Autumn events on ANZAC Day

I slept in too late (ie past 4:30) to go into the ANZAC Day dawn service this morning but have reflected a bit on matters ANZAC at various times during the day.  One (I suspect little known) fact about the ANZAC/Gallipoli memorials in Canberra is the positioning of the Ataturk memorial at the head of ANZAC Parade, directly opposite the War Memorial.  The inscription on this memorial (vide the linked document) is very moving.

It is considered that ANZAC Day usually marks the start of Winter in Canberra (and it runs through to Remembrance Day - this duration explaining why Frances is keen to get outtahere for a spell during the period).  So we have nice Autumn leaves on our Pistachio tree and the Chrysanthemums are blooming nicely.

It also meant we got into various 'preparing for Winter' things such as pruning some of our shrubs;starting to pick apples and putting away the netting from the pear trees which have been clean picked.

The last-mentioned of those turned out to be quite exciting as I store the nets in our red shed.  This is also where I store the old straw from our potato mulching (some it I have used for 3 years) so is a good place to find the occasional rodent.  This is well known to the small dog and she is very excited to join me in the shed and snuffle around in the dark places therein.

Today a rat was injudicious enough to put in an appearance.  Knowing that Fox Terriers are amongst the top ratters I was interested to see what happened.  Bad news for the rat I'm afraid, but I was impressed with the speed and skill of the small dog, especially since the rat was the size of her head.  A photo exists but I felt it was a bit gruesome for this family-oriented blog!

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Hi Martin
I always counted Anzac Day as the peak of the Autumn colour season in Canberra (when I lived there). My daughter told me that it is late, this year.
Re the Terrier doing what Terriers do best story, your reluctance to post an image is supported. Even I would draw the line there.
Enough to marvel at the speed of the kill.
Cheers
Denis
25 April 2010 at 20:29:00 GMT+10
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are our routes: That map comes from Google Maps (G
Read more

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I recall years ago driving al
Read more

Satin Bowerbird gets ready for Lanigans Ball.

Image
Having some time to spare today I went to check the bower near "Tom Green's Seat" in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  The bower was well occupied by what I take to be - based on the green plumage and yellow bill - a 5th or 6th year male Satin Bowerbird.  (With all these images, click on them for a bigger - unfortunately not better focused picture.  The shots were taken hand held on full zoom from about 10m distance into a fairly well shaded location.) He was very much engaged in adding to the construction. Then it seemed that another bird called from the bush above.  This led to a whole lot of activity: the most spectacular (and worst imaged) was a flash of the wings: The bird also did a fair bit of hopping around.  Given that it was still immature I called to mind the greatest traditional Irish song of all time: Diarmuid O'Leary and the Bards performing Lanigan's Ball .  This ditty refers to spending "6 long months at Brooks Academy learning
Read more