24th September 2012

20^th Sept 2012

I started this several days ago and got as far as the date.

Firstly a little explanation regards my writing. I don’t feel my art is good enough to enable me to express how I see things at times and It’s not my nature to verbally describe what I see or feel but when I write sometimes I find myself expressing how I see or feel without really thinking about it, some may think a little over the top at times but it is probably an emotional outlet on my behalf and is particularly how I feel about something I can see, like a stunning sunrise or the antics of Lorikeets or Plovers and yes I waffle on – so be it.

To those it may offend, just ignore it put it down to the ramblings of an old geezer (but far from senile). Does anyone read it anyway?

  

We’ve had some fairly warm weather lately that has allowed us to open up the house and appreciate the lovely breezes it captures. With the big bi-fold doors open upstairs at the front and a window or door open downstairs at the back of the house a fair breeze funnels down through the void over the front entrance and right through the downstairs area. It wasn’t planned that way but we will take it as a bonus and I don’t think we will have a need for too much aircon in summer.

Finally we had a couple of showers last week and even the little that it rained helped freshen things up and gave a nice green tinge to the park across the road and certainly didn’t do our lawn any harm.

Our resident Plover couple in the park produced a brood of chicks four in all but sadly after a few days only one seems to have survived. I don’t know if they died of natural causes or local predators, there are a couple of cats that prowl around here at night. Saturday night Lisa phoned me to say she had just avoided running over a humungous python crossing the road a few houses past our place, on Sunday I couldn’t find the plovers anywhere and figured the python must have got them, once the crowds of picnickers dispersed they appeared out of nowhere, the chick can’t fly so goodness knows where they disappeared to they are obviously smarter than we think.

These very protective birds are fascinating to observe as people come within their self designated no-mans land, of course this zone changes  as the spritely chick scurries around ferreting for food, the nursemaid plover, whether it is the male or female is anyone’s guess, maintains an ever watchful vigil always keeping just a few metres away while the other parent does the security patrol maintaining the ever changing boundary. When a security risk presents itself the patrolling bird takes up a position in that locality and starts its unmistakeable staccato barking sound, in fact when I was kid we used to call them barkers . The intention of this is to make the intruder concentrate on the bird making all the noise and draw danger away from the chick and as mentioned previously this is often accompanied by kamikaze attacks that are great to watch for my warped amusement.

Got some Brownie points in yesterday, Nancy asked me to go for a walk with her, which I did without moaning. Strange that I enjoy bush walking and hiking but detest normal walking for exercise, I would much rather put some effort into bike riding which I did this morning just a moderately paced 14kls to start with and build up over a week or two until I’m back to my old routine.

Lisa has a job interview this afternoon, she is a bit nervous about it all, her current contract finishes in Dec and the uni have changed the rules and aren’t renewing contracts for people without PhD’s, Lisa won’t have completed hers for another two or three years, so we are keeping our fingers crossed for her this is the second interview and she has to front a panel so we can understand the stress level will be up a little, anyway a second interview is promising.

According to a report I heard on ABC radio today water will not be released from Wivenhoe Dam as a flood precaution prior to summer as they are expecting a hot dry summer, water storage in the Brisbane region is currently at 97.8% capacity.

Cheers

Nigel