WARATAH

Telopea speciosissima or the “waratah” is a native Australian plant with spectacular flowers. Robert Brown (1773-1858) named the genus Telopea in 1810 from specimens collected in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Sir James Smith (1759-1828), a noted botanist and founder of the Linnaean Society in England, wrote in 1793: 'The most magnificent plant which the prolific soil of New Holland affords is, by common consent, both of Europeans and Natives, the Waratah. It is moreover a favourite with the latter, upon account of a rich honeyed juice which they sip from its flowers'.

The generic name Telopea is derived from the Greek 'telopos', meaning 'seen from afar', and refers to the great distance from which the crimson flowers are discernible. The specific name speciosissima is the superlative of the Latin adjective 'speciosus', meaning 'beautiful' or 'handsome'. 'Waratah', the Aboriginal name for the species, was adopted by early settlers at Port Jackson.

Telopea is an eastern Australian genus of four species. Two are confined to New South Wales, one to Tasmania and one extends from eastern Victoria into New South Wales. Telopea belongs to the family, Proteaceae, which is predominantly Australian and southern African. The Waratah is a stout, erect shrub which may grow to 4 metres. The dark green leathery leaves, 13-25 cm in length, are arranged alternately and tend to be coarsely toothed. The flowers are grouped in rounded heads 7 to 10 cm in diameter surrounded by crimson bracts, about 5 to 7 cm long. It flowers from September to November and nectar-seeking birds act as pollinators. Large winged seeds are released when the brown leathery pods split along one side.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

QUINN

Edmond Thomas Quinn (1868 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – September 1929 in New York City) was an American sculptor and painter. He is best known for his bronze statue of Edwin Booth as Hamlet, which stands at the center of Gramercy Park in New York City. His larger-than-lifesize bronze bust of Victor Herbert stands near The Pond in Central Park, New York City.

He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins. Following Eakins's February 1886 forced-resignation from PAFA, Quinn followed him to the Art Students League of Philadelphia, and later became that short-lived school's curator. In Paris he trained for a time as a sculptor in the studio of Jean Antoine Injalbert.

He exhibited regularly at the National Academy of Design, showing paintings in 1891, 1893, 1905, 1906 and 1907. He first showed his sculpture there in 1908, and annually for many years, usually portrait busts. He won a silver medal for his bronze sculpture of model Audrey Munson at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. He also exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (paintings: 1891, 1894, 1897; sculptures: 1899, 1901, 1905–06, 1908–10, 1914–16, 1921, 1923, 1925–26, 1928, posthumously 1930), and the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1920, and was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the Century Association, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Players Club, for whom he executed his statue of Booth. Quinn was recognized as being a fine portraitist whose work "shows taste and conscience." His portrait busts include Franklin Hooper, Sylvester Malone, Edwin Markham, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Padraic Colum and Eugene O'Neill. His half-length, oil-on-canvas portrait of Attilio Piccirilli, the sculptor whose studio executed many works of American Beaux-Arts masters, is in the National Academy of Design, as are his painted portraits of Furio Piccirilli and Sherry E. Fry The National Portrait Gallery has a large number of his portrait busts.

Quinn was found drowned off Governors Island, New York City in September 1929, a suicide. Quinn had tried to kill himself four months earlier by drinking poison. Quinn's papers are at Yale University.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

L: Edwin Booth (1926), Hall of Fame for Great Americans, Bronx, New York City.
R: Victory (1921), World War I Memorial, New Rochelle, New York.

YARRA RIVER VIEW

View down the Yarra River towards the East and Melbourne City.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

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

HOME TIME

Coming back home on the evening commuter train - it's a good time of the day...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

HORSE AT SUNSET

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,
and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

SUN-LIGHT

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.

SOAP ALOE

Aloe maculata (synonym Aloe saponaria; commonly known as the soap aloe or zebra aloe) is a Southern African species of aloe in the Asphodelaceae family. Local people in South Africa know it informally as the "Bontaalwyn" in Afrikaans, or "Lekhala" in the Sesotho language. It is a very variable species and hybridises easily with other similar aloes, sometimes making it difficult to identify.

The leaves range in colour from red to green, but always have distinctive "H-shaped" spots. The flowers are similarly variable in colour, ranging from bright red to yellow, but are always bunched in a distinctively flat-topped raceme. The inflorescence is borne on the top of a tall, multi-branched stalk and the seeds are reputedly poisonous. This species was previously known as Aloe saponaria (a name that came from the Latin "sapo" meaning soap, as the sap makes a soapy lather in water - the juice from the leaves is traditionally used as soap by indigenous people).

Its currently accepted name, according to the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI), is Aloe maculata ("maculata" means speckled or marked). Taxonomically, it forms part of the Saponariae series of very closely related Aloe species, together with Aloe petrophila, Aloe umfoloziensis, Aloe greatheadii and Aloe davyana.

