Floral Friday: Brugmansia suaveolens

Posted on February 21, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist
© irene waters

© irene waters

Angels trumpets hang

Sweet fragrance hides its poison

toxic leaves, seeds: death

Posted in Floral Friday, haiku, photography | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments

Looking Up, Looking Down: Fraser Island (Week 27)

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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Looking down – on Fraser Island,  the largest sand island in the world. It was World Heritage listed  for both its rich cultural and natural heritage in 1992. Pure strain dingos in the wild are still found here on this exceptionally beautiful island. There are over 100 freshwater lakes (both barrage and dune lakes) bordered by rainforest. It is the only place in the world that has rainforest growing on sand at elevations over 200 metres. Taking all these factors along with the knowledge of creeks and beautiful long beaches into account when we saw the plane sitting on the beach there was definitely no decision to be made as to whether or not we would take a trip.

Some interesting facts about Fraser Island

It has continually recorded climatic and sea level changes for the last 700,000 years and these changes can be seen in the massive sand deposits.

It has wallum heaths of ecological significance (and great flowers in spring and summer)

Over 350 bird species are found on the island.

The sand continues to infiltrate the island moving westward at 8 kilometres per year. Some of the grains of sand come from as far away as Antarctica.

Eliza Fraser was shipwrecked on the island and it was named after her.

The indigenous K’gari aborigines inhabited the land and did not suffer well with the advent of the Europeans.

The Ely river is great fun body surfing from upstream back to the beach. I highly recommend this.

The highest sand dunes on the island are up to 240 metres above sea level. 4o perched dune lakes (1/2 the number in the world) are found on the island.

On our return we wandered through the rainforest looking up at the huge satinay trees growing in the sand and then later looked up again to see the plane as it came in to land.

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http://travelwithintent.com/2014/02/19/adore-and-endure/

Posted in Look up Look Down, photography, travel | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

A Lingering Look at Windows: Wk 8 : Transport

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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Windows –  train, plane, boat

bus, car, ferry  and house boat

offer protection

Posted in A Lingering Look at Windows, haiku, photography | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

The Liebster Award

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

2014-liebster-awardI am honoured to accept the Liebster Award nominated by Lita from

http://litadoolan.net/2014/02/13/liebster-award/

Lita is new to the blogging world and describes herself as “Emerging Writer, busy emerging.” Although Lita may be emerging in the blogging world I would say she has emerged in the world of theatre both writing and producing plays, with wonderful names such as “Dad sold our house on ebay.” Lita is making herself known in the blogging world as well with her visits and comments.

The Liebster Award originated in Germany with the earliest record of it being found in 2010. It is an internet award given by a blogger to a blogger. The meaning of liebster is dearest, sweetest, kindest, nicest, beloved, lovely, kind, valued, pleasant, cute, welcome, sweetheart, endearing; all terms which I would be happy to have associated with me.

The nominee can either accept or not however the benefits to the blogger far outweigh the time taken to fulfil the requirements. I for one love awards and enjoy getting to know other bloggers that have not come across my path in the normal course of events. Already I have found a site that I really enjoy from Lita’s list of nominees.

The original rules stipulated that the award was to be passed on to bloggers with less than 3,000 followers but variation has been made over time to the rules and in 2014 I have managed to find instructions which have the number of followers to vary from 200 to 1000. The rules Lita sent me said 200 but as at the time she nominated me I had 246 followers I am going to alter the rules myself and change it to 300.

The really nice thing about the Leibster Award is that it is an award designed to find/recognise new bloggers and welcome them to the world of blogging. A little like taking your basket of scones and going across the street to welcome your new neighbour. It is a really nice thing to do. So thank you Lita for your welcome and welcome in return.

The rules

Thank the person who nominated you and link to their blog

(2) You must answer the 10 questions given to you by the nominee before you.

(3) Nominate 10 of your favorite blogs with fewer than 200 followers and notify them of their nomination.

(4) Come up with 10 questions for your nominees to answer.

 

The 10 Questions I was asked:

(1) What is your favourite building to look at?  

The Alhambra in Granada Spain. I love Moorish architecture and this building, built in the 1300s, is a great example.

(2) Is there a city that has changed you in some way (if so which one)?

New York. I fell off the kitchen table when I was about 18 months old and bear the scar on my forehead.  My presence in New York permanently changed me.

