Nature

Spring Gardens Down Under

Typical of Australian art is an appreciation of contrasting styles. At Everglades Gardens, it’s mainly European flowers and trees, but at some places in nature, and in botanic gardens, such as at Mount Tomah, you can find stunning native plants, in particular, the waratah, floral symbol for the state of New South Wales.

I first attended the Leura “Everglades Garden” at the behest of my cousin, Esther. We met as a result of family research carried out by my brother, William, who has written a book titled A Little Bit of Irish, in which Esther’s ancestors and mine—they were close back then—figured largely.

Esther is a watercolour artist who lives in the Blue Mountains and who paints landscape scenes from the gardens “en plein air”.

These are two of her lovely prize-winning paintings that she created in the Everglades Gardens this year and entered in the Festival Competition.

“Bluebells with Daffodils-Bluebell Path-Everglades” by Esther McFarlane

I returned by train with my husband to the Blue Mountains in the first weekend of October for the Leura Spring Festival. We viewed the gardens in full bloom.

“Conifer Walk with Bluebells-Everglades” by Esther McFarlane

It takes two hours by train from Sydney, and costs only $2.50 to arrive at the gorgeous village of Leura. There was a Festival bus to take us around the eleven garden sights, all of them privately owned, apart from the Everglades Gardens, which are part of the National Trust. This is a world-renowned garden set against a backdrop of bush and sweeping views. In the middle of it all lies a stunning Art Deco home. It’s a lovely spot to wander, to picnic, or to enjoy a Devonshire tea.

Paul Sorensen designed this European style garden that puts on its best show in spring. Set on over twelve acres and surrounded by natural bush, the garden also has views towards the Jamison valley.

One can imagine early newcomers to Australia in the fifties and sixties, from the Netherlands and other European nations, responding with nostalgia to the beauty of the European style gardens, as well as to the bushland grandeur and the native flowers, such as the waratah and wattle that were in abundance in past years.

Here are some of the photos I took at Everglades while in Leura for the spring Festival.

European flowers and shrubs

Tulips at Everglades

October 17, 2017 0 comment

Mythos Nature

Symbolism of Twins

Some Definitions

Twins can be either monozygotic (“identical”), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two embryos, or dizygotic (“fraternal”), meaning that they develop from two different eggs. In fraternal twins, each twin is fertilized by its own sperm cell.

Spontaneous division of the zygote into two embryos is not considered to be a hereditary trait, but rather a spontaneous and random event. Identical twins are not dependent on race, country or ethnicity. The odds of having identical twins are the same for every couple, in every pregnancy, wherever they live in the world.

As yet, the reason for the occurrence of identical births is unknown. There is, therefore, something mysterious about the occurrence of identical twins. Monozygotic twinning occurs in birthing at a rate of about 3 in every 1000 deliveries worldwide, that is about 0.3 percent of the world population, and is uniformly distributed in all populations around the world.

Identical Twins and Research

Identical twins spend their lives being compared for the benefit of science. They can assist psychologists in untangling the effects of nature versus nurture, or aid speech pathologists in understanding the causes of stuttering. As they share duplicate DNA, as well as the same upbringing, they are generally similar, if not exactly comparable, individuals.

October 2, 2017 0 comment

Mythos Nature Poetry

The earth is sick and in need of salvage

Sick Earth

The earth is sick, its lungs stuffed and
out of puff, its bones brittle near to break
cancer cells spreading throughout its crests
amid tumescent landfill dense as gas
Her womb’s barren as melting ice
all of this oblivious only to the unexamined life

August 21, 2017 2 comments

Australia Nature

Temperature Records Broken in Australia this Weekend

We live near the beach at Coogee, so we are fortunate enough to get a fairly constant sea breeze. But other areas in Western Sydney and in the Western plains were not so lucky. Residents of Richmond on the north-west fringe of Sydney saw the mercury climb to 47 degrees on Saturday, placing the town within less than a degree of the title of global hot spot. Tamworth reached 44C and Moree 46C, while Walgett and Bourke were heading towards a sweltering 47C.

2016-fires-nsw

As soon as you leave the eastern seaboard, temperatures soar in summer. And it’s getting worse. My husband travels by train to Lidcombe to go to work, and he feels the difference as he nears the far western suburbs of Sydney.

We were warned that this weekend past was going to break records. I’d joined a long queue in Harvey Norman store on Friday to purchase an electrical fan for our daughter and her two young boys; most of the inexpensive electric fans in the district were already sold out. The woman in front of me in the queue was buying the same fan—along with dozens of other women—for her daughter.

February 15, 2017 2 comments

Childhood Nature

The Grafton Jacaranda Festival of Yesteryear

I’m remembering the Jacaranda Festivals of my childhood at Grafton in northern New South Wales, with a certain nostalgia. Did such a time of innocence really exist? Is this celebration different today?

Below is a photo from my sister’s album of her, Susan, and our little sister, Jill, folk dancing with school friends at the Grafton Jacaranda Festival in the fifties.

jill-susan-dancing-jacaranda-festival

This annual spring-time celebration begins at the end of October and lasts until the first week in November. It has gone on since nineteen thirty-four, and was the first such folk festival in the country.

The Grafton Jacaranda Festival is in full swing in my hometown as I write this post. It is a spring celebration that is held every year during the first week in November. At this time, the jacaranda trees are in full bloom.

Some childhood memories are golden. Or, in this case, mauve, lilac, purple, and, as Dad once said, “heliotrope”. It’s hard to pin down the actual colour of the flowers that bloom on the jacaranda trees, and form carpets of blossoms on the surface of the roads and avenues. Sometimes they seem lighter hued, mauve in my memory, at other times, darkly purple.

November 7, 2016 6 comments