If you'd come walking with us early this morning, a new year morning still shrouded in the mists and constant soft drizzle of the last few days, you would have seen our own local fireworks without the crowds, or smoke, or noise. The only break in the stillness is near the house, where the constant tinkling of water from the roof corrugations into the gutter gives the hint that there's any rain at all. From the gutters there's another trickle into the rain water heads, as the water collects on its way to the house tank, from where it's pumped to the big tank up the hill. It's the water we drink and wash in.
The forest Angophoras (Angophora floribunda) are in flower and there's one just outside the bedroom.
The closer you look the more incredibly beautiful they become, held in a slow motion explosion of dazzling creamy white.
On the edge of the gully, now a ghostly white out, the wild pink spider flowers of the Grevillea sericea bob with the weight of pooled droplets.
Deeper into the woods the damp has woken the lichens, studding the tree trunks on their south side only, ...
... and weaving a complex pattern of colours and shapes so hynotising that you stare at it till it exhausts your comprehension.
I know of no four walled gallery anywhere that has anything more beautiful. Only some of our indigenous painters can approximate such a masterpiece.
Closer to the ground there's a multi-headed burst of tiny white bomblets dusting the track to knee height. I thought they were Pimelea sp, though now I'm not so certain. The good book will tell me, but for the moment who cares.
Happy New Year.
2 comments:
And to you! I hope you are enjoying the heat as much as the cool, wet Christmas.
Jarrett, cool is a easier in the Highlands, much easier, although, in the heat, most nights the temp drops enough to make the house bearable. By the sea, that's another story.
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