Christmas and all that ...

is just another day, to me.
Once, I had family who came, and it was good.  Roast ham with pineapple and cloves and brown sugar.  The turkey. Cranberry sauce and brandy butter.  Bon bons. Roast vegetables. Glass baubles and lights on the tree. Carols. Chocolates. Eyes lighting up, It all went well.
Until it didn't.
Later, reduced, older children travelling home, listening to ABC radio who gave  regular updates on the Christmas road toll as if it were some kind of record they were eager to breech.   Fear - imagination? - did not eclipse relief,  but certainly reduced pleasure.

None of that fits where I am now.
Now I ignore the crassness, shrug off the rancid commercialisim, and am aware that what the celebration is about, fundamentally, down to the nitty gritty., is the birth of a baby. Some people think that this particular baby was divine.  Other don't. I don't think that it matters.

Like sunsets or stars, tides, rainbows, babies - humans through to  mice, cockroaches or other- are an extraodinary phenomena:  always miraculous.
I like to think that at Christmas we are celebrating the importance of the most vulnerable in our world. The least influential.  And, arguably, our sttrongest hint that life continues to have confidence in us.  I am happy. at Christmas, to celebrate babies.

Indolent in the Garden

There are some lovely trees in the garden, like this oak. Its branches spread perfectly for a tree house: it just needs children.
Large parts of the ground have had ivy over them, and it has climbed many trees.  Mainly, I am severing the ivy stems and hoping for good luck, tho' I understand that  if robust enough it can live from the tree itself, not from the earth.    I am careful in trying to rid this gum tree of it, because its bark is so tender.  

 Oops: not much of the gum there on the left. It is a beautiful tree, taller than the oak.  Within the undergrowth there, there is a large fallen limb.  So far I haven't tried to move it.  And behind the gum tree there is a lemon tree abundant with lemons. I must find someone to give them to.

Jasmine, honeysuckle and ivy have romped unchecked, and I'm doing my best - um, every now and then -  to make them behave in a more orderly manner...from time to time.   The honeysuckle is the worst culprit.  In some places it has created ugly, knotted nests high in the branches, and I have no hope of sorting that out. It has caught up fallen branches and woven them in to an impenetrable decaying...mess. Amputation, always a last resort, will turn out to be the only solution, I fear.

This is unfamiliar to me: tall canes, with many flowers. It is deciduous, and rampant. And pretty, as well.. 

The above was not meant to be underlined: that was just a gremlin. I don't argue with them. I wonder if anyone knows what that plant is.

Bad colour. These blossoms - rhododendron surely? - were vibrantly purple, without the pinkishness of the photo.  But, what were they doing coming in to bloom in November., 2 or 3 months too late? A huge bush: I clamber inside to chop the old and the dead, and find some privets.

 Once, boysenberries were planted.  Now I am enjoying that foresight.

I didn't expect that I would enjoy the ripe boysenberries, as I am doing.  But, in the interim I have been tossing minced beef  -only  $6 a kilo - at the magpies, kookas, currawongs + small miners - (mynahs?)  - and others, and can see that I may distorted their world in doing so. Or not.

A smallish brown - grey bird - oh, maybe 20 - 40 cm - has a pure clear song of notes when he is at the rear, waiting for mince. The clarity and beauty of his voice penetrate to me within, to the advantage of the other birds hoping for handouts.

 He snatches food in mid air like a miracle, his reflexes astonishing to watch. His beak is large for a smallish bird, and has a hook at the end, which, I assume, is to pierce the eggs of other birds. Alas.

It occurred to me that that is what I do: take the eggs of other species.

I'm still blundering about here.

Logging on to my site, it says there are a number of comments waiting for moderation. Looking at these, they go back to 2011.

As far as I recall, I have never asked for moderation.