can't see me!

This sheep knows that he shouldn't be there, and he's obviously trying to hide!

This place is one of the outdoor eating places in our garden. It is lovely to sit here and watch out over the valley.

slip casting

A few years ago (1993!!!) I was interested in making molds of things. I still have those molds and every now and again someone wants one of the ceramic forms that come out of them. I had an order just the other day for some human skulls. An artist in the US named Charles Krafft uses them in his own creative way. So today, a beautiful sunny autumn day, I worked in my new studio and started casting . If you're interested you could see my stuff at CAJO.

btw, today was a fun day!

Whoops!

This dead tree had been standing just outside our place for more than 30 years, so I guess it had to come down eventually. We heard the crashing sound late last night, but didn't know what had caused it until this morning. Jon and I spent most of the day cutting it into little chunks to fit into our fire place during winter. I was looking forward to finding bird nests in the hollow branches but there was nothing there. However there was a brown snake that slithered out of it ... straight into the garden.

name this moth!

A moth in our back yard. I have no idea what type of moth it is, but I like its fur coat!

New neighbours

Here is one of our new neighbours! A flock of 17 lads (yes, all rams!) all very quiet and friendly, just trying to seek out a little bit of something to eat in the incredibly dry paddocks. They are quite happy to hang around with the cattle, but they also go off by themselves and spend a lot of time sitting outside our front fence, under the shade of our apple tree.
To try to gauge if anyone is actually reading this blog, I think I will put up a poll. Please click yes or no to the question 'Do you like sheep?' Thank you.

Golden Orb Spider

This beautiful creature has made a very large web just outside our back door! She is no threat to us, she might even help out by catching some flies, she's not in the way and she is very interesting, ... so she stays. It will be good to see how long she lasts, but it's autumn here now, and it will be frosty soon, so I suppose by then she won't want to be there any more.
She is called a golden orb because of the colour of her web, it really is very yellow and glows ... golden! Tiny little males live on the outside areas of the web and risk being eaten when they approach the female.

Paragliding

A beautiful day for flying. I like it when these people who come from all over the world drop in, but today's conditions were too good for that. We live too close to their launch site, and they could go as far as a few hundred kilometers further than here if they are lucky.

caterpiller with salad dressing

Sometimes I just don't run for the camera when I probably should.

Last night, luckily it wasn't too dark when we were having dinner on our (usually candlelit) front verandah. There we were tucking into a delicious roasted meal accompanied by a fresh salad made with lettuce leaves from a sealed bag bought in a big supermarket. No use naming or blaming them, I should have checked more carefully ... but half way through dinner a big caterpillar surfaced onto the rim of the salad bowl! It looked really strange, he was definitely trying to escape. But instead of filming it to show you, I pulled him out gently with my knife. In the dark, we thought it looked like a millipede, but after we had finished eating, Jon washed it off and had a look, it was just a caterpillar and he put him outside. We wondered later if a bird liked the flavour of balsamic vinegar on his dinner!

finding Moganshan in China with X-Plane

We've been busy today finding our way over China! X-Plane is a flight simulation program, and it is very good at forcing one to learn geography. We wanted to fly over Moganshan, plus other places, but to get there, we had to find the nearest airport, and then which direction to go. With the aid of online maps we were able to do it. It'is both very entertaining and educational. Jon then wanted to fly on to Beijing, and it was so far away, he left the plane on autopilot and went outside to wash the car. When he came back he was almost there. How surreal is that!

Here is a map zooming in on Moganshan (introduced to us in China Cuckoo by Mark Kitto).

before and after - on top of the fridge

I was really very fond of this collection of stuff. It has taken many years to get as good as this. Because there was no where else in the house that was suitable, it was with great difficulty that we decided this was the only possible spot to put our new snail pond!

So this is what is on top of our refrigerator now. It's like a glowing 3-D television set, but much more interesting!

To decorate the pond is a rock of red jasper from the Gwydir River, a fossil leaf from the hill behind our house, and an antique silkworm chrysalis jade carving from Xi'an in China.


Hi Yoriko!

grass

Crop-dusting at Llynmollie

This was a fun way to start the day. I filmed all of this from our garden. See, we really do live in the middle of a farm. It is not our farm, so we have all the benefits of a peaceful country life without the worries. We are very lucky!

copper mask with geranium lips

This is an embossed copper mask that I made a long time ago. It was pensioned off as a garden ornament last century! The other day it came to life with fresh pursed lips of a geranium flower!

Brown snake in our garden

The birds always let us know when there is a snake around. Once, we saw a brown snake swallowing a honeyeater in this same part of our garden. They know the snakes are a real threat and they ban together to call us so that we can scare it away!

Butterflies at Llynmollie Cottage

Butterflies in our garden.

Male feeding the female

Watching our friendly Scrubwrens, it looks like the female builds the house while the male (who is slightly bigger and brighter) feeds her!

Watch it for yourself in the movie.

Scrubwrens in our garden

We have these beautiful pots of flowers hanging from our clothes line. That big white bunch of petunias on the left has a new nest of Scrubwrens.










Here is a Scrubwren emerging from her new home!










Watch carefully as a busy little bird takes in nesting material and leaves quickly for more.

Guilin Art Museum - 桂林美术馆

Last January, we spent 3 very enjoyable weeks touring through China. While in Guilin, we visited the Art Museum and watched this demonstration of traditional Chinese painting of bamboo. It was very interesting. I hope you like it.

Bamboo painting by Huang Shouqi - 黄寿奇

我很喜欢学习汉语！

 (Wǒ hĕn xǐhuan xuéxí hànyǔ!  I love learning Chinese!)

I am trying to learn Chinese, I like it very much, but it is extremely difficult and takes a lot of time.

我享受挑战! （Wǒ xiǎngshòu tiǎozhàn!   I enjoy a challenge!)

。。。

Shirley Peters

We went to the opening of Shirley Peters' first one man show last night. It is at Brunswick Street Art Gallery in Fitzroy near Melbourne. She had a fantastic collection of rather large oil paintings, mostly depicting the unexpected combination of modern secular people, such as young runners and surf swimmers, in St Peter's Basilica in Rome!!! Even horses! They are great paintings, each one is amazing, but all together it really was impressive. She sold 3 paintings on opening  night!!!

Here they are: