not much of this colour in my garden at all. So I braved the cold to investigate.

It was a rose flower that has clung on since I pruned them last. At that time I couldn’t bear to nip off the final rose. Looking more closely, it was a fairly battered about, missing a few petals and looked a bit wind blown. With the arctic ‘breeze’ this week, I have to say I’m surprised it had any petals at all.

I’m awaiting the time when it has new blooms so that I can share them.

Also for Cee Neuner’s Flower of the Day Challenge (FOTD)

Storm Out My Window

August 23, 2020

For Sunday Stills : What can you see from your window?

I glanced out the upstairs studio window and grabbed the iphone in excitement. There was a storm coming. There might be a drop or two on the window.

There was a sudden darkening of the sky and the colours were all changing. No post-photo adjustment to the photo here.

Then the sun peeked through the cloud and lit up a patch of reeds beside the water. I love how the colour changed, (without resorting to after photo fiddling with the colours.) Isn’t sunlight amazing…

Water them Geraniums

August 22, 2020

Henry Lawson ( 1867-1922) is one of Australia’s most famous short story writers and poets. My favorite story is entitled, Water Them Geraniums. One of the characters, Mrs Spicer, tries to maintain some beauty in her difficult life of isolation and hardship in the Australian bush, by growing geraniums. Her final, dying, words to her daughter were “water them geraniums”. It’s worth a read. Just follow the link.

I never take any drop of water for granted where I live. If my garden is neglected, it shrivels up and dies in the harsh Australian climate. Luckily I live on an irrigated farm, so I have access to water. It’s expensive, but I couldn’t imagine living without a garden.

The geranium pictured above, lives in a pot under the verandah, just outside my door. It needs very regular water to survive. It’s just about to flower.

Desaturated

August 21, 2020

thanks to Cee’s FOTD Photo Challenge

After visiting Cee’s Flower Of The Day Photo Challenge and looking at her fabulous photography, I was inspired to play with tomorrow’s post. Here it is. Come back tomorrow for the real thing. I’m still debating which photo I like the best.

50 posts and 1000 hits later

August 21, 2020

1. Achievement unlocked : 50 posts

Bear with me. I’m still a beginner. I’m going to take some time to celebrate what I have achieved so far. After a few early posts I have tried to post once a day. This has been hectic at times, but having not much else to do, it has been achievable. Learning to work on drafts and then schedule the finished posts, has helped a lot. But, I have made 50. It’s a start.

2. Finding a focus

At first I had a vague idea of the direction and focus of this blog, my ‘dolls’, my garden and where I live. It seems like this is still fairly fluid. I initially wanted to show off my crafty projects and record what I was making. My current thinking is that my ‘craft’ is not something many people can relate to. Actually the garden is more appealing. I’ve been slowly realising what my readers find interesting. There doesn’t seem to be much purpose to writing a blog if the audience isn’t engaged. Another part of me says it’s still to early to focus too narrowly and I should just keep exploring blogging and it will find its own direction. I think, at this point, I’m just writing about me.

3. Discovering other blogs

I’m spending more time reading other people’s blogs than working on mine. At first I found gardening blogs very interesting reading. All the more because Australia is in the southern hemisphere and most of the bloggers I read were in the northern hemisphere. In the depths of winter, it was uplifting seeing images of beautiful flowers and gardens. It gave me something to look forward to, rather than dwelling on the misery that is Covid. Now I’ve discovered the amazing range of subjects covered by bloggers. I’m currently devouring photography blogs; enjoying their content and hoping to pick up some tips.

4. 1000 hits and very nearly 50 followers

My first follower was my son, then a friend and then strangers I’ve never met, in places I’ve never been. I find it amazing that so many other people read my blog, take the time to like the posts and sometimes comment. I love reading about other people’s lives. Sometimes they live in places that I am familiar with in my own country, but it’s rather magical being virtually transported to other places, only to find that underneath the details, people share so much in common.

5 Discovering challenges and an award

What a compliment. To have another person appreciate what you have been up to. Thank you Cee Neuner for featuring my post. as a CFFC Featured Blogger. How embarrassed am I to admit that I’d love to put the banner up on my site, as a widget, but with my skill level, that presents yet another challenge, just to get it up there!

An unexpected result of blogging has been rekindling my interest in photography. Loving that!

