My photos - Sounds like wish

17 May, 2013

Ailsa's travel photography challenge: The four elements

The four elements: earth, water, air, fire; that’s Ailsa’s photo challenge this week.

The photos below are from the Catalan coast, north and south of the French-Spanish border.

EARTH

House built onto rock, Port-Vendres, France

Sometimes the French completely tame and reshape nature, sometimes they work around it, acknowledging its beauty. Many buildings in this region are built on rock, incorporating it into the external and even internal walls. Why remove rock when it adds to the visual appeal?

WATER

Students casting stones into the sea, Cadaqués, Spain

Yesterday afternoon in Cadaqués on the north-east coast of Spain, we stopped to have a cup of tea in a café. Outside, students stopped on the beach on their way home after school with the idea of dismantling the rocky beach and casting the stones into the sea, an activity which amused them greatly. I wondered whether they do this every afternoon. This is truly a watery photo because it was drizzling and had been for most of the day.

AIR

Here on the Côte Vermeille it’s OFTEN windy. Squally. Scary at night. I shut the shutters.

FIRE

This afternoon I lit the candle on the right for my family. The little candles that burn in churches every day are strangely warming despite the tall, open, often icy space.

13 May, 2013

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Beaches

Ailsa had trouble finding a free spot to park her towel on a Seattle beach this week since everyone had gone there to catch some rays. Sometimes on the beaches of south-east New South Wales we, too, have to look carefully for a nice piece of sand to plop onto without flattening the pointillist art of tiny crabs, the fine wet sand balls surrounding their homes.

Crab hole construction, south-east coast, NSW, Australia

This past week I found a couple of beaches here in France that were empty of people and crabs, despite lovely warm weather. I’d like to see the crabs that could roll this gravel into balls:

Small beach near Port-Vendres lighthouse, France

I was disappointed that I had to keep my shoes on, something I never do back home; it wasn’t only the gravel that bothered me (which might in fact be good for smoothing the feet), but the litter also put me off. I’ve been told the authorities clean the beaches every day in summer, but it is yet spring… On the other hand, it was something special to sit looking across the top of the flat Mediterranean Sea instead of down over the huge rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean. I’ve often thought of those waves as an analogy for life, comforted by their continual rolling and crashing that no human disaster can prevent, but if I’d grown up here beside this waveless body of water, I would’ve looked at life differently.

France is beautiful, almost everywhere, but her beaches have not stolen my heart; it still belongs to the long, white, squeaky sand beaches, often deserted (except for crabs), around the Australian coastline.

12 May, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: Pattern

The pattern straight-twisted-straight-twisted has pleased the eye for centuries. This past week I saw it in the 12th-century cloister of the cathedral of Sainte Eulalie and Sainte Julie in Elne, France:

Cloister, Ste Eulalie, Elne, France — Cloister, Ste Eulalie & Ste Julie, Elne, France

And I saw a much more recent use of this pattern on a balcony railing overlooking Port-Vendres, a bit further south:

8 May, 2013

East of Málaga's photo challenge: Knobs and knockers (door furniture!)

Marianne proposes a search for interesting knobs and knockers on doors (http://eastofmalaga.net/2013/05/01/cbbh-photo-challenge-knobs-and-knockers/)

I’ve seen many in the past few days but the ones below were pretty special.

Doors, Cathédrale Sainte Eulalie et Sainte Julie, Elne, France

See the knobs? Side doors, Cathédrale Sainte Eulalie et Sainte Julie, Elne, France

5 May, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: From above

I’m presently staying in a French flat on the Mediterranean, at the top of 109 steps. I’m seeing plenty From Above…

From one window I see the eight cats that live in the flat next door. Some try to enter any window or door or hole in the wall of all the other flats.

From my porch I look down into an old lady’s courtyard where the eight cats prowl and wander and climb in and out. Look at the wall made from whatever bits of building material were at hand!

Courtyard with 2 cats — Courtyard with two cats

From my balcony I see the old lady’s roof, beautiful terracotta tiles, each one an individual. (The peg was dropped by an earlier tenant.)

12 April, 2013

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Benches

Every park bench has a story to tell, says Ailsa. She has posted some photos of benches to inspire all of us.

