Catching up with with autumn -- in July. Ahem.

Is anyone else finding this winter way colder than usual? It's ... interesting. Trying to keep busy, I'm -- at last! -- unpacking the photos I took a couple of months ago (with the Lumix; this predates the Canon by months), and this little photo essay, I'll call "Wine Country Autumn." Poem and images are dated March 9, and this is July 3. Where did time go?!

Wine Country Autumn

Gold lies strewn to the horizon and beyond

As if some careless godling

Turned out the divine pockets and

Let the doubloons tumble where they may.

Fields of gold burn, lustrous in the westering sun

As evening settles ― but not for long.

In just a week or three, the next rapacious wind

Will gambol among these vines and loot the hoard

Till bare wood alone remains,

Enduring winter’s ire with never a hint

Of the transient splendour that was

These fields of gold.

 

...Dave and I were at Myponga the other day, and I field tested the 18-45mm lens on the new Canon. Nice. I have the images in Photoshop at this time. Its *not* that the photos look much (if any) better, just as they come out of the camera, than the shots I was getting from the Lumix, BUT -- when you come to enhance them, you find there is a zillion times more information in the Canon image than there would have been in the same picture off the FZ-80 Superzoom bridge. This means the image can be "driven" far, far further, and at the end of the process, the picture will have the characteristics you expect from a professional camera. Mmmm. It's all about a synergy between the camera and the software, and both elements have to be in place, to get the results. I Have a lot still to learn, but I'm getting there!

Autumn comes to SA ... normality returns at home!

It would be fair and accurate to say that normality has been restored literally as I write this. Dave is fully fit, healed, well, after the crash; his long pre-booked March holiday is up today, and he's on his way in for his first shift back after seven weeks. So life returns to normal; now, if I can only find my equilibrium, and somehow track down my errant muse, find out where she's disappeared to, and get back to what we'll -- smilingly -- call work. (Occasionally I get paid; in fact, I do believe I'm overdue for a pay check.)

So I thought, why not start with photos? We covered a lot of ground in March, though the much mooted road trip to Mount Gambier wasn't going to happen. The truth is, by halfway through the month, Dave actually could have handled it, but --

-- by the mid-point of March, the impact of the appalling war in Ukraine was starting to bite hard even in SA. The price of fuel was waaay past the point where a driving holiday looked realistic. It wouldn't even have been tasteful, with so many people putting away the car and taking the bus! On top of which, there's always the risk of Covid.

Now, we're all triple-vaccinated -- but. Even triple vaxed, you can catch Omicron; about forty thousand people a day do, nationally. And even though the chances of actually perishing with it are vanishingly small for triple-vaxed people who're not yet entirely geriatric (ouch), the risk of Long Covid is rather alarming. Averaged across the population as a whole, Long Covid attacks about 10% of people; but in certain age groups, the percentage is far higher. Wouldn't you know it? No one in this house is young enough to laugh off the threat. Truth? Long Covid would finish me off, and I've only just begun to clamber back to my feet! So --

Soooo ... we stuck close to home, stayed out of hotels, kept to the outdoor dining areas on the occasions when we went to cafes as diverse as Long Shot at Old Noarlunga, Flower Cellar at McLaren Vale, and The Aldinga Aerodrome. We did just two day trips, using less than a tank of fuel each time -- budgeted for, at over $2 a litre (which will sounds absurd to my ears, though I've seen the news from Western Sydney, where they're paying $2.30, and from the Top End of this poor country, where they're paying well over $3). 

In fact, it's been a great month. Barossa in the rain, the Coorong, the Adelaide Hills, parks and gardens, a few nice cafes, a lot of quality time spent chilling and relaxing. I read some good books, binged some great TV, and come home with a lot of very good photos. Going through them will be fun. I'll post more in the coming days and weeks.

Now, what the heck happened to my muse? Why can't I seem to put fingers to keyboard and actually write something ... like a story, or even a poem? I don't even seem to be able to glimpse an image that inspires me to create art. So, for a while let's blog, play with photographs, and see what happens.

Life goes on. One watches the stories of war with disbelief; one worries about the future of this country, and its people, who're struggling in the teeth of an economy gone bonkers. The 2022/23 budget was handed down last night, at Federal level ... to my eyes it looks like a lousy joke. The kind of budget that will bankrupt small business, land thousands of families on the street, with nary a rental available anywhere ... mind you, the country apparently can afford about sixty billion for defence spending, while the mega-rich don't appear to pay tax at all. Argh. The plight of people in Ukraine is haunting; our own east coast is being blitzed by Mother Nature; and Covid is on the rampage. Sigh.

In light of all this, when I look at our own lives -- living where we do, as safe as we are -- it occurs to me that one needs to take stock a little, count one's blessings, just settle down and wait this situation out. Because nothing is as sure as the fact this will end. Even the Second World War ended, though its death throes didn't come one day sooner through grumbling, complaining, or impatience.

So here I am, settling down, courting patience and setting out on a quest to find my muse. Autumn has come to South Australia, and Dave ... is off to work! 