6 Upskilling

I bought my first computer with the leave salary for my first pregnancy. It had 48 K! It was a real luxury back them. It cost a fortune. Computers have been a great tool for work and I will admit to spending many, many hours as a ‘gamer’. But, this blogging business is a test of my patience and perseverance, and most definately a real challenge.

7 Challenges not the fun ones

Getting the site up and then changing the theme to a more advanced one. DAYS LATER finally making it all work again.

Ping Backs. I did it. (Once!) Look at me with the technical language…

8 More challenges, not the fun ones

Organising my photos. Still a work (quite a lot of) in progress. Enough said.

9 Challenges : the worst

Trying to put a watermark on my photos. Discovering that ctrl shift ‘u’ a9 = the copyright symbol. Like, since when is that a thing? AND THEN BEING CAREFUL TO PUT IT ON A STICKY NOTE ON MY COMPUTER SO I WOULD NOT FORGET IT, AND THEN REALISING THE STICKY NOTE HAD UNSTUCK AND DISAPPEARED, AND THEN SEARCHING THE HOUSE FOR SAID STICKY NOTE….AND THEN TAKING HOURS TO WORK IT ALL OUT AGAIN…..

10 Looking ahead

This year I took all my long service leave, a whole year’s worth, to travel the world. A few days before we were set to go, the Pandamic was declared to be a thing and all plans were cancelled. So I’m hesitant to make any future plans. However, I can still blog.

Except for the challenge logos, all the images I’ve used have been current and have been my own. I want to have another look through the thousands of photos I have and share some of the better ones. I’ll continue to try and improve my skills and maybe, treat myself to a couple of better lenses.

If you’re still reading, thank you. I’ll visit you later.

All about buildings: Old buildings, barns, sheds, houses

August 20, 2020

Cee’s Fun Photo Challenge

Here’s my fun contribution to the challenge.

This is the old chook house, about to fall down. The chooks (Australian slang for chickens) and the ducks have left home in fear of their lives.

Kachunga is a name made up by my children many years ago. I think it originally came from a TV program. It sounds like something you might say when this finally tips over.

Cracking Canna seed

August 18, 2020
Seed pod

Better late than never. Maybe. This year is the first year I have had any luck with Cannas. Other years I’ve manged to kill them, usually before they flowered. Only sheer determination to remember to water them, no matter what, has enabled them to survive, I could proudly say thrive. Before you imagine a garden full of colorful cannas, let me put it in perspective. I only have a few, maybe six plants.

I finally got the nerve to cut them back. If you’re thinking it’s almost springtime there, you are starting to understand reasons why plants have an uphill battle at my place. As I was hacking into them I noticed that a few had some seed pods on them, so I carefully put them aside and went to Mr Google to research how to grow some more.

Mr Google said “gathering the seed was easy to do”. And it was. The seeds were large and easy to remove. The pods below were from a plant in a different location and I had left them too long, There were no seeds to remove.

The next step in the process was to ‘nick’ the rather hard seeds, so that they could germinate. As an afterthought many of the references said growing cannas from seed (even once you had it) was not that easy. That was an understatement. It started with ‘nicking’ the seeds.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to ‘nick’ the seeds. I tried sandpaper. Not going to happen. A file, no. How do you hold the seed and file it. Slippery little suckers. I ventured into the workshed. Maybe the grinder. No, I value my fingers too much. The seeds were round and very hard to hold on to. I chased them all round the shed as they flew out of my fingers. A sharp anything; knife, blade, no, no, no. I couldn’t cut them. Maybe if I hold the seed with a tool I could grind it. No!! A hammer. Yes that broke the seed. Shattered it. Apparently that’s a no – no too. They need to be ‘intact but nicked’. I nearly gave up.

Then I remembered. Once I grew wattle trees from seed quite successfully. The seed was also hard as nails and had to be boiled for a while before sowing.

IDEA : Type canna, seed and boil into Google.

There was one, (just one) video I found that claimed boiling water over the seed might do the trick. So, I boiled the kettle and poured the water right onto the seeds. Success. They crackled. I could actually hear them burst their extremely hard exterior, so that I might have a chance of success. They even danced around the jar. Now they are happily soaking for a day or two before a trip out to the glasshouse.

Check back in a few months. I’m feeling I might have cracked it!!!