QT Times

I was very thrilled this morning when we arrived at woodwork and one of our ladies Pam brought me yesterday's QT Times.  Once again the paper had published my photo of the Passionfruit Flower that I took a few days ago.  I must be doing something right !! or perhaps it is just a case of no one else sending photos in and they are desperate.  Never mind I was still thrilled. Neither Brian nor I had a very productive day at the club today. Brian was helping a new young man start carving a Goose and I was struggling with something I was trying to do with the pyrography, only to find that the actual picture I copied it from was totally out of perspective. The picture was taken from a professional book, but obviously not that professional otherwise it would not have been so wrong. Grrrr.   Maddening that's for sure

Silly Mr. Galah

A real dull old day today, nothing moving, and no sun at the moment.  We have just been up to wish Matthew a very happy 16th Birthday today.  He is so tall he towers over Brian and I.  Where have the years gone.

While we were sitting having breakfast outside this morning I noticed a Galah sitting in the tree.  He didn't appear to be a very happy bird, they usually are so alert, however he was just sitting with his head in his wings.  Initially I thought he was asleep so went inside to fetch the Camera.  I managed to get very close to him and he just occassionally lifted his head.  We are hoping that he is not sick so will watch him carefully, in case the other birds attack him.   I did manage to get a photo of him, and hopefully Ian this is in focus a bit better.  Thank you for your comments on the other one, yes it is a mammoth task to get the focus right, especially when I am still using Auto !!!.  Naughty Mom, you are saying.

A PASSIONATE TIME

We have an enormous Wild Passionfruit vine at the bottom of our garden.  The birds are having a wonderful time both in breaking up the flowers and then biting off the ripe fruit.  I took a walk down to the bottom of the garden to see what was what and thought that the flower of the vine is so beautiful.  Just as I was taking the photo a beautiful dragon fly landed near me. As Ian knows these are so difficult to photograph as they are very quick and flighty. Anyway for what it is worth here are the two photos.

SOAR LIKE AN EAGLE

Beverly and I were standing in the garden on Thursday when she spotted a Wedge Tailed Eagle flying overhead, with 2 or 3 Plovers dive bombing him.  As is usually the case the camera was inside the camera bag which was inside a cupboard so by the time I had run in and fetched the camera, he was way up in the sky.  I have managed to get a tiny photo of him and with the aid of Photoshop cropped it till at least you can see the bird.  He circled overhead for at least 10 minutes catching the thermals, however all the time being bombarded by lots of birds.

QT TIMES PUBLICATION

It was with great excitement and pride that I discoved on Wednesday, that the photo I took of the strange fungi in my flower pot had been published in our local papers.  The QT Times newspaper is distributed all over the Ipswich area and it is actually the biggest of the Ipswich local papers, it is also sold for $1.00 in most newsagencies with the main Queensland paper "The Courier Mail"

I had submitted the photo shortly after taking it, and on Wednesday at carving, one of the ladies had made the effort to cut it out of the paper and bring it in for all to see. My word did I have a bit of a swollen head.  I have had quite a few of my photos published, one being the caravan in the mist, the other of the Tawny Frog Mouth and now this one. I will have to keep up the good work.

LAZY DAY

Well today I decided to have a lazy day.  Was up and about quite early and did the bare basic chores, then settled down to catch up on some "Taped" Programmes.  Watched an Episode of "Survivors"  then watched last night's "Australia So you think you can dance", really good series this year.  Cleaned up the two new bookcases after Brian had been  sanding them down, so they are now ready for varnishing, then had lunch and watched "Dr Phil".  Now it is almost time for "Judge Judy", so yes I have been a total "Couch Potato".  Hmmm what a pleasure.  Most unusual for me to just do nothing. Now off to make a nice cup of tea. Hope your day was as lazy as mine.

MEN AT WORK

Oh dear me !!!!,  Unfortunately Beverly & Ivan's pool has a leak in one of the pipes. The pool man managed to identify where the leak was but it is buried way down in the ground. Ivan and Brian and Matthew got stuck in to see if they can find it themselves but up to now some 6 hours later, still no luck, there are lots of trees in the pool area and therefore hundreds of roots running all through the place making it so difficult to dig. They are also scared to use the pick as it might puncture a pipe then they are in real trouble. Hopefully by the next blog they will have been able to find it. The pool man will come back on Monday and fix it.  

Brian's Carvings

Well here is another go at posting some photos Ian took of Brian's carvings.

MOSES

Oops, have no idea how the picture of Moses that Brian cared, has arrived in such a big format underneath my beautiful flower, I had wanted it to go into "Daily Photo" Oh well there it is, for all to see, now need to call on the help line (Beverly & Ian) to remove the darn thing, I suppose I will get the hang of this stupid thing sooner or later.

BOOKCASES IN THE MAKING

From the humble beginnings of long pieces of board, they end up being transformed into beautiful bookcases made by our resident cabinet maker.

Brian is busy making me two more bookcases and Beverly will have three, these have been specially designed to take our Creative Memories competed Albums. The standard book case that one can buy (and they are never as nice anyway) are too short to take the albums with the result the albums hang over the edges.

He has made all the mouldings himself and these two that are being worked on are for my computer/spare room. Once these are finished he has three to make for Bevelry to go into her study for her Albums as well. I think in total between us and Beverly and family, these, once finished will be number 15. No the wonder if anyone asks him would he like to make one for them, they get a resounding NO.

Beverly and I had a lovely breakfast at the Coffee Club this morning as a treat for her for their 21st wedding anniversary. Unfortunately Matthew is still quite sick so she is having to take him back to the Doctor today, what's new !!, wedding anniversary or not, hubby at work, washing still needs doing, and now sick kids. She says she is having take away tonight, that's for sure.

