Christmas is coming

With our topsy turvy weather no one can make any plans for outdoor activities. So many different Christmas pageants have been cancelled in the past two weeks here on the Gold Coast that it is not funny - and I suspect that this trend is not isolated to here. Rain is covering Australia and even the Hairy Nosed Wombat in the desert area of western Queensland has become a water rat with a flooded burrow. (For those of you who do not know this rather rotund huge guinea pig, it is a very endangered member of our native animals!)
Lucky for us, I planned our Christmas break-up for our Visions Group yesterday as an indoor celebration. As Santa was invited too, I asked a few children along to brighten our day. It worked!
Our Santa was a champion and the children - who ranged in age from 10 months to eight years - really had fun with this playful character.

Our youngest party-goer checks if the beard is real.

Santa's real life wife had come along to our celebration too and she remarked that she was amazed at how the children reacted to him. Perhaps it was because we were all in a party mood and the children felt safe and excited. Being in a home with Santa is a lot more relaxed than being in a shopping centre surrounded by strangers.

Being asked to give a "hi-5"

Once the children and Santa had left, the exhausted members of Visions also made their departure. Oh yes, we all had a turn at having our photos taken with the gent in red! Our cheeks were aching from all the smiling! We had a lot of fun.
But now it is pouring with rain and the back yard is not lawn but water frontage! The creek has flooded and is over the banks again. If the weather had been like this yesterday we would have had fewer people at our party because many roads are flooded and those that are not are quite dangerous because of the driving rain.
Christmas carols that are normally held as fund raisers for charities are being cancelled left right and centre. Our local carols were supposed to be held this morning - but it has rained all day so I bet they didn't happen. A big event with one of the "You've got talent" winners, plus two others in different parts of the Gold Coast will be casualties of our rain since they are supposed to start at six this evening - and it has just turned six as I write this story. It must be dreadfully disappointing for the organisers - as well as the performers who were expecting to make their appearances. Even our Santa from yesterday will miss out on his appearances too.

On a lighter note. I will share my email address with you. If you need to contact me it might be useful!

AJ    joanren@gmail.com

A busy kitchen

"The way to a man's heart is through his stomach" is a phrase my mother liked to quote, Its just as well there are other ways too or I would never have got married! My cooking prowess came later!
The sun turned on its strength today and while the mercury outside climbed every upwards past 30 degrees until it changed direction after reaching 35, I was busy indoors with the air-conditioner keeping me cool as I prepared for an on-slaught of visitors tomorrow.

A batch of mini pavlovas were made first, the work is all done with a mixer so they are easy! Tomorrow I will whip the cream to dollop on the top and crown that with some fruit salad. Pavlovas are different to meringues, they have a little cornflour in the mix which keeps them soft inside, meringues are crispy all the way through.

Then it was into the serious cake making! I have a collection of great little recipe books which have been purchased as fund raisers for church ladies or schools or kindergartens and they have real recipes that work in their pages. At Christmas I make a sponge slice that has fruit mince in it. Fruit mince is incredibly sickly sweet, usually, so I add sultanas that have had a sprinkle of lemon juice and microwaved for a minute, to the fruit mince.

The sponge is rolled out like a pastry but it is lovely and soft to handle.

The fruit is spread on the first layer and the other half of the sponge rolled out and quickly plonked onto the top - it is so soft that if I am slow it just rips and falls in a heap as I turn the rolling mat over!

The oven does the rest. All that has to be done now is cut it into slices. (And eat it!)
I hope I have made you hungry!

Colin and I had a sample slice with a cup of tea once it had cooled down, so I know that it is a success!
On Saturday we are having the last meeting day of our photo/video group "Visions" and we are making it a little bit special.

