Words for Wednesday

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Week after week she provided us with challenging prompts.    Computer issues led her to bow out for a while and I took over.  When Delores' absence looked like being more permanent I begged and cajoled for other volunteers to share providing the prompts, and Words for Wednesday became a movable feast.  Delores discontinued her blog for a while, but she has returned.  Her new blog can be found here.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

This month the prompts were to be provided by Jacqueline aka The Cranky on her blog.  Sadly Jacqueline has had a stroke and is unable to participate.  Even sadder, it now seems unlikely she will be able to rejoin us.  My heart aches for her and for those who love her.  It seems so unfair that she was hit with this just when she was turning her life around.

So I am providing this month's prompts here.

This weeks prompts are:

1. prank
2. arms
3. regret
4. light
5. hostility
6. crime

and/or

1. astronaut
2. wolf 
3. prophesy
4. guillotine 
5. bootlegger 
6. adorable

Have fun.

Sunday Selections #298

Sunday Selections was originally brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, as an ongoing meme where participants could post previously unused photos languishing in their files.
 
The meme is now continued by River at Drifting through life.  The rules are so simple as to be almost non-existent.  Post some photos under the title Sunday Selections and link back to River.  Clicking on any of the photos will make them embiggen.
 
Like River I usually run with a theme.  For the next few weeks I am going to revert to the Home and Away theme I was using this time last year.
Starting with home.  Well in the general vicinity anyway.

Shortly before himself headed off, we went to a  guided 'Breakfast with the Birds' at our National Botanic Gardens.  It was an early start (much earlier than he usually arises) but afterwards he told me it was worth it.  

Over 200 species of birds are known to visit the Botanic Gardens, and for one month (co-inciding with Floriade) they open the gates early on weekends so that small groups of people can be shown some of them.

We had a lovely time.  Very few bird photos follow (many were small and moved faster and less predictably than greased lightening), but there are some shots of the beauty of the gardens.

I do love kookaburras.

If you embiggen you will see several birds nests in the tree above.

The Wood Ducks at least stayed still long enough to take their photos...

In the prolonged wet weather we have been having some surprisingly large trees have slid to the ground...

Orchids were coming out everywhere.

The early morning light and the bird song made a beautiful start to the day.  And the cafeteria opened early for us too, and the after walk breakfast was also a treat.

And now to more exotic treats.

Of course himself had to see pandas while in China.  I believe that pandas are 'reluctant breeders', but you would never know it from his photos.

And some shots from a market place he wandered happily through.

He tells me that ginger cats are almost the only ones he has seen in China.  Which surprised me.

He tells me that this is 'furry tofu'.  Which is so very wrong on so many levels.

Noticing the fish, I asked whether the markets smelt, and he said that he has smelt much, much worse. 

He is still having a lovely time, and still having his photo taken on a regular basis. 

Words for Wednesday

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Week after week she provided us with challenging prompts.    Computer issues led her to bow out for a while and I took over.  When Delores' absence looked like being more permanent I begged and cajoled for other volunteers to share providing the prompts, and Words for Wednesday became a movable feast.  Delores discontinued her blog for a while, but she has returned.  Her new blog can be found here.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

This month the prompts were to be provided by Jacqueline aka The Cranky on her blog.  Sadly Jacqueline has had a stroke and is unable to participate.  Even sadder, it now seems unlikely she will be able to rejoin us.  My heart aches for her and for those who love her.  It seems so unfair that she was hit with this just when she was turning her life around.

So I am providing this month's prompts here.

This weeks prompts are:

1. cheerful 
2. caravan 
3. some 
4. gossip
5. crossfire 
6. group

And/or

1. freaky
2. error 
3. afterlife
4. decade 
5. end
6. cruise

And a random image to go with the random words.

Have fun. 

Sunday Selections #297

Sunday Selections was originally brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, as an ongoing meme where participants could post previously unused photos languishing in their files.
 
The meme is now continued by River at Drifting through life.  The rules are so simple as to be almost non-existent.  Post some photos under the title Sunday Selections and link back to River.  Clicking on any of the photos will make them embiggen.
 
Like River I usually run with a theme.  For the next few weeks I am going to revert to the Home and Away theme I was using this time last year.

Starting with home.  And our garden this time, though there are still many, many photos from Tulip Top Gardens.  It has been an unusually wet Spring and everything (including weeds) is going gang-busters.

 The second is a not entirely successfully experiment.  I was looking out the window just after dusk one evening and noticed that the bank of tritellias (spring star flowers) was just about glowing.  There will be daylight photos of them later.

Pretty things aren't they?

 This orchid has no fewer than seven flower spikes on it this year.  There is another different one heavily in bud on the front veranda.

