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

waterfall in Ein Gedii oasis in the Judaean Desert

Nature Poetry

Visiting Ein Gedi

I was drawn to the exotic name Ein Gedi, when coming across it in my brother’s first novel set partly in Israel. Then in a friend’s writing based on a poem by Ted Hughes from “Folktale”, part of Hughes’ collection entitled Capriccio. Hughes refers obliquely to the last of the leopards of Ein Gedi in the following excerpt, which suggests via exotic imagery that he is enslaved by dangerous passions. Hughes is writing here about his fraught relationship with Assia Wevill, a flamboyant European who settled in Israel for a time after the War.

What he wanted
Was the gold, black-lettered pelt
Of the leopard of Ein Gedi.
She wanted only the runaway slave.
(From Folktale by Ted Hughes)

There are still doubts as to whether any of the leopards from the original aristocratic dynasty of leopards that roamed the area still exist. And even whether any leopards at all still roam the wilderness areas of Ein Gedi. I discovered that Hariton the leopard entered kibbutz Ein Gedi twice in earlier years, and was once spotted carrying off in his fangs a house cat, which he later devoured. Apparently at this time there were two leopards left in the Judea Desert, Hariton and a female.

According to a study from Tel Aviv University, altogether there were only eight leopards left in the entire country up until a few years ago. The study, conducted by Inbar Perez in 2006 as part of her degree in zoology, was intended to provide the Nature and Parks Authority with information to help preserve the leopards, which have been in danger of extinction for years. Fewer than 100 leopards are estimated to be left in the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Oman) and in the rest of the region, including Israel, fewer than 50.

Ein Gedi is an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea and one of the most important archaeological sites in the Judean Desert.

The name means Kid Spring: a compound of two Hebrew words: ein meaning spring, and gdi meaning young goat. Ein-Gedi is actually the name of a spring which flows from a height of 656 feet above the Dead Sea. In the Bible, the wasteland near the spring where David sought refuge from Saul is called “the wilderness of Ein-Gedi” and the enclosed camps at the top of the mountains, the “strongholds of Ein Gedi.” Ein Gedi is mentioned for the first time in the Old Testament (Joshua 15, 61) among the list of the six desert-cities in the domain of the tribe of Judas (Yehudah). Wikipedia

Nubian ibex in Ein Gedi Reserve, Israel

Some pictures and photos of Ein Gedi are reminiscent of images I gleaned from biblical references of the Garden of Eden as a child.

September 10, 2016 8 comments

Australia Nature Writing

The Passion of Grandparenting … and of Writing

Like for most things, you can only understand the strong emotions grandparents feel towards their grandchildren once you’ve experienced it.

Some live only for their children and grandchildren. I cannot imagine this. I feel so lucky and priviliged to have my twin passions, my family AND my writing.

I’ve reconnected recently with people from my past, one who told me that he is bored with his life. What about the joys of learning new things, of travel, exploring different places, cultures and scenery? How can anyone be bored when there is so much to do and to see, even in one’s own country, not to mention other places on planet earth?

September 9, 2016 6 comments

Mythos Nature

The Golden Ratio in Nature

I was never interested in mathematics at school, because of the way it was taught; it was seen as a subject for boys in the 50s. Perhaps today, things have changed a bit. In any case, from early on, I was on the creative spectrum, rather than the logical/rational one. Was this a result of nature or nurture? Perhaps a little of both.

Today, however, I’m fascinated by the idea of The Golden Ratio, and its links with mathematics, nature and art. In fact, it also has links with science, architecture, music, and many other areas besides. The golden ratio essentially states that a + b is to a, as a is to b.

$golden-ratio-math$

The Golden ratio is a special number (1.618), found by dividing a line into two parts, so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. It is often symbolized using phi, after the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In an equation form, it looks like this: a/b = (a+b)/a = 1.6180339887498948420

Around 1200, mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci discovered the unique properties of the Fibonacci Sequence. This sequence ties directly into the Golden ratio: if you take any two successive Fibonacci numbers, their ratio is very close to the Golden ratio. As the numbers get higher, the ratio becomes even closer to 1.618. For example, the ratio of 3 to 5 is 1.666. But the ratio of 13 to 21 is 1.625. Getting even higher, the ratio of 144 to 233 is 1.618. These numbers are all successive numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.

Here is a visual representation of a Fibonacci spiral which approximates the golden spiral, using Fibonacci sequence square sizes up to 34. Notice how the lengths get smaller in a spiral pattern.

This spiral pattern is used throughout nature. Many shells, including snail shells and nautilus shells, are perfect examples of the Golden spiral. shell-nautilus

fibonacci-sunflower-centre The seeds of a sunflower, which start in the centre and radiate outwards to fill the space, repeated endlessly, are a perfect example of the Golden Ratio in nature. There are no gaps from beginning to end. Some spiders form their webs in spirals that suggest the repetitive pattern of the golden spiral. And the beautiful designs on the wings of moths and butterflies approximate the golden mean. Similarly, hurricanes often portray the golden spiral. Other examples are roses, spiral galaxies, such as The Milky Way, dolphins, starfish, sea urchins, ants, cauliflowers and honeybees, which all exhibit the fibonacci proportion.

The symbol that has come to represent this ratio is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet phi.

butterfly-beauty

Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Leonardo Pisano or Fibonacci, was an Italian mathematician, born in Pisa about 1175 AD.

Fibonacci popularized the Hindu-Arabic numeral system in the Western World through his Book of Calculation in 1202. In the same publication, he introduced the sequence of Fibonacci numbers to Europe.

Scientists today, have moved away from thinking about such considerations, as they are deemed to belong to an ancient time. Darwinian evolutionary theories, and findings from archaeological diggings are more likely to be of interest to the modern mind, because they are evidence-based.

It still amazes me to see how much order, beauty and patterning exist in the natural world around us. I wonder at the time it took, and the processes at work, to create all of this amazing diversity surrounding us, and of which we are a part. red-rose-spiral-pattern

Photographs on this post have been renewed and resized to fit the new format and theme of my blog. The content remains the same.

August 24, 2016 11 comments

Art Nature

More About The Golden Ratio

The Vitruvian Man is a drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1490. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the architect Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man (Wikipedia).

vitruvian-man

Golden Ratio and Art This drawing is based on the correlations of ideal human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise De Architectura. Vitruvius described the human figure as being the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture. Vitruvius determined that the ideal body should be eight heads high. Leonardo’s drawing is traditionally named in honor of the architect. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man (Wikipedia)

The human body: The measurement of the human navel to the floor and the top of the head to the navel represents the Golden ratio.

In a previous post, “The Golden Ratio In Nature“ I pointed out how this ratio appears in many forms of nature and of science.

August 23, 2016 5 comments

Art Nature

The Golden Ratio in Art and Architecture

Many buildings and artworks reflect the Golden Ratio: the Parthenon in Greece, and many other classical buildings in Europe. But it is not really known if it was designed that way. Some artists and architects believe the Golden Ratio makes the most pleasing and beautiful shapes.

There is a mathematical ratio commonly found in nature—the ratio of 1 to 1.618—that has many names. Most often we call it the Golden Section, Golden Ratio, or Golden Mean, but it’s also occasionally referred to as the Golden Number, Divine Proportion, Golden Proportion, Fibonacci Number, and Phi. Now, a Duke University engineer has found the Golden Ratio to be a compelling springboard to unify vision, thought and movement under a single law of nature’s design.

August 22, 2016 0 comment

Nature

Some Definitions

Identical Twins and Research

Sick Earth

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Like for most things, you can only understand the strong emotions grandparents feel towards their grandchildren once you’ve experienced it.