Our Guest of Honour is the bewhiskered gent himself - so I have also invited a few parents with children to come along to meet him. That will give the photographers something to do!
Incidentally, in the afternoon thunder heralded a change in the weather. You aught to have seen the rain come down! We had 30mm in ten minutes. Then it stopped, just like that! Crazy stuff!
AJ

Garden growth

A big round ball caught my attention this morning. I looked out of the window that overlooks the swimming pool and there below me was this big golden orb. Out came the camera (of course!) and without even checking the ISO I went into action.
Why did I mention the ISO? Because it was still set for the dim light in which I used the camera yesterday! Grr!
Anyway, the camera is more intelligent than I am and the photos came out fine! The focus was set to manual - I sometimes cannot get the right thing in focus when I rely on the auto focus - and thanks to the decent sized viewfinder on my Nikon D90 I seem to be able to get the focus accurate in Manual mode.

f/20  1/125  ISO 640    78mm

Obviously I am looking down on this plant from above. We have a two story home with a veranda on three sides on the upper floor. The birds are seen on the side veranda. This shot was from the back veranda, which is only narrow enough to walk along comfortably. All the leaves on the plant - it is one of the Cycads - have white fringing on them. This has been caused by the grub of a small grey moth. We spray when we see the moths but obviously don't stop them all!

f/20     1/125    ISO 640      300mm

The second shot was taken from the same place on the veranda (using the 70-300mm lens) and shows the wonderful patterning created by the petals on this flower. For that is what the ball is. It is the flower of the female cycad or Sago Palm.

f/16    1/80    ISO 640    50mm

Now I have managed to get into the swimming pool yard without being followed by the dogs! You can now see just how large this plant has grown. Many years ago I sent away to a seed specialist for the seeds for this cycad, an envelope with four huge seeds (you can see some under the leaves) arrived in the post (remember those days when mail came in an envelope?) so this large plant came from a seed that I planted and nurtured.
Many of the seeds do fall to the ground (and germinate) and many stay anchored to the plant - and many of them germinate on the trunk of the plant.
The flower will open and seeds will have been formed under the protection of those woody petals so they will be revealed. Then new leaves will sprout from the centre of the core of the flower and force the seeds to the outside of the plant. Then the seeds will fall to the ground. That is how the trunk is formed too.

f/6.3    1/80   ISO 640   50mm

This last shot was taken with the swimming pool behind me to show how some of the seeds have germinated on the trunk of the parent plant. We have to cut them off before they get too big and put them into pots to give away (or we would soon have a forest) or the plant would become far to large and untidy.
Do click on each of the photos to see them in more detail. That way you will be able to see the shape, size and colour of the seeds too.
AJ

Using two cameras for one task

This afternoon I was taking photographs of a rather wierd insect walking on my veranda floor when the finches flew in to keep me company. They seem to be attracted by my presence outside, when we pack everything away after having a cup of coffee and move indoors, they fly away and back into the trees.

I switched my attention to the birds and decided to give the SLR a go in video mode. Boy, was that difficult! Because of the less than ordinary light in the shade from the veranda roof, the depth of field was really narrow, so only part of a bird would be in focus while the other birds behind it were very much out of focus. These birds are quite timid so moving closer and "going wide" was out of the question, as it was I was only three metres away from them but wanted the camera to be close enough to capture their markings.

I must have taken about five minutes of video before I stopped and went inside to find Steven's Sony hard drive camcorder. I know from past attempts at using it that the quality is not brilliant but when all video on Youtube is converted to flash video anyway (and 30fps when we shoot in PAL 25fps here in Australia) I wondered whether there would be very much difference in the converted quality.

