Have a look in the post previously sent for a full explanation of these photos. Spring sure is here down under ...I nearly walked through this swarm when I took our doggie out under our mulberry trees for a play. Glad I didn't : )
 

These photos were taken a week ago out under our Mulberry trees which are in full fruit right now. The weight of this massive swarm of bees was enough to weigh the whole branch down to the ground. They stayed there for about half the day. I first spotted tham at 6am...and they were gone by 11.30ao. They left no damage at all to the branch.

We noticed that the swarm seemed to be settled in a sort of twisting spiral pattern and seemed to be vaery docile.

A friend in the US sent these to a friend of his who is a retired beekeeper...this is her response,
"As a former beekeeper, having picked up many swarms (that is how we got started with bees) I noticed those little white flecks on the leaves at the top of the swarm in the first photos. Those flecks are beeswax. You may know that when the bees are getting ready to swarm they fill up on honey to have a start in their new home, and wax production is involuntary when they are full; in fact, in the hive, certain bees are "assigned" the wax production job and they hang in one spot and other bees feed them to make sure they are always full, and still other young bees take the wax away off their plates and use it to build comb. It takes twelve pounds of honey to make one pound of comb.This huge swarm is from a tremendous hive. You can tell because when they swarm they take the old queen and half the hive. Wow! Thanks for sharing these, brings back many memories."

End quite.

Aint Nature grand...gets along happily without our input! 

baby laughing

I defy you not to laugh out loud or even just a smile : )

Laughing Babies

The world has enough of its troubles so here's a happy something. These are Quads! There's one maverick thumbsucker on the left hand side...

The Lift

The Lift.

He was used to taking charge. Buttoning up his suit coat, he elbowed through the other three and opened up the emergency phone case, fifty floors up.
“Hello! Hello!”

He waited looking above the heads of the small herd around him,
“Come on, come on. I’ve got a meeting to go to and they can’t start without me.” he shouted down the mouthpiece of the phone.

Thrusting out his arm to look once again at the face of his shiny Rolex his elbow connected with the back of a very red head.

“Ow!” the tall red head girl yelled. She stumbled backwards and fell into the other two all heels and skirts. A sharp crack was heard.
“My arm! Oh! My arm’s broken…” she sucked in her breath and exhaled with a pitiful sob,
“It hurts, it hurts so much.”


A dark nuggetty man stepped over her and spun the Health Minister around. He jabbed a calloused hand onto the Minister’s chest,
“Whatsa matta wiva you mate? Look a watta you done to my girl a friend. You bloody broka her arm. I’m a gonna breaka you bloody face hey! Hey! Repeatedly jabbing his finger near his face.
“We all know who you are an a we gonna sue your pants right offa you okay!”

The Health Minister, face steeled impassively turned and regarded the three occupants of the stuck lift. Not seeing anyone he judged of any importance or relevance he turned to the dark man and softly snarled,
“Listen Luigi, you touch me again and I’ll have your greasy face thrown so far in prison your cheap whore’ll be a grey old crone when you surface – get that olive oil!”

He looked back over his shoulder at the fourth occupant and tried a smile which he hoped would disarm her and show her he was really very civilised. Seeing his bared teeth and the strange grimace on his face she jumped back a step.
“No worries there” he thought judging her to be a faded timid nondescript old woman.

He played his hands out like a prophet and said in a deep sonorous voice used to giving orders,
“Just everyone calm down. They’ll be already looking for me.”

“Are you really the Health Minister?” the old faded woman asked softly.
He stretched himself up like a lizard in the sun,
“I am that Minister madam, the Federal Health Minister to be precise” and smiled that same reptilian grimace.

She nodded quietly and looked away. The redhead was still sobbing and the Minister hoping to retrieve something from the situation and maybe even grab some positive headlines, bent down to help her up to her feet.

He grabbed the wrong arm.

She screamed, “Roberto, Roberto he’s killing me, he’s hurting me”
Roberto passionate with hatred at the “Luigi” tag spun the Health Minister around and “thunk, thunk, thunk!” three solid punches to his guts. The Health Minister doubled over and crawled into the other corner. He extended his right arm straight at Roberto and nodded to the small gun it held.

Everyone stopped moving.

The lift started moving.

The old faded woman moved to the front of the lift and pressed Ground floor and then the lowest basement. The lift descended rapidly to Ground.

