SPRING

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.

MY MUSIC

Just taking an opportunity to blow my own trumpet (yes, pun intended - sorry!). Since May this year, I have been putting online some of my own musical compositions. If you like the classical music genre, you may like to have a listen. My handle is "Otidorchestre" and you can find me on these platforms:

Amazon, Anghami, MediaNet, Boomplay, Deezer, Instagram/Facebook, Adaptr, Flo, YouTube Music, iHeartRadio, Claro Música, Joox, Kuack Media, NetEase, Qobuz, Pandora, Saavn, Spotify, Tencent, Tidal and TikTok & other ByteDance stores!

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

AT THE RIVER

Feeding the ducks...

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme

WALKIES

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme

CLIVIA

Clivia is a genus of monocot flowering plants native to southern Africa. They are from the family Amaryllidaceae, subfamily Amaryllidoideae. Common names are Natal lily or bush lily. They are herbaceous evergreen plants, with green, strap-like leaves. Individual flowers are more or less bell-shaped, occurring in umbels on a stalk above the foliage; colours typically range from yellow through orange to red.

Many cultivars exist, some with variegated leaf patterns. Species of Clivia are found only in South Africa and Swaziland. They are typically forest undergrowth plants, adapted to low light (with the exception of C. mirabilis from the Western Cape). Clivia miniata grows into large clumps and is surprisingly water wise. It is also reportedly naturalised in Mexico.

It is a popular plant for shady areas and is commonly seen growing in older established suburbs in most Australian states. It is also popular in New Zealand, Japan, China and southern parts of the USA , particularly California. It grows to a height of about 45 cm, and various varieties have flowers that are red, orange or yellow, sometimes with a faint, but very sweet perfume.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

DAREBIN CREEK

One of the lovely spots in the Darebin Parklands in the midst of metropolitan Melbourne.

This post is part of the Roentare’s Water Meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme.

BY THE POND

At the Darebin Parklands in Alphington.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

SPRING EQUINOX

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme

FAIRFIELD BOATHOUSE

Fairfield Boathouse was established in 1908 by John St Clair as a picnic, camping and refreshment room area. John St Clair was a piano tuner from Smith St, Fitzroy, with a vision. He firstly wrote a letter to the Premier suggesting that he open a refreshment room and boat shed area, with motor boats at Fairfield Park.

The Premier had to seek the approval form Yarra Bend Hospital of the Insane because the proposal for the boat shed was actually on the hospital grounds. The Premier gave his permission for the boat shed project to go ahead. Mr St Clair built the boat shed and six years later Fairfield Park was set aside from the same grounds. However Mr St Clair had seven troubled years with Crown Bailiffs over building permits.

Eventually in 1915 the Heidelberg council bought him out. In 1923 the boathouse was raised by 12 feet to help minimise flood damage, a frequent threat to boathouses along the Yarra. Boat and canoe carnivals and open air carnivals were common sights at Fairfield until the 1950’s. Boating popularity declined until finally the Fairfield boathouse was closed in 1980 as it was declared unfit for human habitation.

In 1985 the boathouse was restored and re-opened. The derelict building had recently housed squatters and possums. The project took 30,000 hours of restoration work. Meticulous work and an eye for detail was required for rebuilding. Even the gardens have been restored to encourage native birds. It now enjoys renewed popularity and is a pleasure to visit.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

ROSELLA

The eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius) is a rosella native to southeast of the Australian continent and to Tasmania. It has been introduced to New Zealand where feral populations are found in the North Island (notably in the northern half of the island and in the Hutt Valley) and in the hills around Dunedin in the South Island.

The eastern rosella is 30 cm long. It has a red head and white cheeks. The beak is white and the irises are brown. The upper breast is red and the lower breast is yellow fading to pale green over the abdomen. The feathers of the back and shoulders are black, and have yellowish or greenish margins giving rise to a scalloped appearance that varies slightly between the subspecies and the sexes. The wings and lateral tail feathers are bluish while the tail is dark green. The legs are grey.

The female is similar to the male though duller in colouration and has an underwing stripe, which is not present in the adult male. Juveniles are duller than females and have an underwing stripe. The diet of eastern rosellas mainly consists of fruit, seeds, flowers and insects.