The anenomies are for Joanne Noragon, to tide her over until hers return.
Just a few more from our garden.  (Well perhaps a generous few.)

 And now to the away part.  As I indicated in an earlier post, himself is on the road again.  He is in China until early next month.  So far he seems to be loving it and tells me (not surprising) that Chinese food in China bears no resemblance to Chinese food in restaurants here.  He always puts on weight when he goes to India and I am wondering whether the same will be true of China.

He started in Shanghai, where this next photo comes from.

 
  And then he moved on.  To a town I had never heard of.  Dali.  This link will give you some information about it.

And a few photos he took on his phone.

  
I spoke to him a little while ago and am still laughing.  It seems he is a tourist attraction in his own right.  Every day two or three people apparently ask for his photo, and others take it surreptiously.  He thinks it is his beard.  Which his sister describes as luxuriant and I am not fond of.  It is his face though. 

Words for Wednesday

This meme was started by Delores a long time ago.  Week after week she provided us with challenging prompts.    Computer issues led her to bow out for a while and I took over.  When Delores' absence looked like being more permanent I begged and cajoled for other volunteers to share providing the prompts, and Words for Wednesday became a movable feast.  Delores discontinued her blog for a while, but she has returned.  Her new blog can be found here.

Essentially the aim is to encourage us to write.  Each week we are given a choice of prompts: which can be words, phrases, music or an image.   What we do with those prompts is up to us:  a short story, prose, a song, a poem, or treating them with ignore...  We can use some or all of the prompts.

Some of us put our creation in comments on the post, and others post on their own blog.  I would really like it if as many people as possible joined into this fun meme.  If you are posting on your own blog - let me know so that I, and other participants, can come along and applaud.

This month the prompts were to be provided by Jacqueline aka The Cranky on her blog.  Sadly Jacqueline has had a stroke and is unable to participate.  Even sadder, it now seems unlikely she will be able to rejoin us.  My heart aches for her and for those who love her.  It seems so unfair that she was hit with this just when she was turning her life around.

So I am providing this month's prompts here.

This weeks prompts are:

1. fiend
2. imposter
3. flood
4. island 
5. primitive 
6. fix

And/or

1. happiness
2. curious
3. bubble 
4. bizarre 
5. degeneration 
6. adrenaline

I am looking forward to seeing where these words take people... 

Testing Times

Himself is on the road again for the next month or so.

China this time.  Alone again, and travelling independently.

I love that he is feeling well enough to travel.  I will worry, but that is one of my skills.  I will also relish some time on my own.

But.

Last time he was away I realised that I am not as strong as I was.  By the time he returned I was exhausted, in more pain than usual and it took weeks to recover.  

Slowly (not slow enough) and too surely the dread disease is progressing.  I am just not as capable or as independent as I was.  Or as I thought/deluded myself?  Which scares me.  And depresses me.  It is starting to warm up here which doesn't help. 

Managing myself, the cats, the fish, the house, the shopping, the garden and my voluntary work on my own is now too much for me.  I will have to find a compromise (or compromises) which I can afford and which will work.

Cross your fingers for me please.  And please, don't suggest that I give up my voluntary work while he is away.  Trading something I find fascinating (albeit not always pleasant), something which makes me feel I can still contribute to the community, and some socialising for the housework doesn't feel like a fair exchange.

Sunday Selections #296

Sunday Selections was originally brought to us by Kim, of Frogpondsrock, as an ongoing meme where participants could post previously unused photos languishing in their files.
 
The meme is now continued by River at Drifting through life.  The rules are so simple as to be almost non-existent.  Post some photos under the title Sunday Selections and link back to River.  Clicking on any of the photos will make them embiggen.
 
Like River I usually run with a theme. After our trip to Tulip Top (see Friday's post) we took a detour.   Tulip Top is just off the highway between my city and Sydney.  Beside that highway is a lake, Lake George.  Lake George has been a puddle or a patch of green grass for many years now.  However, this winter and spring we have had real rain (and naturally some areas have had too much).  And the lake has returned.

Starting with Lake George as it was in 2010, when we took a trip to see an (illegal) sculpture installation.  The zebras were fun, but they were vandalised and later removed.

Not a drop of water to be seen.  And even the green disappeared in the intervening years.

Last week was a different picture.

Local talk-back radio suggests it hasn't been this full since the late 1970s.  Perhaps water sports on Lake George will resume...

If you embiggen the later photos you may be able to see wind turbines on the hills to the rear.  Some of our politiicians have been appalled at their ugliness and the blight they cast on the scene.  Sigh.  I would much rather look at wind turbines than coal mines.