She stood in front of the Health Minister’s gun and indicated to Roberto and his girlfriend to get out, which they did with sobs and thankyous. The doors closed and the lift descended to Lower basement.

The Minister smiled deprecatingly,
“Why thank you madam. I didn’t really want to have to use this. It was just a precaution. Someone in my situation…well you know with all this terrorism and that, and a Health Minister is never very well loved.”

“It can’t be easy,” she murmured.

“Well no it isn’t. I could be earning millions out in the private sector with my talents.” He drew himself up as high as he could and tried his best to look down on her…

“Mmmm I have had wads of job offers from Health Insurers and private hospital chains. And only the other day one of the big four banks offered me a top spot, by way of thanks…er” he stopped babbling.

“What’s the matter with me?” he thought to himself. “Why on earth did I let that out

.
.
“You are that Health Minister, the Federal Health Minister?” She asked.

“I am madam. I am that Minister and very close to the Prime Minister.” Wondering would she ask for his autograph soon. It wouldn’t do to offer it without being asked. The faded old woman smiled gently at him as the lift stopped and the doors open. She fumbled in her bag and almost dropped it on the floor as she got out.

“Stupid clumsy old cow” he thought. He pressed floor fifty- four.

The doors began to close. An old hand appeared briefly in the space between the doors. A grenade dropped softly onto the carpeted floor of the lift and the doors shut
firmly.

“Now you will be late for your meeting Mr Federal Health Minister”

She chuckled softly as shuffled along to her r old Hillman. “But not late for your own funeral you cost cutting privateer.” Mr Minister’s Government had privatised maintenance and security in all its buildings, schools, trains and hospitals as per the World Bank’s requirement and the business of making a profit made cost cutting the order of the day. Mr Federal Health Minister had been a most enthusiastic supporter

“Good onya Beryl. We knew you could do it. Now who’s the next hard hearted greedy bastard on the list Henry?” Beryl settled with a bit of a rustle and re arranging of clothes. Three pairs of wrinkled hands reached out to gently pat her on the back.

“Hm, well now let me see, that’d be the State Transport Minister wouldn’t it Horrie?
The little car cautiously poked its nose out onto Pitt Street and a chorus of “It’s a long way to Tipperary” from its interior made the people on the street smile.

A soft thud was barely heard from inside the huge building. It was barely heard from the opulent boardroom up in the sky, where the meeting was progressing happily. Only Roberto and the redhead heard anything, as the lift exploded just below where they were standing near the ground floor lift doors.

It was Friday afternoon and as the four working lifts sped up and down emptying the building for the weekend, nobody queried why lift number five wasn’t working. Nobody had answered Mr Minister’s earlier emergency phone call .

These days sometimes they didn’t get round to it.

Just a thought or two.

Some mornings the dawn chorus around our place is an amazing thing to wake up to. I lie in bed looking out and Kookaburras fly through the branches outside the big glass door. I leave this door always a bit open so I can hear the birds and the morning sounds  and so I can breathe the sweet cool air and feel a bit more in touch with, a part of life.

The Butcher Bird’s song is such a pure melody unable to be copied by all the skills of humankind. Ours is just to listen and realise.

Realise what?

When I wake up like this in the greyness and hear the Magpies carolling along to each other I realise my insignificance in all of this and also my significance.

Before man was, Magpies yodelled about in the trees and scratched about teaching their young the intricate game of survival. Whether we were here or not means nothing to the Magpie, the Kookaburra or the Butcher Bird. Over the ages mankind of many colours and races has lived on this ancient land and faded in and out like the shadow paintings of the “Bradshaw Type” of the Kimberleys. (http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/bradshaws/main.html )

These rock paintings feature tall elegant figures with complicated headdresses. Their vibrancy belies the extreme age of these echoes of a lost people. In a way they still appear to live adorned with clothing and other accoutrements unknown to the Aboriginal tribes who later inhabited the land.

Even those few, still genuine tribal Aborigines from the area have no idea who painted these enigmatic paintings, so much so that early pioneers reported that most of them could not even see the paintings because they were outside of their “seeing”. Once they were traced out with a finger they were amazed and could see them for the first time.

The old tribal medicine people knew they were there but didn’t claim them as belonging to their dreamtime and placed no value upon them at all.
“From before. From before.” was their reply.

The Bradshaw people whose rich life is depicted on a myriad of rock faces faded out and no one knows who these lost people were, all they left were these shadows of their presence.