The May Report

 

Well ... I promised myself some time ago that I wouldn't blog here until I had good news. Not bad news. Not no news at all, but good news ... and here's another month gone by, while I wait for something to blog about! So the addendum to that decision is: I'll blog once at the end of each month, with a roundup of what's been going on, though not in any depth. Yes, autumn has been and gone, all in the space of May! We caught the fall colours at Stirling and Belair NP, fleetingly ... by the end of the month, there was frost on the car yesterday, and we just put the heavy duvet on the bed. Safe to say, it's winter!

The high point in the month was the first week -- vacation week! -- and we headed north to the Flinders and Remarkable Ranges. Ports Wakefield, Germain, Pirie and Augusta, and then north to Wilpena, and east to Alligator Gorge, Bundaleer Forest, and so on. Four wonderful days, staying in a huge caravan named Sundancer, at Port Augusta -- an Airbnb, which worked out marvellously, after an initial hiccup in connecting with the owner. Things were all smoothed out and resolved in no time, which is a credit to Roseanne, when one remembers everything going on in her personal life at the time. We saw and did some amazing things ... even managed to get some decent bird photos --

...though the little beggars didn't make it easy for me, and in fact there weren't very many birds at all in any of the places I could get to. (I'm very lame just now, with problems in both feet, knees, hips and lumbar ... disability is a bummer, but we do what we can). In fact --

That just about says it all! I also didn't see any wildlife, other than a couple of grey kangaroo does, which are a hundred times more commonplace down south here, an absolute plague of locusts at Telowie Gorge, a tiny lizard on a tree at Wilpena -- and ferals. Wild goats, deer, sheep. Nothing else moving in the landscape, which made me sad. So I photographed said landscapes, until --

In closeup, you can actually see how dusty the camera is. Was. The dust got into the lens and jammed it comprehensively. It died on me at Bundaleer Forest, and didn't work for the rest of the trip. Even though I was able to physically pull to lens out and unjam it, now the whole zoom mechanism grinds and growls. The camera isn't 100% dead, but it's close to it. So I spent weeks researching replacements, blew hours on this ... chose the Nikon P900, which I expected to get for ~$850, which is double the price of a new Lumix, and would have given me an 85x zoom! Got to the point of ordering it, only to discover that it's been discontinued. All the stores are now pushing the P950 which is $1200, give or take. Nope. Not right now. In the future, maybe, but the pennies are too tight at the moment, and I can't rationalize spending that much on a camera. Soooo, another Lumix is on the way: the FZ-80, which will give me a 60x zoom, and Leica lenses, and an f/2.8 to f/8 aperture, and a touch screen, and UHD video, and an articulated LCD, all for ~$400, which beats hands-down the nearest competitor, which is the Canon Powershot SX70, at almost double the price. Uh huh. In fact, Australia Post just sent Dave an SMS ... the new camera will be delivered sometime today! Now...

...the spice of life at the time of this writing is actually art! I confess, I'm spending a little too much on 3D goodies to put in front of my virtual camera. But, but, but ... this is my hobby, it's keeping my brain working, and I enjoy art as much or more than anything else at this moment. These are my rationalizations for spending more than I should, funds ripped out of my so-called Dental Fund, that stash of cash that's guarded to pay for dentistry as my teeth go bung one (or two) at a time, as they will, given how ancient I'm becoming! Art?

This is where my mind is at this moment. Images. I can handle images, and I can crunch the numbers to make them go, and digitally paint them in Photohop etc. after they've rendered up on a system that's fast enough to do the work. This PC is amazing. Must remember to give Dave a hug for organizing it for me, six months ago! Art is keeping my brain healthy, although I have to admit, I have "word block." Not traditional Writers' Block, because I can write, no problem (to wit, this blog post!) ... but I can't even edit at this moment. Not in the zone, and can't get into the zone, even though I have ideas galore. Sigh. It'll come back. I have a short story -- Ignis Fatuus -- to tackle, then The Hesperides to finish editing, then Pet Shop Dragons to write, before I get into collaborative projects with Mike. All I need is for my brain, or maybe my muse, to cooperate. In the meantime ... art. While I wait for a my new camera. And in the garden --

...the seasons are so confused, the Monarch caterpillars are starting to cocoon just as winter comes in. It's going to be too cold for the butterflies to manage, I think, when they hatch out. At the same time, the north is having a locust plague, NSW is having a mouse plague, and Victoria is struggling with a new Covid-19 crisis. It's not a happy country, or a happy world. My thoughts have turned inward; I've been looking deeply into Buddhism as I search for "spiritual solace," and discovering how much I disagree with the critical 20% of Buddhism. All spiritual paths, bar none, agree on the broad points (love thy neighbour, including -- or especially! -- one's enemies, do unto others, be kind, always be kind, never cowardly or mean). Those points are just common decency which we share with many animals; there's nothing spiritual or pure about them: just decent. It's when you get into the nitty gritty, the "what's it all for, what does it all mean, isn't there more than this, where am I going next?" stuff ... I've found that I'm at odds with Buddhism as surely as I'm at odds with every path I've looked at, barring one ... Gaia. Safe to say, "I know what I believe," and that'll have to be enough. 

I'll write a proper blog post when something actually happens! For now ... this is the May Report, signing out.