The Soap Aloe is highly adaptable and is naturally found in a wide range of habitats across Southern Africa, from Zimbabwe in the north, to the Cape Peninsula in the south. Specifically, it is native to southern and eastern South Africa, south-eastern Botswana and Zimbabwe. In addition, it is now planted around the world as a popular landscape plant in warm desert regions – especially in the United States, where it is the most popular ornamental aloe in the Tucson, Arizona area, and is also popular in California. It is very common in Australia as a garden plant.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

PAINTING

Painting| ˈpeɪntɪŋ |noun [mass noun]

The action or skill of using paint, either in a picture or as decoration: Pastels require a different approach to painting.

• [count noun] A painted picture: The oil painting depicted a seascape.

An artist at work in Fitzroy's Rose St Artists' Market. 

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

SUNRISE

Sunrise in Melbourne reflected by the waters of the Yarra River.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,
and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

A WALK

A day spent for the most part walking and taking photos is not only good exercise, but it gives you a good stash of photos for your archive.

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

AN OUTING

Despite our very cool, rather grey and often wet Spring weather, occasionally we have a beautiful day and everyone who can gets out into the parks and gardens to enjoy the weather.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

LORIKEETS

The rainbow lorikeet (Trichoglossus moluccanus) is a species of parrot found in Australia. It is common along the eastern seaboard, from northern Queensland to South Australia and Tasmania. Its habitat is rainforest, coastal bush and woodland areas. Several taxa traditionally listed as subspecies of the rainbow lorikeet are now treated as separate species.

Rainbow lorikeets have been introduced to Perth, Western Australia; Auckland, New Zealand; and Hong Kong. Rainbow lorikeets are true parrots, within the Psittacoidea superfamily in the order Psittaciformes. They include two subspecies: Trichoglossus moluccanus moluccanus and Trichoglossus molucannus septentrionalis.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,

and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

SUNRISE

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.

ROSA 'FRIESIA'

Rosa 'Friesia' (synonyms: 'Sunsprite'; 'KORresia') is a rose variety developed by Reimer Kordes and introduced in 1973. The rose was derived from the cultivars 'Friedrich Wörlein' × 'Spanish Sun', and is one of the most successful floribunda roses. It was named 'Friesia' after the region Frisia (Friesland), the home of the breeder, and was one of the first roses to be given a code name (KORresia for Kordes).

Its sunny yellow blooms are large and flat with 17 to 25 waved petals, reaching an average diameter of 8 cm and have a very strong fragrance. The high-centred flowers appear solitary or in small clusters in a blooming period lasting from June to September. Their bright yellow colour hardly changes with age.

The flower is not well suited as a cut flower as it has short stems and only lasts for a short period of time after cutting. The plant has light-green, glossy leaves, forms upright, bushy shrubs with about 40 to 75 cm height and up to 60 cm width, is very disease resistant and hardy (USDA zone 6b) and can be grown on the ground or in containers. It is used as a parent rose, leading to cultivars such as Rosa 'Sun Flare' (Warriner 1981) and 'Morden Sunrise' (Davidson & Collicutt) 1991.

We have a couple of these rose bushes in our garden and they have given us many years of pleasure, producing abundant crops of exquisite flowers during their long blooming season.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

OP ART

Op art, short for optical art, is a style of visual art that uses optical illusions. Op art works are abstract, with many better known pieces created in black and white. Typically, they give the viewer the impression of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibrating patterns, or of swelling or warping.

The antecedents of op art, in terms of graphic and colour effects, can be traced back to Neo-impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Constructivism and Dada. László Moholy-Nagy produced photographic op art and taught the subject in the Bauhaus. One of his lessons consisted of making his students produce holes in cards and then photographing them.

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE (born 24 April 1931) is an English painter who is one of the foremost and most influential exponents of Op art. She currently lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

MELBOURNE TOWN HALL

Melbourne is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in Australia and Oceania. The name “Melbourne” covers an urban agglomeration spanning 9,992.5 km2, which comprises the broader metropolitan area, as well as being the common name for its city centre. The metropolis is located on the large natural bay of Port Phillip and expands into the hinterlands towards the Dandenong and Macedon mountain ranges, Mornington Peninsula and Yarra Valley.

Melbourne consists of 31 municipalities. It has a population of 4,725,316 as of 2016, and its inhabitants are called Melburnians. Founded by free settlers from the British Crown colony of Van Diemen’s Land on 30 August 1835, in what was then the colony of New South Wales, it was incorporated as a Crown settlement in 1837. It was named “Melbourne” by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Bourke, in honour of the British Prime Minister of the day, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.