Well almost 2 full days of sun. Everyone charging around with their lawn mowers, washing hanging on all the lines and in general a good feeling around. They are still expecting a bit more rain but hopefully by Monday it will have cleared up.

We went to the movies today to see "The Blind Side" for which Sandra Bullock won the Oscar, it was a true story and very well acted indeed.

A quick pop into our local watering hole and we had a lovely Roast Pork, potatoes and about 5 different vegetables, a beer and a glass of wine went down very well indeed. Yippee, I don't have to cook tonight.

Well here we are the 9th March. It is now day 12 that we have had some rain, mist and in general darn miserable weather. It looks like it might clear up by Sunday. Dams are so nice and full so that is good and it was pleasing to hear our Premier say that everyone has got so used to only using 200litres person over the past year or two and in fact most people were using less that she is not going to lift the restrictions. It is a good thing in a way, most people waste water, such as washing drives down instead of just sweeping them.

Both grandchildren are sick this morning so I am taking them to the Dr while Beverly and Elizabeth go off to Uni. Nothing too serious but probably needs some medication.

Visitors in the night

Overnight there sure was magic happening in our garden. I have quite a few pots on my patio and we discovered these amazing yellow fungi growing among the geraniums.

Well today is our grandaughter Sarah's 12th birthday. Happy birthday sweetheart. Dear oh dear me where has these past 12 years gone? answer: "Ever so quickly"

Well once again we woke to pouring rain, it just does not seem to stop. I was up at 6.30am and emptied another 9 mm out of the rain gauge. With 45 minutes the gauge had another 10mm in it, fortunately no driving rain or wind but this constant downpour.

We are fortunate though compared to people in Charleville and Roma in central Queensland and now the deluge is on its way downstream to a town called St. George. They are expecting their river to rise to 14.5 metres, it is far to difficult to comprehend that. Apparently the last record of 14 metres was in 1890. Cattle are drowning,, fences completely washed away, very sad. We are hoping to take a trip to our two big dams tomorrow to see if we can get some photos as 3 of the 4 dams are overflowing which is wonderful news

Sweat Blood and Tears

Poor Beverly trying so hard to sort out this blog for me. No photoshop work done on this photo, we were using this photo as a test.

Well done Beverly, you had me on the right track and I appreciate your help in doing this. You like me didn't realise I was not typing in the "compose" section, but with Ian sending me through the e-mails, he picked up what I was doing wrong.

I have decided to post your photo so everyone can see how you were working away at my machine instead of on your Uni work.

SECOND PHOTO TODAY

Ian wanted the photo a bit bigger of the bar so am having another go at this now.

Posting Photos

A photo Ian took of Elizabeth and I at Mt Tambourine on the Skywalk

Hi everyone, second post for today, main reason is that Ian has kindly sent me two
e-mails to help me get the photo where it should go, so am going to work through it and see if I have any luck. Thanks Ian

Ok here goes, someone come back and let me know what you see !!!!

Daily Photos

Over the next few weeks, I am going to try and put some photos on the Daily Photo section. This allows me to give you all something new to look at each day.

The one posted today is when Ian was here on holiday in November, Beverly took this lovely photo of us all sitting at the new bar that Brian had made for Ivan. It has a variety of different woods in it, including Spotted Gum and Huon Pine, the Huon Pine is very rare these days as it is protected.

About 13 years ago Brian and Ivan managed to secure some old floor boards which looked like the pits,they kept telling us that it was Huon Pine, which of course we just laughed at, but once sanded down it was absolutely beautiful.

Well another day almost gone, where does time go to. I took both children to school this morning, only to find five minutes later a very distressed Sarah on the mobile as she had left her sports bag at home, so off I charged and managed to get it back to her in time. She was very grateful and I got lots of hugs from her. Beverly said she was a bit upset this morning before leaving for school as she has PE today as well as a Piano lesson and unfortunately the lesson is in the middle of the PE which makes it very difficult for her, however Beverly tells me she is so proud of Sarah as she went to her Piano Teacher and asked him could he try and re-schedule her lesson, which he kindly has done. She is growing up so quickly and taking command of things that she feels are not quite right. WELL DONE SARAH . !! We have had rain on and off all day with patches of sun and then more black clouds. We have had another 10mm since 7.00am this morning and although that doesn't sound a lot, it is if you add to the past 2 days. Many towns have been cut off and in one town they had to evacuate all the hospital patients and fly them down to Brisbane as there was no power or equipment. The headlines in the newspaper this morning were that it is going to add millions of dollars to the economy with the farmers grinning from ear to ear.

Blog problems

Hi everyone, I have removed all the photos that were posted before. Beverly is helping me to try and sort it all out as they should have been done differently, so please be patient with me. Thanks a lot

Ok, Ok, enough rain please, everything is absolutely soaking with roads flooded, towns cut off, dams overflowing. Since Monday morning to this morning we had 109 mm of rain, since 6.30am to 2.00pm today we have had another 23 and it is still raining. The humidity is very high and everything you touch is so damp. Washing hanging all over the place, so now enough. STOP.

Brian and I did volunteer work today at the Ipswich Hospice Book Store. I did threaten Brian with his life if he bought any books, and guess what !!. I ended up buying two. We mainly were there for about 5 hours and helped sort, tidy, price all the books, there are hundreds. Craft books, knitting books, nature books, travel books, poetry, crime stories etc etc and so on. A book lover's paradise. Although the weather was pretty grim there were quite a few people who felt the need for a book. After leaving there we stopped off for lunch which was a lovely Roast Pork and potatoes and vegetables and also apple slice and custard and plum pudding, which I had. the total cost for the 2 courses was $6.95, can't complain about that, it also means I don't have to cook tonight. Yippee.