Sunday, visiting Murwillumbah Regional Art Gallery.

Art is life;

Mount Warning is dominating the beautiful rural area of  the Tweed Valley.

The name Murwillumbah derives from an Aboriginal word meaning "camping place" – from Murrie, meaning "aboriginal people", Wolli, "a camp"; and Bab, "the place of". Nearby Mount Warning and its attendant national park are known as Wollumbin, meaning "Cloud Catcher", in the Bundjalung language.

The day was a bit moody, but Mount Warning showed its best side.

Murwillumbah is a town in far north-eastern New South Wales, Australia, in the Tweed Shire, on the Tweed River, 848 km north-east of Sydney, 13 km south of the Queensland border and 132 km south of Brisbane.

Murwillumbah, a few snippets  from time passed.

Originally the area was home to the indigenous Bundjalung tribe.

European settlement came in the latter 19th century, with the name Murwillumbah  was the aboriginal name of the tribal lands between what is now the Tweed and Rous Rivers.

The first commercial maritime vessel navigated the Tweed River in 1868 and the cultivation of sugar cane and the surveying of the town soon followed.

Shortly before the turn of the century Murwillumbah became the terminus for the NSW North Coast railway line.

In 1907 most of the town’s business district was razed by a devastating fire.

But typical of the Australian country people’s resilience, the town was rebuilt with many fine buildings from that period still in evidence today.

Stormy weather - In 1954 Murwillumbah faced devastation once again as the worst flood in its history inundated the business district and low lying areas around the town.

Water levels reached the awnings of many businesses in Main Street. In 1956 the town was again awash with another major flood, a scene repeated in 1974. Since then levee walls and banks have been constructed to lessen nature’s onslaught.

Rocks as sculptures. Make you smile.

Having lived on a grazing property, rural countryside, grazing cattle, peaceful, as life should be, love  it.

Annexed to the gallery at the back is a neat small building where artists can sketch the country side.

Presume not that I am the thing I was.William Shakespeare

©Photos/Text TS

Saturday, oh wishes...

Wishes and hopes…  are part of  life… then comes the desire to put wishes and hopes into reality…then possibilities arise to act upon your dreams and hopes… are put to rest until next time…Ts

“I wish you all the joy that you can wish.” W. Shakespeare.

...people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

Hello and good bye, that is life in politics, it might be  nothing but a 4 year long term, good or bad after  a while all is  forgotten.

I am not impressed with this media made women’s movement against Mr. Trump,  President elect. It is not important if I like him or not, it is not the issue here. 

Women should be conciliatory, peacemakers, not harridans on a warpath. They are out for the kill just like their heroine Miss Clinton was. They should know, that democracy has spoken and all their tantrums won’t reverse it. They must be very ignorant of politics not to recognize the puppet masters behind  the scene.  Let these women do the dirty work for us, and they do.

If this march was for women’s  and earth's issues they should have marched a long time ago and every year. 

They did not march against all the miss deeds the outgoing politicians did. They did not march to stop the bullets and the bombs, they did not march for all the dead and destruction, for all the dead women and children,  all these wars have caused. They did not march for all the destruction of ancient cities and looted treasures. No, they march for their own hypocrisy, with little pink hats like they were performing on a stage. 

They are certainly not marching to better women’s life, they should have done that every year, no matter who holds the reigns in Government.

All these performers live in glasshouses and love to hear themselves speak. It seems they even believe their own drivel. Ts

Saturday; Macros are fun.

From my summer garden;

Penta.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps;
Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.

~A. Bronson Alcott, "The Garden," Tablets, 1868

Scented Geranium.

I am a sentimental gardener. 
The flowers, trees, shrubs they all hold my dreams my thoughts and sometimes my frustration, but mostly  my heart and soul is pleased. When the time comes to fold their petals the last time,  the softly,  withered flowers or leaves  have a lovely sentimental look about them. Ts

Withered Lotus leaf

Clarence river Baeckia.


To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. ~Mahatma Gandhi

Nerine bulb.

The garden is the poor man's apothecary. ~German Proverb
I change this proverb to " The garden is the clever man’s apothecary." Ts





Lycoris aurea bulb.


