My Bright Field

Over the road from the houses is Ada Cottage aged care facility.  It is small community of residents for those needing assisted care.  But there are lots of spritely older folk in their 80s and 90s living in their own homes in the town. It was bright sunny weather (that is the brim of my sunhat in the top of the frame) with people out tending their gardens or soaking up the sunshine. We stopped several times on our walk and chatted.  All up we added 11 new acquaintances during our walk.  Being a country town many of the people have known each other from their schooldays but are nonetheless very welcoming of newcomers like us.  Do you live among people you have known for a long time?

Here we go, we are heading along the main street Angus Avenue with the mountain behind us. At this end of the street there are houses.  As in most of Kandos they are modest and well kept older homes on big blocks, nearly every one with neatly mowed lawn.  I would despair of keeping up appearances at my place but for our neighbour keeping our footpath trim with his ride on mower. As several have commented there are very few cars so there is no traffic noise but there is what we call the "Kandos hum" -- the sound of lawn mowers.

\ This is the view continuing past the Kandos clock down to the mountain end of the street.   As hoped we went for a walk to show you around so I will be featuring "Life in the Village" for a while.

It has been quite a busy week with Easter and Anzac so no time for me to sit around hoping to capture a bird.  So here is a pretty sky seen from my dining room window instead.  I think Autumn is great for lovely sunsets.

When I posted the image of the Kandos Clock recently Kay said she would like to see more.  Well here you go, this is the main street (Angus Avenue) viewed from the entrance to the town.  The rotunda I showed recently is in a park at the left and way up the street you can see the clock. I will try to take a photo walk up the street over the next few days to show what makes up our town. 

Today we attended the ANZAC commemoration march and service at Kandos. Similar events are held in every town and city on this day.

I have been trying to accelerate packing up things at Lawson for the next move of furniture to our home in Kandos.  This week I tackled the "54 drawers" cabinet.  About ten of those drawers had my patch-working fabric stash from when I did quilts over 30 years ago.  It was quite a trip down memory lane to finger the fabrics again, among them were scraps from dresses I made back in my school and uni days. A book I have read recently This week's book is another on the Australian list,   The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham. I saw the movie adaptation and found it interesting but rather odd.  The book is a quirky dark comedy with a huge caste of amusing but stereotypical characters. I enjoyed it but mostly I liked being reminded of how much I enjoyed sewing my own clothes.  I think I might rewatch the movie to see what I think of it now and maybe start a patch-working project.

Autumn is coming - the first colour at Burnbrae is always the Virginia Creeper along the fence. When it turns red it is easy to see how much it has creeped to places where it should not be. The early camellias are also beginning to flower now.

We wrapped up Easter with a lunch with family members today.  The weather is now cool enough to fire up the wood stove at the back-in-time house and cook up a storm. A poem for today A hymn to God the Father by John Donne

When we were in the city on Friday Haig's Chocolate Shop at QVB still had lots of Easter merchandise to move. Even though I love chocolate and was excited to have the Easter Bunny visit as a child, for me Easter remains an essentially religious festival. I have such happy memories of Easter celebrations over the years.   Reflection: 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 New International Version (NIV) "But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." Alleluia, Christ has risen.

It is a shame the image is not clear but I was very excited to capture this one.  I believe it is a spotted pardelote.  I have not seen one before.  I was mowing the grass when I could hear the twitter of birds and was surprised to see a whole flock of tiny birds hopping around the grass.  I managed to grab this photo at a distance later in the day.  They have not returned since.

We went down to the city this morning for the Good Friday church service.  The soaring ceiling and stained glass windows made me think of Notre Dame Cathedral. I have recently been scanning photographs and turning them into slide shows, including our Grand Tour of Europe done 35 years ago so the cathedral's flying buttresses and beautiful rose window were already fresh in my mind when  I heard the news of the awful fire this week.

An interesting landmark in Kandos is our town clock in the main street.

Autumn might be slow to my garden but the street trees in Kandos are beginning to colour up and dropped their pretty leaves which has nothing to do with this week's book other than they might be vaguely like drops of blood. A book I have read recently This weeks book The Broken Shore by Peter Temple is another unusual selection for me (chosen because it is on the Australian top 50 list).  I think the only crime novels I have read previously are some Agatha Christies many many years ago.  Of course, I have watched crime shows on TV.  This book was just like a TV show with an endearing, quirky cop.  If it was a TV show it would come with a trigger warning "Contains frequent course language and racist slurs" but that didn't bother me.  Temple has a wonderful ear for Australian vernacular, rich visual description and tells a good yarn.

Autumn is still holding it's breath in my gardens so this week I am showing you what else there is to see.  Gerberas were very popular mid-century (perfect for our back-in-time house) and there are quite a lot of them in our Kandos garden.  Quite apart from their simple beauty which I like they have a very long flowering season which also pleases me. I would never have thought to plant them myself so I am very glad the previous owner did.

