I’ve been spending far too much time with my camera this week. It can do so much cool stuff!!!




And below is a time lapse film of a saffron flower opening.
I’ve been spending far too much time with my camera this week. It can do so much cool stuff!!!
And below is a time lapse film of a saffron flower opening.
This week I’ve not managed a lot of writing, so I thought I’d give you a blast from the past instead of authorial words of wisdom. About ten years ago I won a balloon ride at a work Christmas function. Although I was a little bit terrified, I did it, and it was AMAZING.
Here are some photos to prove it.
For various different reasons I’ve struggled to get to the computer this week. I was also unable to do my regular morning walks, which left the creative juices a bit bottled up.
So I visited Cleland Conservation Park to get some animal inspiration, and I think it was just what I needed.
I always knew that week 2 would be hard. This is when the excitement of starting has waned, the book can enter sagging middle territory and you see that even with all the hard work you have done, you have even more hard work stretching out before you. I felt all of that this week. I even gave myself two days off because I just couldn’t face the book a couple of times. There is a chance I might not hit my word target this week.
To add to the draw of not being at my computer, I bought myself a new toy; the Olympus Tough TG-5 camera. It takes super-close photos (along with about a million other things I haven’t yet worked out). So I’ve been out in my garden playing with it. This is a lot more fun that forcing myself to squeeze out story. It also doesn’t help that I’m not confident the story is going in the right direction. It took a turn I didn’t expect, and I don’t know if I’m up to taking it where it wants to go.
But I’m going to try really hard to have a big Sunday and see if I can at least get close to the word count, because I know this hard reality; the only thing harder than week 2 of a Wri-Mo is week 3. So head down, I’d better get writing.
See below for some of this week’s efforts with the new camera…
Can you believe, even as I’m loading these pictures up now, a koala is in a tree outside my window. We are so lucky in the Adelaide hills.
In less than 4 hours it will be spring! I didn’t want to subject you to ‘spring has sprung’ or ‘spring into spring’ catch-phrases, so instead I will share my haiku;
Spring
About bloody time
Was going out of my mind
Winter wasn’t kind
Time for spring phlog, provided by a walk around the beautiful Mount Lofty Botanical Gardens last weekend;
Yes, the weather warmed up a bit this week, and it felt like Spring! I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but I wrote some new words this week, and I should have my next eBook out by the weekend. I know this break from the cold is probably just a tease, but I’m making the most of it with a celebration of the end of winter with a photo log…
Goodbye winter colours…
Hello spring workers…
And let’s not forget the dragons…
There may have been some photo manipulation in one of these pictures…
There is an upside to this rather miserable time of year, and that is the beginning of whale watching season. Being located in Adelaide at the moment, I’m well placed to pop down to the high peaks of the Victor Harbour bluff (or any one of the cliff edges that look out over the Southern Ocean) to watch the Southern Right Whales as they frolic around, give birth to and then play with their babies.
Yesterday we heard there was one such cetacean playing off Victor Harbour, so we all jumped in the car and set off on the one hour trek (with many games of eye-spy and twenty questions along the way to defer the inevitable ‘are we there yet’ from little miss six).
To add a bit of spice to our quest there was also a storm rolling in which we were desperate to beat. We could hear the crashes of distant lightning punctuating the old-time tunes on the radio (because we were listening to am radio as dad was driving and he is a big believe in ‘driver picks the radio station’, no matter how desperately the passengers protest. So really the lightning sound was a bit of relief).
With the first splatters of raindrops on the window (splatters, not patters, these were big drops that looked not unlike clear seagull droppings) we arrived to search the slate grey ocean for signs of life.
Did we see any whales before the storm drove us back into the car and a further torturous round of twenty-questions? I’ll let my photos do the talking…
I was showing the 6 year old ‘little miss’ the fairy toadstools growing in the paddock across the road. Between these lovely red with white-dot storybook toadstools were slimy brown toadstools, which looked a little like fresh cow pats. Being the speculative fiction writer that I am, I asked her the question; “If fairies live in the pretty red and white toadstools, who lives in the slimy, gross brown ones?”
Little miss looked at me with the condescension that only a child can muster, shaking her head as if she pitied my stupidity. “That’s where the boys live, of course!”
I should have known!
Anyway, time for another photo blog, so here are some of the fairy houses around the garden…