(3) On a day off what museum or gallery would you visit?

Georgia O’Keefe museum in Santa Fe because I am quite taken with her art and also I love desert landscapes. To my knowledge this is the only museum dedicated to a female artist.

(4) If you were putting a raft together to survive the floods what would be your secret building material (it can be crazy or practical)?

If I had to build a raft at my house knowing what I have around I think that pool noodles would be the way to go. These can be tied together with whatever I can find first string, pantyhose or whipper snipper cord. Possibly a use for the hundreds of sparkling mineral water bottles that are in the recycling bin also.

(5) If food had no calories what would you fill your table and plate with?

Most definitely biscuits, desserts, and chocolates. I’m assuming no calories also means that you won’t get sick from overeating.

(6) What is your favorite method of transport?

Shank’s pony

(7) Do you remember the first time you smiled and around what age were you?

No I don’t remember. Probably quite young as I was a happy baby. Probably the first time I was conscious of a smile (its just not something I ever really thought about) was when I was in a Peter Pan musical at around 4 years of age and we had to sing “Never smile at  crocodile, never tip your hat and stop to talk awhile ……” and our instructions were to smile and then stop smiling.

(8) What (who or where) inspires your writing? I have always written. I don’t know that anyone inspires me although there have been some very encouraging people in my life. I love reading some of the literary greats and other superb writers but they don’t inspire me – I know I will never be able to write like them (although I’d love to) but they have their voice and I have mine.

(9) What is your favourite body of water (ocean, pool, spa…)?

To look at probably a river followed by the ocean. To swim in most definitely a pool.

 

(10) What advice would you give to your younger self (fun, fictional or factual)?

Chill out.

My Nominees  (are all fairly new to the blogging world)

http://milankasfinefood.wordpress.com/

http://snapshotsofawanderingheart.wordpress.com/

http://carojesu.wordpress.com/

http://yuktakher.wordpress.com/

http://paradiseofstrangers.wordpress.com/

http://upasnamattoo.wordpress.com/

http://l6mmelehtofnettleweed.wordpress.com/

http://101challenges1001days.wordpress.com/

http://lizard100blog.wordpress.com/

http://writinghome.me/

 

The questions I am asking my nominees.

1) When did you start writing in general?

2) Why did you start this blog

3) What is one of your talents?

4)What is a great memory from your past

5) What is your favourite season of the year?

6) What makes you smile?

7) What do you think about the self-publishing vs. traditional publishing debate?

8) What do you think the future of books is?

9) If you have some spare time, what do you do?

10) Are you a planner or are you spontaneous?

Posted in Awards | Tagged , | 22 Comments

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Orange

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

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Orange: Can be found all through nature. The red centre of Australia is often orange depending on the light. The animals that frequent this landscape although called  red kangaroos are in reality often more orange than red. Timber can also be orange particularly if the light hits it in a certain fashion and the dog lying at the top of the stairs is orange despite being described as tan. The pumpkin carved for halloween is definitely orange and the sediments found in the crystal lakes in the geothermal region of New Zealand are also orange. Of course there are many orange flowers and these can be seen in the bougainvillea nursery. Some sunsets are orange and orange used to be my favourite dress colour.

Hot, healthy, fruity

orange is extroverted

the hue of power

 

http://ceenphotography.com/2014/02/18/cees-fun-foto-challenge-the-color-orange/

Posted in Cee's Fun Foto Challenge, haiku, photography | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

Wordless Wednesday: 19th February 2014

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist
© irene waters

© irene waters

Posted in photography, Wordless Wednesday | Tagged , | 4 Comments

My cannibal ancestors

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

I mentioned in my post
https://irenewaters19.com/2014/01/18/weekly-photo-challenge-families/
that I enjoyed the stories that made the family real whereby my brother was interested in ancestory going back way past that whereby the people can become known as living flesh and blood characters. I am starting to revise my thoughts as I am finding his post (Mitochrondral Eve and his other origin blogs) fascinating. But this one….. not only do we have a bigamist in the family but we were also cannibals.

colinmathers's avatarMountains and rivers

The tale of how a Scottish Mathers killed and ate one of his enemies was discovered by my father when he was reading a Scottish novel from his Uncle John’s library (John Melrose  Mathers 1889-1975). He took great delight in the idea that the medieval Scottish ancestors of the Mathers family had been cannibals. The novel, Cloud Howe, by Lewis Grassic Gibbon was published by Jarrolds, of London, in July 1933. It was the middle novel in a trilogy A Scots Quair, the others were Sunset Song and Grey Granite.