It was officially declared a city by Queen Victoria, to whom Lord Melbourne was close, in 1847, after which it became the capital of the newly founded colony of Victoria in 1851. During the Victorian gold rush of the 1850s, it was transformed into one of the world’s largest and wealthiest cities. After the federation of Australia in 1901, it served as the nation’s interim seat of government until 1927. Additionally, it was the host city of the 1956 Summer Olympics and the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Melbourne rates highly in education, entertainment, health care, research and development, tourism and sport, making it the world’s most liveable city (for the seventh year in a row in 2017), according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. It is a leading financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region, and ranks among the top 15 cities in the world in the Global Financial Centres Index.

Referred to as Australia’s “cultural capital”, it is the birthplace of Australian impressionism, Australian rules football, the Australian film and television industries, and Australian contemporary dance. It is recognised as a UNESCO City of Literature and a major centre for street art, music and theatre. It is home to many of Australia’s largest and oldest cultural institutions such as the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the National Gallery of Victoria, the State Library of Victoria and the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

SEASONAL

Some flowers in our garden, which is now all abloom with springtime vigour:
Geranium 'Johnson's Blue'; Krantz Aloe; Pansies.

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

SPRING SKYSCAPE

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

DUCKLINGS

The chestnut teal duck (Anas castanea) is a dabbling duck found in Australia. Males have a distinctive green head. It's duckling season now and the proud father is looking after the children...

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,

and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

SUNRISE, FROM MY WINDOW

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.

ST JOHN'S WORT

Hypericum perforatum, also known as St John's wort, is a flowering plant species of the genus Hypericum and a medicinal herb that is sold over-the-counter as a treatment for depression. Other names for it include Tipton's weed, rosin rose, goatweed, chase-devil, or Klamath weed. With qualifiers, St John's wort is used to refer to any species of the genus Hypericum. Therefore, H. perforatum is sometimes called common St John's wort or perforate St John's wort to differentiate it.

Hypericum is classified in the family Hypericaceae, having previously been classified as Guttiferae or Clusiaceae. Approximately 370 species of the genus Hypericum exist worldwide with a native geographical distribution including temperate and subtropical regions of Europe, Turkey, Ukraine, Russia, Middle East, India, and China. St John's wort is a perennial plant with extensive, creeping rhizomes. Its stems are erect, branched in the upper section, and can grow to 1 m high.

It has opposing, stalkless, narrow, oblong leaves that are 12 mm long or slightly larger. The leaves are yellow-green in colour, with transparent dots throughout the tissue and occasionally with a few black dots on the lower surface. Leaves exhibit obvious translucent dots when held up to the light, giving them a ‘perforated’ appearance, hence the plant's Latin name.

Its flowers measure up to 2.5 cm across, have five petals, and are coloured bright yellow with conspicuous black dots. The flowers appear in broad cymes at the ends of the upper branches, between late spring and early to mid summer. The sepals are pointed, with glandular dots in the tissue. There are many stamens, which are united at the base into three bundles. The pollen grains are ellipsoidal. When flower buds (not the flowers themselves) or seed pods are crushed, a reddish/purple liquid is produced.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

NATTIER & HIS BLUE

Jean-Marc Nattier (17 March 1685 – 7 November 1766), French painter, was born in Paris, the second son of Marc Nattier (1642–1705), a portrait painter, and of Marie Courtois (1655–1703), a miniaturist. He is noted for his portraits of the ladies of King Louis XV's court in classical mythological attire.

He received his first instruction from his father, and from his uncle, the history painter Jean Jouvenet (1644–1717). He enrolled in the Royal Academy in 1703 and applied himself to copying pictures in the Luxembourg Palace, making a series of drawings of the Marie de Médici painting cycle by Peter Paul Rubens. The publication (1710) of engravings based on these drawings made Nattier famous, but he declined to proceed to the French Academy in Rome, though he had taken the first prize at the Paris Academy at the age of fifteen.

In 1715 he went to Amsterdam, where Peter the Great was then staying, and painted portraits of the tsar and the empress Catherine, but declined an offer to go to Russia. Nattier aspired to be a history painter. Between 1715 and 1720 he devoted himself to compositions like the "Battle of Pultawa", which he painted for Peter the Great, and the "Petrification of Phineus and of his Companions", which led to his election to the Academy.

The financial collapse of 1720 caused by the schemes of Law all but ruined Nattier, who found himself forced to devote his whole energy to portraiture, which was more lucrative. He became the painter of the artificial ladies of Louis XV's court. He subsequently revived the genre of the allegorical portrait, in which a living person is depicted as a Greco-Roman goddess or other mythological figure.

Nattier's graceful and charming portraits of court ladies in this mode were very fashionable, partly because he could beautify a sitter while also retaining her likeness. The most notable examples of his straightforward portraiture are the "Marie Leczinska" at the Dijon Museum, and a group of the artist surrounded by his family,"The Artist Surrounded by His Family", dated 1730. He died in Paris in 1766.

