weekend in dwellingup

Last weekend I spent the weekend at Banksia Springs in the Lodge, with a group of women called Designing Women. This was a great opportunity for me to re familiarise with the Lodge as this is where we are holding the retreat with the wonderful Nina Bagley. As the retreat is in May ie Autumn I took the opportunity to take lots of Spring photo's of trees etc for the 'Book of Trees' which is the project Nina is teaching there. From the photo above you can see it has been raining, we have had the best rainfalls for quite a few years so everything smelt fresh and the air was so clean and fresh, so wonderful to get out of the city and breath in the fresh country air.

This handsome fella flew into the trees outside the room that I slept in, I couldnt resist capturing him on my camera through the window, he belongs to the kingfisher family and is the large cookaburra, such a comical bird.

Friday late afternoon the showers stopped and the sun came out giving me the opportunity to take a long walk in the bush, trusty camera in hand. As a born and bred country girl my soul hungers to be in the countryside and I find I can regain peace and tranquility so necessary in my life. As I was alone I managed to put my camera on auto and placed it on a large fence post to take the above photo, as I am camera shy it gives me the freedom to place myself where I want to be in the photo, oh these digital camera's are so much fun, I especially like the delete button. All this while I waited for a kangaroo to re appear, couldn't wait to long as it was getting late and I didn't fancy walking back through the bush in the dark.

I like the composition of this photo, the lovely lichen on the fenc post, rusty wire and wild flowers to the left.

This mushroom has pushed its way up through the gravel in the side of the road, amazing where they can pop up, its the first one I have seen growing up through gravel.

This is another composition that I liked the contrast between the rusty old chain plained wood and dried old leaves blown off the trees from last autumn and piled up in a clump completing the picture.

Sitting out on the deck Sunday morning soaking up the warm sunshine (the only time I really enjoy the sun in Australia, usually just to hot to enjoy) bees humming in the the shrubs behind me gathering pollen in the flowers, the bonk of the frogs in the pond just beyond the trees, the occassional bleat of sheep, am I in heaven, I could sit there all day and do nothing.

Saturday morning I demonstrated gel medium transfers and in the afternoon while they where demonstrating embellishing machines, I worked on my hat. We had all received these white hats that they where at bowls and had to decorate them, as I hadnt received my hat earlier I had to do a impromptu altered hat with what materials I could find, so painted flowers in bright colours then applied some gesso to tone down. Made some pleated medalians out of newspaper and a bit of gauze I embellished on the machine, it was a lot of fun and of course I didnt win but we had to all model them that night and this is me in mine, how stupid do I feel, hate wearing hats because they look so bad on me. The other girls came up with some stunners.

Had a lovely weekend, the food was delicious, was envious of one girl who had specified vegetarian which looked wonderful. The Australian bush which is not as lush and green as the New Zealand bush it has its own appeal, especially at this time of the year with all the wildflowers out, it also seems ageless.