Now I am able to view the video I CAN see a difference - particularly noticeable with the zoomed in shot of the pigeons on the tree branch. That was using the digital zoom so quality drop is not really surprising! When it comes to comparing the early shots of the double bar finches and the shots in the second half of the video the difference is not really so great. Interesting!
To view this video on Youtube click to this link
AJ

New visitors

The sun came out today after several days of horrible rainy weather and with the sun came different birds to our bird feeder on the veranda. Perhaps it is because seeds on the trees are soft after the rain - whatever the reason for it, our seed dish was first visited by two rosellas the red headed bird is an Eastern Rosella and the other a Pale Headed Rosella.

f/4.5  1/320   ISO 300

Unfortunately it was quite dull when the photo was taken and it was rather dark so it has been tweaked to brighten it.
I increased the ISO "just in case" and it was just as well I did since we were visited by yet another common Australian bird - but not common on my veranda. Our visitor was the delightfully coloured Galah (pronounced "galaar" with a long second syllable).
Since it stayed still for a few minutes I was able to creep forward and take three shots of it before it flew away.

f/4.5  1/320   ISO 640  

f/5.6   1/320 ISO 640

f/5.6  1/320   ISO 640

These are beautiful coloured parrots and yet when I lived on the farm we would not appreciate it when thousands of galahs would decend on our wheat crop just as it was sprouting and pull up the little plants to eat the seed at the bottom. But they looked totally amazing in the sunset when they flew overhead. The red evening light would bounce off their pink head and chest feathers and make them even more beautiful. It is an image that I will always be able to recall!

These days I get a thrill when this bird makes a personal visit to our place! It happens so rarely.

AJ

Driving on Sunday

It was a very wet awakening on Sunday - my last blog showed you the birds reaction to the rain. Well after our breakfast in the birds' company we had to drive into town to watch one of our Grand daughters perform in her ballet. I took a little video camera along with me to take a few shots of that - but that is another story!
On our drive home again I had the means to take a little video out of the car window just to record some of the wetness that was around us!
Here are a few seconds of wet roads and puddles!
AJ

Wet Sunday

It is always good to roll over on a Sunday morning and catch a few extra moments of "doing nothing" before getting out of bed - this morning it was a bit more difficult to roll over for the almost deafening sound of falling rain. I find it quite incredible just how much water can fall out of one cloud - and the cloud that was hovering above us in the early daylight hours (4.30) must have been quite massive. It must also have been dropping its load of water long before I woke up because when I looked out of the window there was an inland sea reaching half way up our land.
The main bedroom overlooks the swimming pool and normally we have a large area of lawn between the pool and the little creek . . . but not this morning

F/11  0.4 seconds  ISO 160

I was rather surprised this photo turned out - it was taken hand held.(leaning on the windowsill)  I used Aperture priority so that I could get a wide depth of field which meant that the camera chose a slow shutter speed - with such a slow shutter speed it really would have been better if I used a tripod. (It was incredible that I had the camera in the bedroom let alone take a tripod there too!). Incidentally the pool is not directly beneath the window, it would be about six metres from the wall of the house.
Before I make breakfast I have to feed my dogs and the wild birds or my life would not be worth living! The bird feeder extends out beyond the shelter of the roof so to keep the seeds dry I put that dish on the floor of the veranda. As long as we keep Byron away from the sunflower seeds (he loves them) the birds will not mind coming in to graze on the floor rather than in their usual place. Byron is not interested in chasing the lorikeets - they do not look like white hens, it is the sulphur crested cockatoos that he chases (and we encourage)!

F/10   0.6 Sec    ISO 160

From this photo of the birds feeding you can see that the water has overflowed the creek which has come up past the dividing fence through the centre of our land, that open gate you can see is actually between our property and that of our next door neighbours. The gate is opened to allow the faster flowing water to go through without pushing the fences over. The gate was closed but is never latched and this morning's rain has pushed it wide open.

Here is a sixty second video taken this morning just to give a taste of the sights and sounds of our breakfast encounters.

Now that the rain has eased and the lorikeets have mostly had their fill of their seeds - and since I haven't swept up the mess they made with all the seed husks, another visitor has just arrived with a yell of defiance. I left typing this blog to see where it was and sure enough, he was about to indulge!

F5.6    1/60 Sec     ISO 450

The rain has about stopped and already the water is retreating, still over our land but only half as much as first thing. The change in the weather can be quite exciting!

Now to clean up that veranda!

AJ