Flowers wherever I go...

As we leave Scotland and return to Australia, one common feature seems to be flowers.

We arrived back into Maleny just after midnight this morning, managed about 6 hours sleep, and then began the day slowly and gently. As we were getting breakfast, I popped outside to cut some sage flowers I had noticed as we returned in the dark. Flowers make a place feel like home.

So here is a run down of the flowers of today, and of Scotland... once more in a random manner.

We stopped in at Perth on the way south to Glasgow. Beautiful parks and the fading of flowers.

The trip's first bunch of flowers from the cottage's garden - Crocosia Montbrecia. We have begun to plant out an entire slope with these magnificent and bold plants. It looks stunning.

The daily walk to the cove offers small gatherings - here a posy or two of weed flowers.

The best of gifts from a friend - fresh flowers from their garden.

The delicate highlights.

Remnant pansies from the plants we planted back in April. With peace.

Some stunning cornflowers. Basking in sunlight.

After a week or so, the cornflowers bleached themselves!

The last flower in our rockery - another gift from a friend.

One of the many thistles we found in Perth's sculpture gardens.

A photo as much of the bee as of the flower...

And today, trying to keep ourselves awake and upright we did a quick wander through the garden here (in between rain showers).

This lovely collection of lavenders with some of Dad's crucifix orchids.

Is now placed to reflect and connect to this painting by Minnie Pwerle. The brightness and boldness of them both.

I think there is a new game to play here - matching bouquets of flowers to artworks!

Fare thee well and haste ye back

 Today is the day we head back to Australia, all things being equal...

As we farewell the cottage once more, I have simply gathered here a bunch of my favourite 'landscape/outdoors' images from our time here. So many to choose from, no particular order, and apologies if I over did it!

Heading home...

Thursday Thoughts...

“I realise there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter, how they’re experts at letting things go.”  

Jeffrey McDaniel

The honesty of trees in winter.

A tree's bareness, is perhaps like baring your soul. No foliage to cover or disguise or protect. All that there is, is there to be seen, is on show.

Or perhaps it's that they have shed things that no longer serve them. The letting go of leaves which enables them to retreat a bit for the winter, to tough it out without needing to worry about looking after leaves. 

I must admit I love looking at trees in winter - their shapes so lean and pared back; their essence there, but also simply a platform for the next step, the emergence, the return...

And somehow still offering shelter, respite and resting places for others..

Art we have seen and some we have bought

There are a couple of lovely small galleries near us in Thurso, and one in the small locality of Skerray.

We were fortunate to see this vibrant, perspective-twisting exhibition by David Body.

I was really drawn to the angles, the simple shapes and forms and the excitingly wild and bold colours. Together they made familiar and almost monochromatic daily scenes, take on the power of a kaleidoscopic dream.

I particularly enjoyed the works where he included elements of text and collage. Love the idea of using cut out wording to describe what's in the painting - FIELD.

At first I though these birds were crosses!

And now to a beautiful piece we bought at Skerray. We were lucky that the artist Rhona Graham was attending the gallery (and the post office) on the day we visited.  The piece is called Night Swimming, inspired by the rusty ladder at Skerray Harbour.

I fell in love and have sunk deeply into it.

I love the misty moon, and the fragments of thoughts or dreams in the sky.

And I love the lower forms - rocks? a pier? a paddle?

And that beautiful rusty ladder...

It feels like a painting I will spend time with over the years. I gaze into it; I feel things; I understand parts of it - I continue to wonder about other parts...

A gorgeous new part of the cottage.

Serendipitous moments - art!

 When we arrived at the cottage and had sorted things inside the house out, we headed into the garden shed and began to sort out the yard. Going in and out of the shed reminded me of some small pieces of driftwood and salvaged timber we had left there - hoping that one day they might become 'something'.

As it was, it took until last week for me to re-focus on the timber bits. In part I regained my focus because I had found some excellent wire bits and a rusty nail along the way. Surely they might go together? 

I had just finished mulching some plants and it was getting on for 4 or 4.30pm and I saw the bits and picked them up and before I knew it, without glasses, and no phone to document, I simply began.

Barry has taught me heaps about how to attach things to timber, so I had a few thoughts about how I could sort out the first piece in my mind, and it came together pretty well.

The second one I had in mind I did OK with to a point, but Barry came in from what he was doing and gave me hand.

The third one proved the trickiest - I wanted the weird angle to hang over and dangle something. My design was so clear and focussed! Laugh. But we did it - me drilling and hammering under supervision. It was getting dark now and there is no power in the shed so no lights, but we managed to finish them just in time and headed in to make dinner.

I returned the next day to photograph the trio - in the messy garden shed where we work. I kind of like them in their original home.

The next day or maybe the next after that, the sun shone and I thought to bring them outside and photograph them in the bright light, with the cottage's stone wall as a back drop. I also like them out and about.

They are each around 10 - 15cm square in broad terms - clearly some a bit taller than others, and a delightful trio to have made without even meaning to.

Thursday Thoughts...

"Beauty is no quality in things themselves. It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." 

David Hume

This is one of the truest of truths.  Beauty is not generally a notion that can be defined, reproduced and agreed upon.  I know that people and scholars and philosophers nad writers and others have tried, but it is such a personal experience. 

The things I gasp at; that take my breath away; that make me feel transported and uplifted and so glad to be alive, do not have the same effect on others.

They might walk past them, not notice them or be affronted by them.

So it is unlikely that things themselves can have beauty as an inherent and known quality. It is far more likely that we experience beauty as we look upon them - that they trigger whatever chemical release or synaptic connection that we associate with the idea of beauty.

I guess it's just another way of saying that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Altho as I tried to find if there was an originator of this phrase I should reference, I discovered this interesting article.

I find this drain cover quite beautiful. It is calming and restful to look at - the grid of dots, the patina on the metal and the concrete... Beautiful!