The natural range of the eastern rosella is eastern Australia, down to Tasmania. The species is found in lightly wooded country, open forests, woodlands, gardens, bushlands and parks. Eastern rosellas usually breed in spring but if needed summer as well. They can have 2-9 eggs. In the wild their breeding hollow is 1m deep and 30m high up a tree. The sign the eastern rosella mostly shows that they would be breeding is that they give food to each other.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme

SUNRISE

 This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.|

LAWN DAISIES

Yes, I can tread on 12 or more of them with one step - must be Spring!

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

YARRA RIVER

At the Fairfield Boathouse on the Yarra River in Fairfield one fine Spring day. Yarra Bend Park surrounds the River as it comes to the City (≈4 km from the CBD) and is a beautiful and extensive nature reserve.

This post is part of the Roentare’s Water Meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme.

PRESTON

Preston is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 9 km  north-east of Melbourne's central business district, located within the City of Darebin local government area. Preston recorded a population of 33,790 at the 2021 census.

As part of the City of Darebin, Preston has an active and eclectic artists and DIY community which is contemporary, experimental, and culturally diverse. Writers, musicians, and visual artists flock to the locality for performance, collaboration, and acceptance. Notable contributors to the Darebin arts community are locals Saint Jude, Downhills Home, The Contrast, The Melbourne Ukulele Kollective, Performing Older Women's Circus (POW Circus), Darebin City Brass, and members of Little John, to name a few.

Darebin celebrates the artistry and diversity of the community with regular festivals and events such as the Darebin Music Feast and the now-defunct High Vibes Festival. The major community Indigenous Radio Station 3KND is located in Mary Street in Preston and is completely Aboriginal managed.

Preston has a wide variety of restaurants, including fine dining and fast food. High Street has been transformed lately, with many new cafes and restaurants opening and becoming popular with the youth in the area. Niche cafés and restaurants have opened in the suburb inviting patrons to dine.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

SPRING BLOOMING

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
And also part of the Seasons meme

LUNCHTIME

At the Preston Market.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

NIGHT HERON

The nankeen night heron (Nycticorax caledonicus) also commonly referred to as the rufous night heron, and in Melanesia as Melabaob, is a medium-sized heron. It is found in Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Melanesia, and throughout much of Australia except the arid inland. A small colony has also established near Wanganui, New Zealand.

The nankeen night heron stands about 60 cm tall with a stooped appearance. It is a stocky heron with rich cinnamon upperparts, white-buff underparts, a black crown, and yellow legs and feet. The head is large, the neck short (giving a stooped appearance), and the legs relatively short. During breeding the back of the head bears three white nuptial plumes. The bill is dark olive-green, and the eyes are yellow. 

Young birds are heavily spotted and streaked white, brown and orange-brown. As they mature, the black cap of the adult develops first, with the body plumage remaining streaked for some time. It is not strictly nocturnal. It often feeds during the day, especially during wet weather.

The bird is dependent on a diet of small fish, reptiles, insects and sometimes eggs. It can be seen around freshwater rivers, lakes, bulrushes, estuaries, harbours and in residential fishponds for goldfish. The species breeds in the period from September to April, building a nest platform out of sticks. It nests communally, near water. Two to five light green eggs are laid, with a 22-day incubation followed by a 42- to 49-day fledging period. Widespread throughout its large range, the nankeen night heron is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme

WALK THE HUMAN

Make sure you keep her well-behaved!

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme

AT PRESTON MARKET

Flower shop at Preston Market. Spring has arrived.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

SAD DAY...

Twenty-seven police officers were injured and 42 people were arrested today following a violent anti-war protest outside a weapons expo in Melbourne City.  About 1500 people descended on the City this morning against the Land Forces Defence Expo being held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

It was the city's largest protest in 24 years with about 1000 officers, from both Victoria and New South Wales, deployed. Protesters were accused of throwing projectiles like rocks, suspected human faeces, horse manure and balloons filled with unknown liquids at officers following a clash about 7am. Scenes became more violent throughout the day before dying down by the afternoon.

Violence and war are not stopped by further violence an escalation of conflict. War is a vile thing and it should be stopped. However, these protesters were obviously unaware of Satyagraha...

Satyāgraha (from Sanskrit: सत्याग्रह; satya: "truth", āgraha: "insistence" or "holding firmly to"), or "holding firmly to truth", or "truth force". This  is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone who practises satyagraha is a satyagrahi. The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) as early as 1919. Gandhi practised satyagraha as part of the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights.

Non-violent protesting is more effective in furthering one's cause and making people aware of wrongdoing, than is violent and antisocial behaviour. You cannot purport to be a peace activist by injuring others and putting innocent lives at risk. It is shameful, it is wrong, it is counterproductive. A sad day for Melbourne. More to come this week, unfortunately...

