FULL MOON, ORCHIDS & BETTY IS 86.

SEPTEMBER FULL MOON

Is that a UFO bottom right?
Nah...just the 747 from Coolangatta to Sydney with headlights blazing as it does its big swooparound & heads south west from coast.

Celebrated Betty's 86th last night with veranda drinks & dinner watching full moon rise over caldera. Then showed her flickr & blogspot, explaining how, if her traveling clan posted to web, she'd be able to access their pix & diaries. I think she was impressed.

Gosh....I AM! It's such high magic this technology. Here's a good shot I got of her two days ago.

Betty is a hearty 86! Congratulations Betty!

A few more orchids have come into bloom.
This one is the Tongue orchid, Dendrobium linguaforme.

Tongue orchid

Below, this is the extravagant large raceme of the King orchid, Dendrobium speciosum. This year only 1 raceme, instead of the 6-12 it usually present. The other plants of this species, usually so abundant, have not flowered at all.

King Orchid

The drought has cut deep. This morning I harvested the solitary lemon my bush lemon beside studio gave me this year. Normally they are so abundant they litter the ground at this time and I'm busy preserving them or freezing the juice.

The fact that eastern states farmers are quitting their farms, committing suicide in frightening numbers, pulling up whole orchards, looking at totally failed crops & putting the sheep to graze off what has managed to come up but is unharvestable, is not getting through to a lot of people I think.

The implications are huge. Can we survive as a population from what the Ord River will provide?

Populate and Perish.

I'd like to congratulate my old friend from way back then, Karl Kruszelnicki , who is running for Senate under the Climate Change banner in next election.

DR. KARL FOR PRESIDENT !

Karl you are such an amazing man, always had great admiration for what you do & say. You simply MUST run for President eventually.

That's all she wrote....

Sto kalo.

SPRING !

Enjoy the peach blossom all buzzin' with bees.
Symbols of hope & renewal.

The first signs of spring. Our winter of 4-6 weeks is almost over. Hasn't rained since June 26th, the creek is down to last trickle & some neighbors have run out of water. Bushfires all around, mostly arson, or idiots whose pre-fireban period burnoffs got out of control. Why anyone would light fires when the countryside is tinder dry beats me. At least a recent slight change blew the smoke pall away, enough to give a blue sky in above shot. But today the air is a jaundiced yellow/khaki again.

Thinking of the whales surging along the coast on annual summer migration, just started. I can almost feel the whoosh and surge as they surface, breath & dive again.

Meanwhile Wollumbin's Fighting Chief of the North is a sleeping giant enveloped in a pall of smoke.

Dream On.

What we are breathing

Today I went out, took this shot above - I live in that pall of smoke. It's been 4-5 days of it.
Compare it with the shot of same view below, taken just 3 months ago.


This is all because some bloke thought he'd burn off & beat the official August 1st Fire Ban start, no thought apparently for the drought conditions, exacerbated by the sudden black frost last week. Coldest night for some 30 years.

Today it was 29 degrees C. Spring has started. If the winds start up we have big big problems.