Fri Feb 08 12:27:10 2008
Botanical Gardens
The Big Wet continues
It's a very wet summer. It seems to be perfectly possible here for it to be raining heavily, solidly, for five days in a row. In what is meant to be the hottest month of the year, wildlife in front of our balcony continues to seek shelter from the rain in the Jacaranda tree. This aptly-named rainbow lorikeet tried to get his feathers dry. Some chance.
One does get the occasional half-day without rain, in which case the temperature goes from cold to burning hot with no intermediate stages. The Botanical Gardens look lovely (no wonder, everything has had a lot of rain!). As it happened to be sunny at the time, this sundial actually managed to show the time we were there -- 11:20am (add an hour for summer time, which the sundial doesn't know about).
An ibis, caught while flapping its wings (trying to get them dry, no doubt).
We found an enormous spider web in a tree, just at head height. This was shot with a manual focus as the autofocus considered the tree branches in the distance to be the much more likely target of the picture. No doubt the spider is poisonous. In Australia, statistically speaking all spiders are poisonous to the first order of approximation.
On the main lake, somebody had built intricate little bark boats and set them afloat. I thought they were enchanting.
The Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, peeking over the bright-red flowers. In case someone is wondering, the flowers are deliberately out-of-focus. It's Art.
Talking of Art, allow me to introduce Ella. This amazing figure appeared a few days ago on the lawn between Circular Quay and The Rocks. It is made entirely of peaches and is meant to symbolise something about feeling great with good skin. Or something. Considering the building material I suspect the figure has a limited life-expectancy. Very eye-catching, though.