Nattier blue (mass noun - dated): A soft shade of blue, especially in fine textiles. "She carefully chose the shade of delicate light blue of the curtains to match the fine Nattier blue of the silk upholstery of the armchairs in the morning room."

Origin: Early 20th century: After a colour much used by Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766),  the French painter.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

L: Nattier - "The Comtesse de Tillières (1750)" Wallace Collection, London
R: Nattier - "Portrait of a gentleman in a blue coat"  The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle.

AT THE MARKET

Preston Market is the second largest market in Melbourne selling fresh produce, clothing and homewares with a variety of restaurants and food stalls; it attracts over 80,000 visitors per week. Construction on the Preston Market began in October 1969 when Preston Mayor W. K. Larkins drove home the first stake in the site of the former Broadhurst Tannery. The original investment in the site was $2 million. The market opened in 1970 and by 1976 the market had grown to include 46 green grocers, 15 delicatessens, 4 fish shops, 4 poultry shops, 19 butchers and a variety of small goods shops including toys, clothes, carpets, plants, and sporting goods.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

SPRING

We went for a walk today and it was quite evident that Spring has definitely sprung! The flowers are blooming the days have lengthened, a host of fragrances are in the air and the birds are singing on every greening branch.

The flowers below are from (L to R): Wattle; Cineraria; Onion weed.

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,

and also part of the Seasons meme,

and also part of the Blue Monday meme.

AT BRUNSWICK ST

Brunswick Street is a street in inner northern Melbourne, known for cafés, live music venues, quirky shops, street entertainment and alternative fashion boutiques. Brunswick Street runs north-south through the inner northern Melbourne suburbs of Fitzroy and Fitzroy North, from Victoria Parade at its southernmost end, crossing Alexandra Parade, and continuing until it reaches St Georges Road in Fitzroy North, near the Edinburgh Gardens; there, its former northward course is continued by a much smaller residential street named Brunswick Street North. Tram route 112 runs along the entire length of Brunswick Street for part of its journey.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

GREEN BOTTLE FLY

The common green bottle fly (Phaenicia sericata or Lucilia sericata) is a blow fly found in most areas of the world, and the most well-known of the numerous green bottle fly species. It is 10–14 mm long, slightly larger than a house fly, and has brilliant, metallic, blue-green or golden coloration with black markings. It has short, sparse black bristles (setae) and three cross-grooves on the thorax. The wings are clear with light brown veins, and the legs and antennae are black. The maggots (larvae) of the fly are used for maggot therapy of infected wounds.

Lucilia sericata is common all over the temperate and tropical regions of the planet, mainly the southern hemisphere, Africa and Australia. It prefers warm and moist climates and accordingly is especially common in coastal regions, but it also is present in arid areas. The female lays her eggs in meat, fish, animal corpses, infected wounds of humans or animals, and excrement. The larvae feed on decomposing tissue. The insect favours species of the genus Ovis, domestic sheep in particular. This can lead to "blow fly strike", causing problems for sheep farmers, though Lucilia sericata is not a major cause of blow fly strike in most regions.

The flower is Felicia amelloides (blue daisy, blue marguerite), which is a species of flowering plant of the family Asteraceae, native to South Africa. F. amelloides is synonymous with, and formerly known as, F. aethiopica, Aster amelloides, Aster capensis, and Aster coelestis.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,

and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

SUNSET WALK

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme.

FORGET-ME-NOT

Myosotis (from the Greek: "mouse's ear", after the leaf) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Boraginaceae. In the northern hemisphere they are commonly called forget-me-nots or scorpion grasses. The common name "forget-me-not" was calqued from German, Vergissmeinnicht and first used in English in AD 1398 through King Henry IV. Similar names and variations are found in many languages.

Myosotis alpestris is the state flower of Alaska. Plants of this genus are commonly confused with Chatham Islands forget-me-nots which belong to a related genus, Myosotidium. Myosotis have pentamerous actinomorphic flowers with 5 sepals and petals. Flowers are typically 1 cm diameter (or less), flat, and blue, pink, white or yellow with yellow centres, growing on scorpioid cymes. They may be annual or perennial with alternate leaves. They typically flower in spring or soon after snow-melt in alpine eco-systems. Their root systems are generally diffuse.

Their seeds are found in small, tulip-shaped pods along the stem to the flower. The pods attach to clothing when brushed against and eventually fall off, leaving the small seed within the pod to germinate elsewhere. Seeds can be collected by putting a piece of paper under the stems and shaking the seed pods and some seeds will fall out. Myosotis scorpioides is also known as scorpion grass due to the spiralling curve of its inflorescence.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.