In the Proem to Cloud Howe, Gibbon recounts the history of the village of Segget, which stands under the Mounth, on the southern side, in the Mearns Howe, near Fordoun and Drumlithie. The Mearns was the Gaelic name for Kincardineshire (from A’ Mhaoirne meaning ‘The Stewartry’). Gibbon tells how Hew Monte Alto, a Lombard with…

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Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Weekly Writing Challenge: Sounds of Silence

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist

We are always aware of the silence when visitors depart but in the normal course of daily events it goes unnoticed. Visitors make us aware that perhaps we are not quite normal. Everyone expresses surprise that we don’t eat breakfast together. I am more surprised that people even want to eat and start conversing at that time of the morning. Certainly I enjoy going out for breakfast –  but at 1030 or 11 am. Have it double up as lunch. Being an early riser I have the benefit of even more time to myself, in the silence of my thoughts.

In Australia there is no such thing as silence with the clicking of the geckos, the hum of the cicadas, the ribbit of the frogs, the chirping of the birds and the rustle of the breeze in the trees. Aside from the wildlife and natural noises our house is full of its own sounds, the constant drone from the fish tank pumps, the plop of the air bubble exploding on the surface of the water which in turns sends out ripples which splash on hitting the side of the aquarium. Then there is the fridge cutting in and out as the motor operates to keep the inside temperature at its ideal and the cuckoo clock. When I take the dog for his last walk around 10pm and the street is in darkness and, apart from the creatures of the night,the silence is absolute I can hear our cuckoo clock up and down our entire block. I wonder how much the neighbours must hate us for breaking the silence or whether like us they simply don’t hear it.

All these sounds are white noise to us. Our normal backdrop. Silence is the absence of human voice whether it be from the radio, television or sitting opposite you at the table. Everyday we have this silence, unless we have visitors.

In Vanuatu, in our house, we thought we had absolute silence. There were no tweety birds, no traffic, no Australian wildlife. Any birds or wildlife on the island had been eaten and were now rarely seen and less frequently heard. We enjoyed our silence, as silence in Australia can be deafening, until one day a guest told us that they couldn’t sleep for the noise. “What noise?”

“The sound of the sea breaking on the coral reef is so loud” was his response “I’m used to the traffic and the noise of the city but this constant crash just drove me mad.”

We did have an Australian style silence on the farm when we returned to Australia but perhaps a bit too much silence. Most days everyday. Radio National became our company and we listened to it frequently. Unfortunately we often had power outages and periods of total silence. We grew to feel that we could be the last people on the planet and we wouldn’t know it. The silence forced our move when I started work in a town seventy-five kilometres distinct and left my husband to suffer the silence alone.

There was no silence at the shop and we looked forward to our move to our house by the river to gain some solitude. We had no neighbours at our town house as  we had an empty house beside us and then a park. Never again will we live on a river near a park as voices will interrupt your silence at unexpected moments, cutting like a knife through the air. It unnerved us to such an extent that we packed our bags and moved to acreage outside town. That was silent as is living here behind our wall. Until we have visitors.

When visitors come they fall into one of two categories. Those that talk a lot, incessantly almost. These people are usually folk who are naturally talkers but live alone  and once with an audience cannot stop chattering. For me that is exhausting as my husband and I only talk when we have something to say, usually sit in different rooms for breakfast, silent as we read newspapers and books, peruse the computer, write, do our own chores and even our first dog walk is often done in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts. It is a companionable silence and we are both comfortable with it.

The other type of visitor we get is the self-sufficient visitor who takes themselves off and doesn’t expect us to entertain them 24 hours a day. Even this type of visitor however still wants to share all meals with us. Dinner is always fun. Lunch too can be good but breakfast. My husband disappears. He has his time alone hidden in his cocoon of silence whilst I have to smile, converse and become increasingly angry with him, jealous of his quiet time and annoyed that he doesn’t suffer as well.

Don’t get me wrong. We love having visitors and welcome them with open arms, but a change to my morning routine is a sufferance and I dream of the return to it as silence truly is golden.