I could not think of any murals in Kandos then noticed in the local paper that there was a new mural painted by Ester Kasepuu at the Quoll Cafe and Wildflower Lounge. Quolls are a native animal which live locally but I have never seen one - they are nocturnal.  The flowers in the mural are Banksias and Waratahs which I have seen plenty of in the Blue Mountains but not locally at Kandos. Participating in Sami's Monday Mural . A poem for today  Waratah and Wattle by Henry Lawson

It was Palm Sunday today.  After church we went for a drive to Gulgong and I decided to play a game of "spotto" looking for palm trees or donkeys. We saw a few palm trees ranging from big and fat to very tall but I think the winner was this avenue spotted by my husband.  If you look closely you can see the palms go right up the hill to the gum trees at the top. We didn't see any donkeys. I didn't really expect to as this is serious farming land and I think donkeys are only kept as pets these days.  Apparently there are zillions of feral donkeys in the outback, resulting from the days when donkeys were useful pack animals. Reflection: Matthew 21:6-11 New International Version (NIV) "The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the ro

I was pleased to see a new bird at the neighbour's feeding station (which I see from my kitchen window).  It is a Wonga Pigeon, I have not seen this one in our mountain garden before.

Lawson originally started on the other side of the railway line to where most of the shops are today.  These old shops are now Lyttleton Stores the home for organic home grown food and artisan made craft. Nearby is the recently opened Sustain Cafe .  I must confess to not rushing to visit here because I feared the menu would be all quinoa and lentils.  However on this day I popped in and found a lovely welcoming space, a varied menu and lots of environmentally friendly products for sale.

Since I showed the skater mural on Monday I thought it would be good to visit the local skate park as well.

This photo is of the sharps bin outside the health centre.  I chose this specifically for this week's book. A book I read recently Helen Garner's Monkey Grip  is my next book on the Australian list.  I have previously written that I enjoy Garner's work but have been avoiding this one because I wasn't keen on the subject matter - 1970s sex, drugs and share house living.  I watched this lifestyle from the sidelines at work but avoided it myself.  The funny thing is not many years later those that survived the drugs ended up much the same as me -- in middle class nuclear families working our way up the career ladder. The book was well worth reading.  While it is a novel (Garner's first book) it's very autobiographical so a good record of the time.  As a novel it seems plotless (more like a diary) because it is true to life, and real life typically doesn't run to a plot or have neat endings.  A single mum in love (but in an open relationship) with a drug

I know I wrote of whispers of Autumn a few weeks ago.  At Burnbrae garden it is still just humming quietly to itself, not much sign of colour yet, but the little cyclamen under the pine tree have popped up again as they do each year.

I decided to go look for a mural in Lawson so I could join Sami's Monday mural meme .  This is a very long mural along the wall of the railway workshops at Lawson.  There are skaters spinning and jumping along its whole length.  I love to see them as my days of that kind of agility are long gone. A poem for today Youth and Age by Vance Palmer

Honour Avenue, Lawson I went for a walk around Lawson this week for a bit of a photoshoot.  Now I have been complaining recently that Lawson is getting too suburban. There are always lots of cars outside the health centre, but truly, who am I kidding -- this place is nothing like the suburbs.  About a block from anywhere there is bushland, creeks, waterfalls and mountains. Reflection: Hebrews 11:13-16 New International Version (NIV) "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city

I spotted a group of kookaburras at the botanic gardens in Sydney recently.  I don't think of them as city birds but I guess we see or hear their characteristic laugh just about everywhere.

I love this apple set, a wedding gift from the 1970s.  I don't think I have ever used it for its planned purpose.  After languishing in my cupboard for years it now makes a nice vase and light catcher on my kitchen window sill.

Another archive shot from Lue, the old wooden railway bridge.  There are people who fondly think that trains will run again from Lithgow to Mudgee but I understand there are several of these bridges that require expensive upgrades for that to happen.

Railway station, Lue This week we were driving through Lue (pronounced Loo-ee) which is between Mudgee and Kandos/Rylstone.  I remembered the excitement of my first photoshoot there in 2009.  It's hard to get that 'first time seen' energy back so I dug into my archives for this one.  The railway station is part of bygone times.  This week's book is also very much bygone times too. A book I have read recently I have been reading my way through this one for ages. It is a very long (800+ pages),  Middlemarch by George Eliot. Set in Britain in the 1830s, it has interesting characters and insights into the society, occupations, manners and cares of the times. Full of wisdom and beautifully written - no wonder it turns up on all of the lists.  I started this one as an ebook (it was going slowly) but picked up a copy in a second hand bookshop when I was on holiday and romped along happily after that.  This is a book destined to stay on my bookshelf.

Right now the dahlias are in full swing at Rose Orchard Haus.  It is so lovely to have them bloom this year, last year it was too dry.

I love that we have a nice wide view of the sky at Rose Orchard Haus.  The evening sky is such a delight, no two days the same. I read recently that "Writing is the tongue of the mind". I have decided that "Photography is the poetry of the eye". A poem for today The brain is wider than the sk y by Emily Dickinson