But the Magpies, Kookaburras and Butcher Birds sang the same dawn chorus to them, then to the Aborigines, to us now and to whoever comes along, away and on out into time. People just like myself laid half asleep in the early greyness and listened to what is still being heard today. They lived well over 50,000 years ago and no doubt humankind listened to these sounds and wondered for as long as we have walked on earth.

So I am hearing what they heard and my descendants if they are here, and if I am blessed with descendants a thousand years hence, will hear the same.

These sounds are so familiar, so friendly and so much a part of my world; a world I am as bound to as were and are any others. But the Magpie, Kookaburra and Butcher Bird, they are out of time, so to speak.

No clock marks out their days, just dawn, day, twilight and night. Just heat, cool, cold, wind rain and fire. Just birth, living, breeding, nurturing and death.  And singing. Singing.

What would this world be like without their songs?

And yet some Maggies choose to befriend us and seem so curious that it seems they like to be around us. Some Kookaburras really do seem to be laughing at us and regarding us with a sarcastic eye as we plod about in our downward and inward looking ways. Some Butcher Birds do seem to like sitting in the branches, not across the paddock, but right outside the window and sing songs of such a purity and melody as to stir the soul to wonder.

Maybe these things are meant to be this way and not understood, just beheld. Its all the same to the Magpie, Kookaburra and the Butcher bird after all. And maybe my ignorance of ornithology is clear to “bird- knowers” as I have no idea at all if the Magpie, Kookaburra and Butcher Bird inhabit the hot lands of the Kimberelys, but who is to say they didn’t once…and who cares at all, not them that’s for bloody sure.

( This site contains short audio of most Australian birds http://abc.net.au/archives/av/birds.htm )

I am a bit stuck on

I am a bit stuck on family nostalgia just for the moment... This is a photo of my Mother, my youngest sister who is now 42 , myself and Don's and my new baby Melissa... and Jackie's doggie Scamper who seems mightily interested in baby Melissa.Taken 32 years ago I remember this day as if it were yesterday.Mum was about 6 years younger than what I am today... how quickly times flies.My sister Jackie (Anne) was just a little 9 year old and wrapped in the new family baby. She is nearly 42 now and with 3 kids of her own.Mum died in 1993 aged 65...I am now 52 and she dosn't seem so old to me these days.In this photo she was only 47. Some lovely memories here of a slower time. (See below)

 

I tried to attach these photos to the story below but they got lost somewhere...


I was thinking strongly about my amazing mother tonight and missing her still after all these years...


she was mainly a happy tolerant soul with a great compassion for all sad and lost souls.

I took this not too long before she died in 1993.
The child in her was there always and I am so very lucky... under any other regeime I would not have flourished as I was able to do...

but this child had a very hard row to how...lucky she was unaware at this time...
My Mum loved my daughters and they loved and still honour her with those memories.

My Irish Type Mothe

My Irish - Type Mother

I lie inside my Mothers soul, and hers lies inside of me.
All through nine months, the heartbeat was heard. And through our shared pain, my life became. Every breath I drew on, nurtured breast to mouth.

Held safe.

In years of falls, scabs, illnesses, learning to talk…and talk and laugh and sing and understand. The tomes of things shown; learning compassion; the Age of Reason, devilment, mimicry and satire; family, and keeping up with all of us -
all mainly from my Mother.

It would have seemed a dry old, cold world without her.
It doesn't seem this way now she's gone on, because she showed the way to be - - free - inside.

There don't seem to be many older people about,
Who've kept the child in their heart, but not become childish. This is wisdom. My Mother was very wise and laughed a lot over little things, over little people, and just when she told stories, her telling was with laughter.

I never will forget her laughter, and her way of twinkling. Not all the time, either as like many Irish, she had her own demons to contend with, and waves of sadness would sweep over her at times; as they do with me sometimes. But hers appeared to possess her and she would disappear inside herself for weeks and become this tiny old sad lady, and the plea would be behind her eyes, to "Help Me! I don't want to be like this." This was really hard to bear, but as she'd say after the episodes were over, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger."

She could really drain your energy when she was like this, and this became like a 'Catch 22' situation, because her need seemed so intense at the time as if she needed the extra strength to get through, and I didn't always have the strength to spare. She knew she did this and when okay she hated being like this.