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme

MELBOURNE EXHIBITION BUILDING

Originally designed for the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880, the Exhibition buildings and the surrounding Carlton Gardens are now World Heritage listed. The Royal Exhibition Building is Australia's only World Heritage listed building. Completed in 1880 for Melbourne's first International Exhibition, it was the site of Australia's first Federal Parliament in 1901. With its meticulously restored interior, expansive galleries and soaring dome, it continues to offer a magnificent setting for trade shows, fairs and cultural events.

The Exhibition Fountain by Josef Hochgurtel is of Portland cement built in 1880. Josef Hochgurtel was born in Cologne, Germany, and trained under Herr Fuels, who modelled the Cologne Cathedral. In creating the Exhibition Fountain, he was assisted by August Saupe, who had worked on similar pieces in Berlin, Dresden and Copenhagen. The colossal fountain stands some 10 metres high on the south side of the Royal Exhibition Building, outside the Great Hall. It was constructed for the first of Melbourne’s two grand international world fairs. The fountain’s visual elements were designed to display the young colony’s confidence and advancement, simultaneously signalling the purpose of world fairs to display the produce and industry of nations.

Here it is hosting the Affordable Art Fair held in Melbourne recently.

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

GLADE

A digital collage/mosaic of three different photos from the same area, stitched together with Photoshop.

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,

and also part of the Seasons meme.

RUBBISH NIGHT

Taking out the rubbish and enjoying a view of the moon amongst the clouds as it goes towards the West to set.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme

GOOD DOGGIE

Lovely dog waiting patiently outside the library.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme

SUNDOWN

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme

SPRING FLOWERS

August 2024 across Australia was the warmest on record by a considerable margin, with a mean average temperature that was 3.02°C above the long-term average, while the 2024 winter was the second-warmest on record nationwide. That's an entire month that was three degrees warmer than average when you factor in both minimum and maximum temperatures at over 100 Australian weather stations across each state and territory.

This may explain why we are seeing early flowering of many Spring flowers in Melbourne, with the gardens already filling with lawn daisies, daffodils, tulips, anemones, primroses, polyanthus, freesias, hyacinths, violets, stocks, etc. In the countryside, one may see three-cornered leek ("onion-weed"), dandelions, buttercups, wattles, gum flowers, and many other natives.

However, every now and then we have a spate of cold, stormy weather with rain, hail, or even snow on the nearby mountains. A couple of days ago a heavy hail storm damaged plants in our garden with hailstones the size of peas. Climate change is a fact of life...

This post is past of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens)

Dandelion

Flowering peach

Buttercup

Sparaxis in the hail

DEMOLITION ZONE

As old buildings get demolished, it is has become important to be aware of potential hazards encountered in the process. Often, crews find caches of dangerous materials lying long forgotten in attics or basements; ricketty structures that could easily collapse and cause injury or damage to workers or adjacent buildings; rotting timbers and mouldy or vermin-infested interiors (rodents, spiders, snakes, termites, ants) pose a health risk to workers or even passers-by.

A special hazard that causes many problems is asbestos, which was widely used in the past as an insulating or building material. Asbestos is a risk in demolition work because disturbance of asbestos-containing material can release countless, deadly, microscopic asbestos fibres. During work, building materials are disturbed, cut, crushed, knocked down. This is the type of work that releases asbestos fibres. You might just see dust and particles, but that dust can kill you if it contains asbestos. Not right away. But years or decades later, causing deadly, highly malignant cancers in exposed people.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the Nature Notes meme

IN THE CITY

After the cold, wet, windy, stormy weather we've had the past few days, people were advised to work from home if they could. This is certainly a very sparse-looking City streetscape early in the morning, which means that many people did indeed stay away. Gave me the willies, as it brought back memories of COVID lockdowns...

This post is part of the Travel Tuesday meme

WIRY EGG

Having a bit of fun with some lengths of rusty wire and stones I had found on a walk. I imagined a wiry egg in a stone nest and made it so... I wondered if cast iron ducks lay wiry eggs?

Melbourne is having a severe weather event these past few days - high winds with gusts up to 145 km/hr, wild rain, hail and snow in the mountains, flooding and cold. Winter is leaving us with a vengeance. The days previous to this event misled us into thinking Spring had come early - Wrong!

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme.

DAREBIN CREEK

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme