Playing Catch-up With Myself: November ... Spring Comes in Late (thank you, La Nina)

Nothing in the world says "spring" like ducklings! It was so good to see squadrons of them at Belair, Byards, Brodie Road, Laratinga, Perry Bend -- everywhere, this year, whereas last year I don't think I spotted even one. This family, here had managed to raise ten, which is exceptionally good going in an environment where cats and foxes wreak havoc. They were right there on the bank as we finished out a walk at the Brodie Road wetlands. Nice!

By November I was feeling more like my old self. The only thing still lingering from the virus was fatigue, and when I saw Dr Tim for my annual bloodwork, I mentioned this ... he wasn't in the slightest surprised. Without going anywhere near "long covid," which is a very different animal indeed, the so-called "post covid syndrome" hits a lot of people and is a bear to get rid of. Fatigue, foggy thinking, shortage of breath, listlessness ... yep, this was me.

But by the time by birthday rolled around I was even boring myself! It was time to throw this thing off somehow, anyhow, and -- well, Dave knows me. I'm terminally stubborn. Just too stubborn to know when to quit or how to say no. I think I'll be dead for three days before to occurs to me to lie down.

November was pretty good, in fact. We walked a lot, and got up to Clare Valley and, I think Laratinga when the weather was good enough to permit. Got the chance to revisit Seven Hill, which has a timeless charm all its own, and the Gleeson Wetlands, which have become a favourite place of mine.

Late in the month, we went orchid hunting at Belair NP -- but that's another story, which I'll tell in the next post. From a purely personal perspective, it was great to be starting to feel like a normal person again after a few rough months. Do not let anyone tell you that Covid is just flu and you'll throw it off in a week ... not even vaguely true! But spring was bursting out everywhere by November -- it came in late and wet, but when it arrived ... well, I'll close this post out with those ducklings at Brodie road, which say it all. And in the next Catch-up post, we'll go orchid hunting!

Playing Catch-up With Myself: October ... Destination: Yorke Peninsula

We'd wanted to do a road trip for a long time, but with it being so difficult to rationalize taking accommodation where you're almost certain to catch the plague (or SARS-Cov 2, which is just harder to type), we decided to make it a day-trip. This has become our rule, though it's a rule we intend to break when the van has been fully refurbished: van camping is firmly on the agenda. But for now ... it's day-trips, as far as you can go by getting on the road at 5:00am and not getting home till about ten at night. So --

Destination Yorke Peninsula. 

Not that we haven't been there before (we have), but it had been a long time, and the Yorke is different enough to make it attractive. We do travel around a lot, between Burra and Clare Valley, to the tip of the Fleurieu Peninsula, as far east as Tintinara and points on the Coorong; and past a certain point, you've been everywhere so often, the idea of going again gets a bit "meh."

So: pack the day before, load the car at 5:00am and get out of Dodge as soon as you're functional. Point the car due north, hang a left onto the Copper Coast Highway, just beyond Port Wakefield, then -- go exploring. The Yorke is a nice place; a lot of people are clearly deciding it's a great place to live, because there are new housing developments everywhere you look. Moonta, Walleroo and so on are turning into yuppie suburbs, with expensive houses and marinas. O...kay. Perhaps people are retiring over there? Because it's difficult to see how so many people would find enough work in the rural centres to pay today's kind of mortgage.

But we were only there for the day, and the weather was great for a change...

It was a great trip, and in lieu of staying overnight somewhere, the day-trip is a happy compromise. But I'm looking forward very much to the van camping, I will admit. The freedom of being able to go out for two or three days is seductive. So the van is going in for service work very soon, and then -- as I write this Catch-up post in early February -- the plan is to head for Mount Gambier. This is going to be very cool, since we haven't been there in ten years or so. So long, I can't really remember when we did that last trip!

We had bacon and egg for brekkie in Port Wakefield, picnicked for lunch at a place with a table on a cliff, set among fields of wild gazania, and stopped for a good-sized snack on the river at Port Wakefield just as the sun was going down. From Port Wakefield to home is about 90 minutes, so we were in good time, and we came home with some nice pictures.

Playing Catch-up with myself: September 2022 ... Covid pays a visit

 

Covid Pays A Visit

There isn't an image to head off September, 2022. There aren't many images at all for that month, which can be blamed on a tiny thread of RNA which gets into the human body and wreaks bloody havoc. Covid-19. SARS Cov-2. The plague. Call it what you want. I called it the nuisance to end them all ... and that was before one learned of the long-term effects of the virus. Hmm.

We were fully vaccinated. The second booster, we'd had three weeks earlier, in August; and that made me ill too. It was like having a nasty case of flu for about a week, but to be fair, I did throw off the effects, and we went into September believing we were covered, protected --

Uh huh. Protected against serious illness. Protected against death. Being under 70 and in reasonable health, we were protected against the probability of needing to head for the emergency room. Which was a good thing, because this was the height of the third (or fourth?) wave of the pandemic, when people were dying in car parks, waiting to see the inside of the emergency department.

But as we discovered, the vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting pretty bloody ill ... the kind of ill where you're still struggling to recover a month later, and three months later, the fatigue and brain fog remain major obstacles. Oh, joy. Dave threw is off fast; Mike, almost as fast. Me?

In typical fashion, it took me about a month to say that the worst of it was over, and in the first week, I was very close indeed to going to the ER. Breathing difficulties, chest pain ... similar to the pain of pneumonia and pleurisy, which I've had several times. The only problem was, the ER facilities were stretched to the limit; you had 90-year-olds lying on the ground for two hours in freezing conditions. Sooo...

I toughed it out, and (knock on wood), I'm still young and strong enough to get over it, and be here to  tell the tale -- it's January 28, 2023, as I write this.

But, but, but ... I've read a great deal about this, enough to know that repeated Covid infections will "eat your heart and destroy your brain." (Quoting an epidemiologist there, from a recent article on ABC News.) So, for us, it's masks every time we go anywhere near people, and social distancing; never go into a café or stay in a motel; take no risks. 

Which makes it all the more odd when you go (masked) to the shops and see no one, no one at all, wearing a mask in the supermarket, even though the statistics suggest that 20% of them have the virus. 

In the long run -- if you listen to the scientists; and I do -- the general population is soon going to be halfway brain dead, and sudden death due to cardiac and pulmonary issues before the age of 60 will be commonplace. We don't want to be part of that picture! I suspect that the population is being thoroughly culled, as surely as if the Wraith were hitting this planet: lifespan will be starting to shorten noticeably if this goes on much longer, and the fact is, there's nothing to stop it at this time. Our current vaccines only, basically, insulate people who still have a modicum of youth and/or strength on their side. 

However, I've read that research is underway to produce a vaccine that will finish Covid-19 off completely, amputate it at the knees. Those developments are maybe three to five years away, so we just need to sit tight and be patient ... and careful. Don't get it again --

Which is a tough ask, when the way it got into this house in the first place was via Dave, who brought it home from work. As I write this, there's a couple of cases in a unit close to the one(s) where he works. Carers and nurses are in full PPE again, to contain it, and we can hope. 

So life really has changed. For us, September was about home and garden, and getting well; and since then, we've been ultra-careful. Outdoor café settings, on the few occasions when we've gone for coffee; national parks, gardens ... don't even think about the cinema, although Avatar is on the big screen, and I'd really wanted to see that. Sigh. 

To quote the Irishman in the tall iron helmet, such is life.

~~ooOOooOOoo~~

But to be fair -- Covid didn't come along till a wee while into the month, and there were good times then. Dave and I went up to Lyndoch, and the birding was amazing. We took a walk through the gardens in the evening light, and literally as we were on out way back to the car for the long drive home, the Musk Lorikeets appeared! They were feasting on something on the rose bushes -- aphids, perhaps? -- not at all troubled by human visitors, and the performed circus tricks not two meters in front of us! With the sun at the right angle and not too much of a zoom needed, I got some lovely photos...

In fact, I came home with so many great Musk Lorikeet images, I'd need to upload about twenty to even halfway cover the experience ... so I'll settle for five, which are representational. Because there's more.

We also returned to Nangawooka, that botanic garden outside Victor Harbour, which is a joy in any season other than high summer, when everything shuts down for the heat. Once again, I took about 500 frames, and upwards of 100 are astonishing, so I'll settle for uploading a few that are representational of the lot...

...there was also a trip to Mout Lofty Gardens, to photograph Magnolias, and more. But this post is long enough for now, so let me close this and begin a fresh one. 

So ends the July 2022 catchup...

 

End of July, 2022

...all of which catches me up with July 2022. This was still about six weeks or so before Covid came for a flying visit and seemed to invite itself to stay for a couple of months. At this point, Dave and I were still trying to plan ahead for a possible trip to the Limestone Coast. 'Twas not to be, of course: cancelled for the third year running. This time around, it was on account of Covid and heavy weather ... this is the third consecutive La Nina winter, and it's wreaking havoc. 

A few cancelled travel plans were the least of it -- and of course, I'm writing this in January, 2023, "playing catch up with myself" to full in the blanks in this blog, because I'd very much like to pick up the threads, and with the benefit of hindsight, complaining about the weather seems petty. People lost their homes, the livelihoods and their lives. So we lost a vacation: hunh. 

But by the end of July, even though Covid was some weeks off, I was feeing it -- "it" being SAD, or Seasonally Affected Disorder. Call it cabin fever, or winter blues. Call it anything you like, it's the same thing: a deep fit of the moody blues caused by being shut inside too much, for too long, because the weather sucks, your health is iffy and dodgy, and you seriously dread catching the plague! 

So we spent our days hiking in remote spots, well away from people, hoping to get some great photos to mark the passage of the seasons. Sometimes, though, you didn't have to go far from home:

This little beauty, above, was sitting on one of the succulent flowers about four meters from the front door as we walked out yesterday, for a drive down to Goolwa -- Dave and I again, making the most of low fuel prices while they last -- because they won't. I got about a dozen nice images, and it was sooo easy ... the rest of the day, I struggled with low light, uncooperative birds and frozen fingers! But we did the walk to the lookout above Mount Bold, hoping to see wildlife ... a deer, right on the trail before us! (And yeeees, I know they're feral, and have become a real pest in Tasmania and New Zealand, but they're beautiful, and I like them.)

Just a day or two later, this, below, is waaaay on the other side of Perry Bend Reserve, far closer to the dunes, but I'd tag it as Perry Bend, because I don't know what to call the location, otherwise! I mean ... you're in the middle of a marsh, looking at massive amounts of sky, river and saltbush, so ... Perry Bend it is. I got lots of pics of waterfowl, which I always intended to share, but never did because the SAD caught up with me, and before I shook it loose, Covid came knocking at the door. Argh.

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!