But in the measure of her life all sixty five years, such a little percentage of her life was like this, so much so that in the balance it can be negated as being less relevant than the time the rest of us waste watching quiz shows, something she never did. TV held almost no attraction for her, It was turned on to watch a movie, and then off it went. No mindless dazedness just passing the whole night by three hundred and sixty five, in front of the hypnotic flicker of today's madness.

What dwells with me now is the cool damp feeling of her skin one day when I recall kissing her, just after she had come out of the shower. What stays with me is the smells of shampoo and soap, and clean. Sometimes, not all that often these days, but still sometimes I feel as if my heart is hurting, physically, and that it is being pulled open inside my chest, and for a little while I have a few tears, nothing unnatural, nothing I can't handle, because she left me knowing inside how to deal with these things.

The lessons, that weren't lessons sunk in. Nothing was by rote, no real hard and fast rules, just the way...the way to be. To do the right thing just because it was the right thing to do, no other reason.

This is what we would have missed out on and the hole left in our little family would have been a darkness.



May those social engineers rot in hell and no, I can not ever forgive them ever, because I have been in touch with those who did not find their babies as I did... and these mothers are still inconsolable.
Melissa with her littlel sister Alison...bombs away!





















And again with her baby sister with who she shares a bond which is now unbreakable... that would also have been destroyed.

And here - her own true self. We didn't have much at all...but we had so much fun and so much laughter and she was a big part of that.









And no , on this her 32nd birthday I can never forgive them and I know who I am refferring to... They did know what they were doing and they deserve to be in jail for that.

Happy 32nd Birthday our lovely Melissa Jane Cleopatra (the Cleopatra was her choice at Confirmation time...and yes...for the catholics out there there was a Saint Cleopatra!).

She turns 32 today...yep September 11th...but she was born long before it became something to remark upon. When she was born I was unmarried...but Don and I were a couple. It was 1974 in Newcastle (NSW Australia ) hospital. When she was born she was taken away from me and all that afternoon I searched the hospital for her.

True to my nature I caused a bit of mayhem because Don and I wanted our baby. For our family babies were the true wealth and Mum had always told me this .

Finally after 6 hours of agitating I found her on the floor above in the area reserved for "sick" babies. When I got there the nurse said to me, "we were wondering why this baby was here...there is nothing wrong with her". I fed her and was allowed to take her down with me to the ward.

They left me alone after that.

Years later I was to learn that it was "policy" in Newcastle hospital to try and seperate babies from unmarried mothers and babies. Plenty of people wanted healthy babies. Bastards! This hospital was known as one of the worst for this abuse.

And here we are 32 years later... all those wonderful years knowing our daughter. Such a time...such a life we have had...all the fun and laughter and devilment... her differences...her beauty, her god heart and soul...all of this would have been stolen, kidnapped from her rightful parents if we had been less assertive...

It breaks my heart to think on this and I am so very grateful that it all was as it should have been.

The "authorities" may they all rot in hell and if they are dead I would gladly spit on their sodding graves for the awful damage they have done or intnded to do. 

In Australia we call this a "Queenslander"Room. Ours was begun in March and dribbled on for a few months...and was nearly ready for use when Council decided the floor had to be dug up because of shoddy worl by a plumber we had who was a raging alcoholic and left work undone under wads of concrete...HMMM...we paid of course as you do.

This addition has made our house just lovely. It was a bit small in places and the furniture didn't have a real home as we need to have a lot of turning room for the wheelchair inside... I am a bit wierd...I just go out there and look at it and sigh... but am not in the habit of really using it yet..., maybe as the weather warms up and before it gets too hot!

Its just bewdiful.
 

The contents of this cupboard are my pride and joy...and some people think my shame...Humph! If there was ever a housefire or bush fire, the contents of this cupboard would be put in the van well before the humans, and just after the dog and cat. (maybe!) I was asked the other dau how many of these precious objects I had in this cupboard and I mumbled 50.

I was asked "You mean the little ones not the ones with take 300 don't you?"

"Nope... my 50 objects all contain 300."

My 50 big photo albums are my treasure and just knowing they are there makes me feel alls right with the owrld, although i do know its not...

I too can have my small dreams.

I have just started number 51 and there is no more room left in this cupboard and I am stumped...do I buy a bigger cupboard or have them in "stereo"? If I get a bigger one or another the same this will mean that Don can never exit or enter this part of the house in his wheelchair.

Then I ask myself " what are my priorities"?

