aka R’acquel

See how busy we’ve been? Look at the state of the lawn in our backyard. Hubby has been so caught up with manufacturing his whistles that I ended up challenging my refusal to learn how to start up a lawn mower. I’m the one always cleaning the toilets in this house, because my husband doesn’t know how to use a toilet brush. The embarassment of owning weeds and scottish thistles gowing up to 1.5m high in the front lawn of this house, in a “Garden Village” for crying out loud, finally got the better of me.

The flies have been so psycho up this way, that i had to invent my new Woztraylian Bushwoman’s (Reverse Swagman’s) Hat for protection. The psycho flies were attacking my ears so badly, that i created some protective ear flaps out of sticky fly-catching paper. Instead of shooing flys away with a regular swaggie hat, i designed this one to attract and kill them.

The front lawn before i started to learn how to start the mower. Take note of how the quality of light in the sky begins to change with the next photo! It’s the early beginnings of a new afternoon storm approaching.

The front lawn after i learned that there’s no point in pulling the string thingie if you haven’t pushed the accelerator throttle down thingie first. The down side of finishing all the mowing, was that the sound of the motor was no longer drowning out the sound of the dying flies stuck around my ear flaps screaming “help me, help me, help me, help me!” in stereo! 555

It took me about 60 minutes to mow our lawn. This new hat of mine reduced the entire psycho fly population of Leura by close to 150 flies. That’s approximtely the equivalent of one psycho fly attacking your ears every 24 seconds. Can you see why i had to invent this hat now? I was hoping that i could send them a very strong message of “fuck off” - that maybe they could tell their friends to,

“Stay away from this woman’s ears! She’s dangerous!”

…but they seemed to be somewhat aloof to this.

It is no longer a myth for me that the sign of sticky psycho flies attacking your ears in Leura, now means that there is going to be a fierce storm that will be brewing in the afternoon. The more psycho & sticky the flies are, the more volatile the storm usually becomes.

Some shots of the orange hazed clouds post-storm. This is about the 4th time that i’ve seen this phenomena across the last 2 years. You can see more orange-sky phenomena photos from My First Storm Chase in Feb 2006.

It’s been the coldest summer i’ve ever experienced in my life. I had to wear my winter coat a number of times during December(our summer here), and we’ve had to put the heaters on for some nights as well.

The dought has broken in many parts of oz with the La Nina weather pattern returning. Very high levels of rainfall have been having a significant impact on my plants.

Napoleon has never flowered for 2 years, just as my dwarf palm hasn’t given birth to a new stem either.

I’ve had this breed of succulent for close to 6 years. The first time i ever saw it flower was last year, where it had no more than 5 or 6 flowers. This time around - it’s a a full blown explosion!

This other succlent, has never looked so pregnant in my entire life of getting to know it over the years. The intensity of it’s colour has never been this saturated or explosive in it’s display. Old plants once deemed as potential dead - have been rising from the dead in my front lawn as well.

What has been the most striking across this summer, is the weather pattern of hot mornings with clear blue skies, that are consistently followed by the formation of electrically charged storms in the afternoon.

I’ve found it fascinating how the storms always form between 3-4pm on average so consistently. As for why i’ve been able to register such a time frame? It’s because these cloud formations start to occur when it’s time for me to pick my son up from school.

We had another hail storm the other day. My son never enjoys the thunderstorms because the electricity blackouts upset him a lot. It scares him. He thinks it’s going to be the end of the world (without electricity) and he’s also seeing the news reports of the climate getting worse, with many floodings and all sorts of other natural disasters revolving around the weather on TV.

I decided to try and divert his negative regard towards the weather into something positive. Here is part 1 of measuring the Leura “Floods” at the front of our house:

After the storm subsides, my son does a more accurate reading of the water level with his red K’nex stick.

For now - i must return back to life & work/work/work ~ and learn how to take more time to relax. It’s been good to be able to pull out my camera… but *sighs* ~ i have to get back to my work. Life’s great - but there’s a lot of amazing things in my life that i have to get back to achieving.