 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/the-sound-of-silence/

  1. The Sound of Silence | Through the Peacock’s Eyes
  2. Listen to the silence | Master Of Disaster
  3. Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound of Silence | JGTravels
  4. Eight Things I Wish I Knew Before I Taught at a Boarding School | Kosher Adobo
  5. The Sounds of Silence* | Icescreammama
  6. underwood | yi-ching lin photography
  7. Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound of Silence | Under the Monkey Tree
  8. Moments | anonim0us
  9. Moments | anonim0us
  10. Silent Agony | Broken Light: A Photography Collective
  11. Silent crimes | Speaking Voiceless
  12. The Sound of Silence is a beautiful thing | Amanda Montomery
  13. Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound of Silence | A mom’s blog
  14. Hug Her Back | Fish Of Gold
  15. Media Blackouts Insult My Intelligence | Bumblepuppies
  16. As Loud as Silence | Chimerical Chicanery
  17. Unspeakable | Musings of a Soul Eclectic
  18. Aborted Words | The Backwords
  19. Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound of Silence | carojesu
  20. yesterday’s snow lets | y
  21. A SILENT SONG | Diary of a mind
  22. A Common Baby Myth: Babies Should Sleep in Silence.. Ssshhh! | Peek-a-boo: Baby and You!
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  24. Never Give Up, Never Give In: My Epiphany! | Hope and Faith
  25. Brady’s Silence (explicit) | Stories From My Mind
  26. Coyote Hill | The Seminary of Praying Mantis
  27. A Silence Louder Than Words | snapshotsofawanderingheart
  28. Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound of Silence | Tales from the Motherland
  29. When The Silence Almost Deafens You | Unload and Unwind
  30. Classy Broad
  31. The Day I Found My Voice | A Path of Living Stones
  32. When you said “Nobody loves you” | So Not Simple
  33. Finding what you didn’t know you were looking for… | Crap I Blog About
  34. WWC: The Sound of Silence | Learning the Anishinaabe Way
  35. Who Said So? | Buzzy Beez
  36. Silence challenge | knovak616
  37. The Silence Welcomes Me | StormieSteele
  38. Weekly Writing Challenge: Have you seen me? | Life of A Fallen Angel
  39. Silence | Perspectives on life, universe and everything
  40. The Things We Don’t Say | A Sign Of Life
  41. Breaking The Sound Of Silence | At least we made it this far…
  42. In the silence of a word | MC’s Whispers
  43. From Silence Came Wisdom | Lifeinpawprints’s Weblog
  44. Blog challenge – The sound of silence « Defy The Narrative
  45. Could the end of ‘that time of the month’ be related to that time of the year? | Minnesota Transplant
  46. Weekly Writing Challenge: The Sound of Silence | Echoes of My Past
  47. Good Grief | Wittyburg.com
  48. silence and snow | from dreams to plans
Posted in Daily Post prompt and challenges, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 28 Comments

Sunday Stills: the next challenge: snacks (then and now)

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist
© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

I’ve never been a great cook. In fact, I’ve never been a cook. In my early days of flatting and living alone I became very adept with the tin opener for snacks and meals alike. All my meals were snacks – I’d heard of vegetables but unless they came out of a can  they certainly weren’t seen on my plate.

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

My meals and snacks didn’t always look that appetising but not being a gourmet I enjoyed most of them anyway.  This concoction was a sausage in a tin of mushroom soup which I thickened with Deb mashed potato. It kept me going until dessert anyway and I love my desserts.

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

In this case an apricot danish buried under a mound of ice cream. Yum.

That was then. Now I have more sophisticated tastes. My husband is an excellent chef and cooks all our meals and snacks. Not because he has to but because

a) he doesn’t like what I prepare

b) it takes me all day and every pot and pan we possess for me to cook a meal

c) he enjoys it where I don’t.

I eat very well with lots of vegetables and fresh stuff. On holiday though the snacks are now  superb.

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

http://sundaystills.wordpress.com/2014/02/16/sunday-stills-the-next-challenge-snacks-2/

Posted in photography, Sunday stills: The Next Challenge | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

Phoneography Challenge: Black and White

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Irene Waters 19 Writer Memoirist
© irene waters 2014

© irene waters 2014

Sun lit clouds travel

upwards, river in shadows 

 anticipation.

http://lensandpensbysally.wordpress.com

Posted in haiku, Phoneography Challenge, photography | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments