art gesture sunday - week 39...

10 volume set Newnes 'Pictorial Knowledge'

between a swamp wallaby track 

and the banks of Sams Creek

....

sew and sew...

It's NSW school holidays

Holidays are when I get to do fun stuff with the kiddies - 

like learning to sew!

EJ wanted to sew a picture of a black cat

sass wanted to make a picture of a yellow kelpie 

(trying to conjure up the beast no doubt! 

he has been asking for months for a kelpie puppy of his own to train - oh save us!)

 

   

both kiddies spent happy hours working on their special project  

who needs a playstation
when you have a piece of fabric,
a needle and thread?

...

art gesture sunday - week 38...

Spring Equinox

one black book, one white book, one alarm clock

face due east 

.....

caught on film...

Two weeks ago the gals from National Parks & Southern Rivers Catchment Management Authority (SRCMA) came to Sams Creek with their spiffy motion sensitive infra-red cameras -- today we had a look at what they captured...

swamp wallaby (check out the joey following)

 (I wonder if this is the same mother and baby moving in the night?)

brush tail possum 

(notoriously renown for running off with the bait traps!)

bandicoot

wombat mother and baby 

 (too cute eh?)

echidna!

and then there was my favourite find...

  lyrebirds!

 (heaps of them!)

other creatures caught on film -- 

bush rats, rabbit, wonga pigeon and other birds...

But this is not what we have the cameras out and about for....  no no no -

Earlier in the year, while out on a walk around the farm, a visiting girlfriend spied something she'd never seen before 'it's kind of like a cat... but not...' I had a thought and whisked her off to a computer - 'could THIS be what you saw?' (and I pulled up a piccie of a quoll) ....

A few months later Phil found the limp body of a strange creature --- now there was no doubt we had a quoll... Now all we have to do is find the little dears!

And that's where the Nat Parks and SRCMA came in --- it's quite a thing to find a quoll (its even MORE of a thing to find a potoroo ---- check out this amazing footage of a potoroo mum and joey captured on one of these cameras in the Nagee Reserve, south of Eden .... ahhhh I can live in hope...) So for the past two weeks, two cameras have been taking THOUSANDS of pictures of creatures on the move here on our farm.... but we have no quoll pictures... YET
 

I'm resetting one of the cameras by myself tomorrow (ooo the responsibility) -- I need to find a suitable location (look for 'diggings' and signs of animal activity... find a nearby tree to attach the camera to ... make sure there are no moving plants that will trigger the motion-sensitive camera... ), set up bait station (which is usually filled with a mix of peanut butter and truffle oil... but I'm going to be trying to lure quolls, so I'm going to use a bit of a chicken wing along with the smelly mix) then arm the camera and test that I've got everything in the right place... oh and make sure I know how to find the camera again (as I don't have a gadget to take GPS reading)

wish me luck


....

into the red...

currently binding my favourite colour

into the very looooooong book

hey - is that the word 'immigrants' poking out on the spine?

how strangely serendipitous...


** ps on a break from all the stitching I stumbled over
 a FANTASTIC art essay by John Kelly

run don't walk - read it now!

 

....

art gesture sunday - week 37...

 incised pages

'Encyclopedia of the Animal World'

 and white-necked heron tracks

....

who's been nesting on my pond?

I spy a nest in the rushes.... 

its a pair of black swans

 swan one

 swan two

all change!

 (its time for swan one to sit on the eggs.... 

and as its late afternoon I suspect this might be the female - taking up the night duties)

 first one has to dry off a little (shake and preen, shake and preen)

settle

 egg warming position assumed

black swans have been nesting on the farm for a couple of decades now 

- but I never tire of the excitement 

waiting for cygnets to hatch

hoping the parents can protect them from foxes 

(and crows and eagles and accidents) 

fingers crossed for this clutch

....

art gesture sunday - week 36...

 

blue books arranged as a square 

filled with blue borage flowers

.....

springing...

A change is definitely in the air...

spring dawn

manchurian pear blossom

plum blossom

baby mulberries

winter flowering daisy 

....

yesterday I had a visitor...

a flock of yellow tailed black cockatoos (in the grevillea robusta)

(what a tail!)

I'm thinking about the spring planting in the garden, 

having a brief rest from all the study, study, study that has consumed me
(before the last big push to complete the MFA next year) 

and some of the big and small changes ahead...

mmmmm nothing like the promise of spring to get the sap flowing again!

...

art gesture sunday - week 35...

On the first day of Spring...

origami 'flower' created from a page snippet 

of a Readers Digest novel

placed in a blossoming peach tree

....