Haven't figured it out yet. 

Have a closer look at these photos of the sky at our place... the first two taken last weekend...the last two taken a couple of onths ago. The long straight lines are not "contrails" as they would have us believe...any fool can see that. These are below the level of the jest which fly between Brisbane and Sydney. Contrails also do not fan out in multiples and cover the whole sky in a dirty looking thready "cloudlike" (Ha as if) fabric.

But these first two are more disturbing because of the horizontal series of "ridges" in the centre...these I believe are caused by Haarp or Scalar waves...

Every singll time these things happen we both come down with sore throats...without exception...and No Charlie...I know you attract nutters... but we have shown these to a friend who used to be a pilot on the 747 and he said they are not contrails, nothing like them.

These are called Chemtrails. They are now worldwide having started in the US and China!!!

In this there are 2 visible ones...One thin one closest to the horizon and one now dissapating above it and under the ordinary clouds...


Here they are again.

Have a look at www.carnicom.com and you willsee these same things worldwide.

Then try to ring your local airforce base and get someone to answer you.

This is now Australia wide...our little airforce doesn't have that many planes...so who's bloody planes are doing this shit? 

This one is a beauty...its of Lake Manapouri Sth island new Zealand... 

Some more photos of my sister and her little family down almost on the very tip of the South Island of New Zealand near where they live


 

These are some photos of my youngest sister's lovely kiddies.

I've been reading some excellent blogs today and some of them are so strong and needed because of whats going on in the world today. I am greatful for them and hope that they continue...better to know than not know I reckon. I was going to write about things that have been going on down under in the same vein, but right now haven't got the heart for it.

I was looking at a DVD of photos my sister sent to me of her family and where they live... and thought to post some of these...after all its this generation who nee need to be looking out for...they have at present no say at all in how things are being done, but it is they who will pay the price or reap the benefits. I hope its the latter but not optimistic.

This little girl (the older one) has my heart. She is such an individual and loves her little brother to death. He by the look in his eye is going to need that love I think.



Too good looking for his own good, poor little bugger.


A very tasty and chubby morsel.
















This is the middle sister who is the one who makes sure he doesn't get it easy. Oh well I am also a middle child and know how important a job she is doing. : ) 

I just cannot help myself. maybe I am bad to the bone...yes thats it...bad as! One of my borther inlaws was telling me a story about a converstaion he had had with my sister...(not his wife) another sister... the sister- that sister! The Social worker sister!...

Sometime back in a gathering he had said, without putting himself down...just in conversation "I'm just a bus driver." which he was. And happy about it...no self esteem problems there!

She looked at him with full, concerned blue eyes and said seriously and with "compassion",
"No Bruce, you are not just a busdriver. You are the bus driver"

We guffawed a bit...I mean what do they teach these flibbertigibberts?

When I told Don we both fell about laughing. You mean to say I am not just a "useless bloody cripple" I am "the useless bloody cripple"?

And I said "Right you are son!" as I scrapped of yet some more of his dinner off the walls... beating the wonder dog Thorn to it...he is getting a little chubby!

And I am not just a boring old hausfrau...I am "the boring old hausfrau" and proud of it.

The Crocodile Man - Steve Irwin was killed today by a large Stingray.

I am genuinely sad. He was so much himself and made me laugh because he reminded me of how I felt at about 7...all full of sillinesss, and common sense and questions and knocking everything over...

Most Australians will find this unbelievable because of his, (what can i call it) ...he was a great tall tale teller and character, and people liked him because he was bigger than all the shit the politically correct tried to dump on his head- even accusing him of endangering his wife (pictured) and his little girl Bindi... she is a great little kid and not glued to the TV and shopping centre... {bugger I think I am going to cry} :(

When I think of all the bloody bastards who get to live long lives I want to spit.

I will be back posting by the end of this week... the past weeks seem to have been too full... you start to go a bit crazy if you don't have down time... which is doing what you like doing... I just came accross this old 1974 photo of Don 23 and myself 20 with our new baby Melissa in my mum's lovely old backyard... its be "interesting" (I must be crazy! ) But there has been more good than bad... and thats better than 3/4 of the rest of the world has it so hey... but glad we don't know whats coming along.

Melissa turns 32 next monday! 

Does anyone know how to upload DVD content to this blog? LIke whenI insert the DvD how do I allow certain segments of it to be entered to this blog?????