With rake and seeds and sower,
And hoe and line and reel,
When the meadows shrill with "peeping"
And the old world wakes from sleeping,
Who wouldn't be a grower
That has any heart to feel?
~Frederick Frye Rockwell, "Invitation," Around the Year in the Garden, 1913



©Photos #mygarden  Ts

Bookshelf;

The Bookworm by Carl Spitzweg 1850

India with its magical colours and gods and stories.

The secret Children is a great book to read, it is about life and death and in between the brittle weaving of a colourful tapestry sadness in the unforgivable way the English Raj treated the native people in their own country. Ts

"From the book;"   tell me the stories about India. The names you have told me so many times. Tell me about being taken by bearers to see the circus, carried high above their heads with the way lit by lanterns. And the woman with her basket of coloured glass bangles, and how they would be broken eventually.

Tell me about your mother, sad and silent with silver bells on her ankles. Tell me about the nights you would get into bed with your sister when the two of you were sent away. Tell me the stories that were told to you. The brothers who eat their sister after discovering the sweetness of her blood, the reeds that whisper her name. Tell me the stories again. I promise I will remember.

Unforgettable...

Assam 1925. In the emerald hills of a tea plantation in northern India.

Mary and Serafina born of two worlds, accepted by neither...

The British Raj , literally, "rule"  was the rule of the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The rule is also called Crown rule in India, The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage, and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and those ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British tutelage  and called the princely states. The resulting political union was also called the Indian Empire and after 1876 issued passports under that name. 

This system of governance was instituted on 28 June 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (who, in 1876, was proclaimed Empress of India). As a state, the British Empire in India functioned as if it saw itself as the guardian of a system of connected markets maintained by means of military power, business legislation and monetary management. It lasted until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states: the Dominion of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan.

Power of fire...

Summers are  hot and may be very dry. the danger of fire is high. The smallest spark, be it from nature through lightening or other, man made causes, may start a disasterous fire. It is a time to be alert. I always get a bit anxious when I smell smoke, or the valley is obscured by smoke. Fortunately our area here had only once a fire threat in all the years we have lived here. I remember some houses had to be evacuated, people left with their pets and a suitcase. There was some damage but all houses were safe, as the fire brigade and its volunteers were  fast and did a lot of hard work extinguishing the flames. It was scary, the air was hot  and thick with smoke.

This is in our garden, but it was  a controlled burning after rain, to get rid of dry grass, branches and twigs fallen from the trees.

We  like the soft flame of a candle; sit around an open fire also love an open fire to cook.

 Fire,  is part of  us since our beginning

Fire a chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products.

The flame is the visible portion of the fire. Depending on the substances, impurities outside, the colour of the flame and the fire's intensity will be different.

 Fire is an important process that affects ecological systems around the globe. The positive effects of fire include stimulating growth and maintaining various ecological systems. Fire has been used by humans for cooking, generating heat, light, signaling, and propulsion purposes. The negative effects of fire include damage to life and property, atmospheric pollution, and water contamination. If fire removes protective vegetation, heavy rainfall may lead to an increase in soil erosion by water. When vegetation is burned, its nitrogen  is released into the atmosphere. Potassium and phosphorus  remain in the ash and are quickly recycled into the soil. Loss of nitrogen caused by a fire produces a long-term reduction in the fertility of the soil, which only slowly recovers as nitrogen is "fixed" from the atmosphere by lightning and by leguminous plants.

Photos/Text Ts

Saturday; a walk along the driveway/butterfly garden.

It is very dry, still some plants and flowers do not give up easily.

Dry leaves from the trees, luckily they can be blown into the side garden as mulch.

Huge lilies; Crinum asiaticum.

Agapanthus flowers may look vulnerable but the plant is as tough as old boots.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

The marvellous Spider Daylilies.

Never give up.

Dreams and Hope go hand in hand...Ts

The toughest of the lot, Bromeliads.

Wishes are generally not granted over night. You must gather your strength like a flower in a drought, to achieve what you wish for. 

Photos my garden/Text Ts