I planned to hike Hondo Canyon in Topanga State Park, but the creek was swollen with last night’s rain and I didn’t fancy getting wet. So I explored in the other direction on the Backbone Trail, and was rewarded with my first currant flowers of the season.
The other night K heard owls in the yard and aimed his camera in their direction in the dark. He got a cool capture of a great horned owl looking back over its shoulder, which I used as reference for this sketch.
I just discovered this green passionfruit which has grown through the chicken wire and is now trapped, bulging above and below as it continues to expand. It’s too late to release it from its bind without harm to either fruit or wire.
I’m super happy with my new handmade sketchbook, constructed with covers from an old French textbook. I plan to use it as a perpetual journal à la Lara Gastinger, with one spread per week, added to over the next four or five years.
Au jour le jour means “day by day”, which seems perfect for a sketchbook. Though perhaps it could really be titled de semaine en semaine (“from week to week”) or tout au long de l’année (“throughout the year”). Regardless, I’m excited to start recording my nature observations in this book.
The Aloe aborescens is going off like fireworks!
I couldn’t attend the Audubon bird walk at the lagoon this past weekend, but I’ve been using my beaut new binos here at home every day. I’ll be hanging with the birders again in January. Maybe I need to get myself one of those harness straps like the serious birders wear.
Helena Fitzgerald calls the week between Christmas and New Year Dead Week. For me, it’s always the opposite — it’s the time of year when I go into a flurry of gift making. Given that most of my loved ones live on the other side of the planet, gifting requires advance planning. I love to start the New Year with a bit of hoard of future presents and cards, ready to pop in the mail at the appropriate time.
For a few years there, USPS wasn’t shipping parcels to Australia, which really put the kibosh on my handmade gift-giving. Even a card was taking up to three months to arrive. Ordering something from Book Depository to be shipped direct to the recipient just didn’t give me the same joy. So I’m thrilled that the mail service seems to be back to its pre-pandemic level of operation (still slow and expensive, but the goods get there within a month.)
All that to say … this isn’t Dead Week. For me, it’s Maker Week. 😊
Another birthday card. Quote is from Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. I have an old paperback that fell apart, so I harvest it for found poetry.
My eldest daughter shares her name with a gorgeous New Zealand bird, so I sent her this painting as a Christmas gift.
The tūī is a boisterous, medium-sized honeyeater, with blue, green, and bronze colouration and a distinctive white throat tuft. Tūī are known for their noisy, unusual, sometimes soulful calls, different for each individual, that combine bellbird-like notes with clicks, cackles, timber-like creaks and groans, and wheezing sounds. They can imitate human speech, along with sounds like glass shattering, car alarms, classical music and advertising jingles.
Merry Christmas, Tui!
Photo reference by Sid Modsell, used under Creative Commons 2.0
I’ve been working on cards for the January birthdays. Having fun.
hashiworks 