Fallen Ironbark

This week a mighty ironbark eucalyptus came crashing down, succumbing to hidden white ant infestation. Inside the house, we froze momentarily, shocked by the noise. 

J beside downed ironbark; decapitated bloodwood in foreground

The ironbark, around 25 metres tall (60-70 feet), fell between the fence and the driveway and destroyed some small trees, decapitating a bloodwood. We're glad the driveway didn't get blocked.

Bloodwood eucalyptus

Meanwhile, the current damp weather makes me reluctant to open cupboards and bins in my campaign to reduce stored clutter. Just peeking inside signals authorisation for the development of new mildew colonies. White ants, mildew and rust are relentless teachers of the desirability of keeping possessions to a minimum in the Tropics.

Shredded paper mulch

I have managed to sort through files of old papers and shred many. J has been using the shredded paper as mulch. I get a little glow seeing results of de-cluttering put to good use.

Have I been sitting too much at my wheel and spinning cotton lately? The dog thinks so. She put a tennis ball instead of a spanner in the works. Isn't it time for a walk, she pleads with begging eyes aglow.

GIMP has a nifty filter for correcting the Red Eye Glow problem in photo portraits, but I couldn't get it to work on the dog's eyes. Eventually, J pointed out that dogs don't have a Red Eye Glow problem. They have a Yellow-Green Eye Glow problem. Doh! I decided to leave the dog's glowing eyes as a design element that relates to the yellow-green tennis ball (i.e. no problem, no correction required)... and go for a walk.

post and pix by M in JaM

Finding My Way

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
...Douglas Adams

I've learned to use a new tool, called Foreground Select, in GIMP, an open source graphics program, thanks again to Tay for installing it. I had fun putting together the image above. I used the new tool to cut out the Road Art sculpture (same one as seen in my last entry) and then deleted the background. I layered the sculpture over Spiral Galaxy M100, one of the amazing photos from NASA's Hubble telescope. What an amazing time to be alive, to see such wonders and to play with such tools.

My energy is returning, no doubt about it. Just in time, too, as J hasn't felt himself since having a wisdom tooth extracted. In amongst preparing soup and other soft foods, I'm sorting through clutter, shredding old papers, making another pile to take to the op shop this week. Each time I stand back and regard an (admittedly tiny) empty space, I realise how truly, at my age, Less is More.

We have interesting news from Max:

Late last year a team of archaeologists from Latrobe University spent about three weeks doing field work in our area. It will be several month yet before everything has been analysed, but already some results are available. 

Richard Cosgrove, who led the team has emailed: "We have received two radiocarbon dates from the rock shelter. The oldest charcoal sampled from the base of the excavation is, when calibrated, about 7,359 years old. ... This dates three artefacts made of rhyolite, probably gathered from the river nearby as many of the flakes and cores have river cobble cortex. The age of the charcoal from the layer above is about 4,348 years old. So the shelter appears to have been occupied by people at least 7,300 years ago and then repeatedly visited through 4,300, probably until the European contact era."

I leave you with a Swedish proverb:

"Fear less, hope more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Hate less, love more; And all good things are yours."

post and photo editing by M in JaM

RoadArt photo by J in JaM

Spiral Galaxy M100 photo by NASA's Hubble

ANNOUNCING....

This beautiful baby boy demonstrated the family gene for impatience, like his twin cousins, and arrived a bit early. He's doing well. What is it about these boys that make them so determined to arrive early? Don't they know about the family tradition of being late?? I suspect this little one will continue to surprise us. And that's a good thing, right? I find my heart smiling.

You can see I've continued to play with GIMP, the image editor. I know, my announcement uses non-traditional colours for a baby boy, but he is a Scorpio, after all. And somehow, I'm pretty sure he's going to be non-traditional....

J has designed a new, you beaut, spindle holder for me and I love it.

Laser cut out of translucent grey acrylic and wood, it provides a variety of places to set numerous spindles.

I have ample space below to store support spindle dishes and extra whorls.

Warm weather has led to the expected arrival of skinks in our house. Inside, we humans and the dog tolerate these little critters. We rescue them when they accidently slip into the sink and can't escape. Safer inside than outside for them. It's a jungle out there. This skink contemplates the option of living on a knife's edge.

post by M in JaM

Wasps, Learning and Celebrations

Paper wasp nest

Our (almost) daily walk takes us past a good sized paper wasp nest fastened to a barbed wire fence. We made a little detour to avoid disturbing the wasps as I had no desire to repeat a previous experience of being stung repeatedly while desperately running as fast as I could while my husband yelled: Keep Running!

Something got the wasp nest. It's completely gone. What hungry night predator managed to pluck that nest off the barbed wire? Always a shock when things disappear from one's life, even when it's something like a wasp nest.

Since we switched our computer to a Linux type operating system called Ubuntu (thanks to a helpful son-in-law), I've had to start learning to use an image editor called GIMP. Actually, I grizzled and resisted learning for a long time. But wouldn't you know, I found some good tutorials on YouTube. I followed one of GIMPtricks' tutorials to make this image:

We celebrated J's birthday. Every year he says, No Party! I know he's happy staying home and working on projects or learning about new things via the internet. He's currently taking a free online course from Stanford University on Artificial Intelligence. No worries about him exercising his brain. You can find out more about some of his projects at tropicarduino.blogspot.com

As his birthday approached this year, he repeated his mantra: No Party! It took some doing, but seeing as this was a decade birthday, I managed to cajole him into getting together to celebrate with a handful of people in town, the youngest being one year old twins and the eldest being a new friend who just turned 96. I have to admit I liked the part about no baking, no cooking, no clean-up. Just visiting and enjoying ourselves.

Remember to enjoy yourselves, readers, to laugh and appreciate those around you. And allow others to appreciate you.