If the empty bench on the right side of this small park in Paris could tell a story, it would be this: I had been sitting on it moments before I took the photo, watching a gardener and his disabled assistant plant flowers in the lawn while I recorded the details of the activity in my journal.

Clicking twice to enlarge the image will reveal the little plastic covers over each lawn flower.

Jardin de l'Hôtel Lamoignon, Paris — Jardin de l’Hôtel Lamoignon, Paris

2 April, 2013

Marianne's Photo Challenge: Multicoloured

Marianne from from East of Málaga has challenged us to find multicoloured photos. See what she has done.

I immediately thought of our parliament houses during this year’s centenary celebrations. Yep, the capital of Australia is celebrating its one hundredth anniversary this year; a hundred years ago, this city wasn’t here. There are lots of events in the celebration; one of them was a week where the major institutions were lit with coloured lights, like this:

Old Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, during centenary celebrations

And unfortunately, like this:

Light graffiti on Old Parliament House, Canberra, Australia during centenary celebrations.

This one was much more tasteful:

New Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, during centenary celebrations

Marianne’s East of Málaga is a great blog where you’ll find a lot of information about Spain. She has asked for challengers to point to a couple of other good blogs; lately I’ve commented on Dennis Aubrey’s blog about Romanesque churches in France, and a blog by Cobbies69, a bloke who lives in New Forest, England, and writes about sixties music and about the history of his region.

I thank my husband for taking these photos. I took some that night, but his are better.

23 March, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: Future Tense and Time

Ailsa has thrown out a challenge to find a photo with the theme of time, and the Weekly Photo Challenge asks us to think ‘future tense’. Today my husband and I went to a new place called the Arboretum, born out of fires which burnt much of western Canberra ten years ago. To replace what we no longer have and to help the city recover, especially those who lost all their possessions in the fires, 250 hectares have been planted with large numbers of rare or endangered trees. There are numerous stands of trees to walk and play in, outdoor entertainment areas, lookouts and hilltop sculptures. This word sculpture had me reflecting on time, 105 years of it.

Sculpture, Arboretum, Canberra (with husband)

Core of my heart

The love of field and coppice
Of green and shaded lanes
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins —
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies…
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains
Of ragged mountain ranges
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror —
The wide brown land for me!

Dorothea Mackellar published this poem in 1908, four years after she wrote it at the age of 19. It’s now such an Australian icon that its lines frequently appear in news articles and tourism literature. One in particular is well-known: ‘I love a sunburnt country’. But during years of drought, of which we have many, the phrase ‘wide brown land’ is invoked. Now Dorothea’s words are immortalised in a huge steel sculpture in the form of her handwriting from the manuscript held in the State Library of New South Wales. The sculptors were Marcus Tatton, Futago and Chris Viney.

Imagine writing something (at 19!) that would be sculpted a hundred or so years later and placed high on a hill in a capital city. The words are part of Dorothea’s future, and the Arboretum is part of Canberra’s future.

View from Dairy Farmers Hill, Arboretum, Canberra. Our land is wide, but right now it’s not at all brown!

PS These are phone photos, taken with a Samsung in the spirit of phoneography month.

15 March, 201327 August, 2018

Ailsa’s photo challenge: green

Ailsa has posted the most awesome green photos, and I’m guessing that since she’s Irish she must have St Patrick’s Day in mind, coming up on 17th March. And so I have a King Parrot in mind: the orange and the green.

He used to visit us on our back deck. Unlike Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven which I blogged about yesterday, the King Parrot never came rapping or tapping at my chamber door, nor at my window lattice. But he would fly in under the pergola and sit on the clothes horse as though wanting to join us for morning tea.

11 March, 201327 August, 2018

54 great opening lines: 17

There was once an art critic, I have been told, who had a sure way of identifying ancient Maltese art objects: he found himself crying before them.

Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, Philip Hallie

*****

The story of a village in the south of France, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, where every household and farm sheltered or hid refugees between 1941 and 1944, under penalty of death. In four years, thousands of Jewish refugees were saved; only nineteen were lost.

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, looking over the railway line on which refugees arrived from 1941-1944