This dusty rural road in Rajasthan is shared by traffic and shepherds. The trees cast long shadows as a traditionally dressed woman brings her herd of sheep in for the evening, and we carefully drive past.
Join in the Sunday Post with your photo of a road!
Purple Sea Snail
These exquisite sea snails are blown ashore in the summer north-easterly winds, usually with bluebottles Physalia utriculus which they predate.
Check out other entries in this week’s Challenge: Purple
Island Traveler tells us that “colours make us feel truly alive and ready to face challenges ahead ….. they are a gift that nature and Mother Earth give us everyday”. Colour is such a vital part of life, and not only visually, for colour is also used to express the spectrum of experience in other senses, feelings (I feel blue …for example), hearing, and so on. Here are a few of my favourite colour photos, the first one a fragrant bunch of flowers given to me by a dear friend. Her love filled the room just as the sweet fragrance and colour of the flowers.
The next photo shows an artwork in process during a Joy of Being weekend here …. where everyone becomes an artist, set free by the vivid colours, the natural tools, the atmosphere of fun and freedom.
Nature excels in colour and design, like this big Orchard Wanderer butterfly. They float gracefully through the garden in the most entrancing manner, just sublime.
Finally we are also part of nature and have always loved to mimic her colours in our clothing. Here I am laughing with my grandchildren as we flaunt our bright colours together.
Every day is a celebration of colour, a rainbow of love and joy pulsing through our world as we live heart-centered lives. Thank you Island Traveler for drawing attention to Colour this week!
We have a Dragon Boat on the Moruya river. Every Saturday morning the paddlers arrive and carry the boat from its shed, down the ramp onto the water.
A few weeks ago I was on the other side of the water, looking across towards the Saturday morning market, when the Dragon boat came into view, they stopped and turned just out from where I was standing, then following orders from the coxon paddled smartly back upriver.
Dragon boat racing began in China, but has spread around the world as water sport, and a rehabilitative activity for breast cancer survivors. The Australian website http://www.dragonsabreast.com.au/ has lots of information about groups. Boats are often decorated with a proud dragon head and tail. My friend Buddhist nun Ani Choekyi blessed a number of dragon boats on the south coast here.
Here they go, back up the river, our mighty Moruya women, in their boat RiverDragon!
To see more D stories visit Frizztext’s site: http://flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/story-challenge-letter-d/
When the weather is cold everyone appreciates a beanie! Alice Springs is in the heart of Australia, surrounded by desert, very cold on winter nights, and very hot in summer. Every year hundreds flock into Alice for the Annual Beanie Festival, where works range from fine art works by indigenous desert artists through every possible woolly hat, some gorgeous and creative, some atrocious! Knitters all over the nation work through the year to bring their creations to the Alice Springs Beanie Festival in June. Are they collectible? Yes I am reassured they are, no matter what kind of beanie you are looking for you will find it there!! We were there a few years ago … here are some images 🙂 Artists, check out the Beanie Festival website to see this years winners.
snazzy!
the grand hall …. full of beanies!
how does this one look?
So many beanies!
Thank you Jake for your wonderful ideas … always so much fun exploring the photo library to find something suitable!
We were inside the Art Gallery of NSW a week ago, when we had an unexpected day in Sydney while waiting for our flight to Lord Howe Island. In an exhibition that is is part of the 18th Biennale I saw the intricate work of artist Yuken Teruya, who creates trees inside shopping bags. The upper surface of the bag is carefully cut to create the tree, which appears to be standing inside the bag. I loved this one that was crafted from a large striped paper bag.
Yuken Teruya’s tree inside the bag
You can see more depictions of inside here.
track sign closest to us
Inspired by beeblu and Sacred Cave I am impelled to share my Dreaming Story too. We live on the edge of a Dreaming Track, an important trail used by aboriginal people who lived here before invading Europeans took the land almost two hundred years ago. When we became associated with the land twenty two years ago we began a resident’s group to protect what we felt was valuable from the encroachment of council road builders and other developers. Gradually as the new wave of settlers moved onto their acres we applied for government grants to make the Bingie Dreaming Track, linking Congo Beach with Tuross Beach through the Eurobodalla National Park.
Bingi residents working on the Dreaming Track
It was a dream, but working with National Parks and local volunteers it has all come to pass. Of course local aboriginal people were consulted through the process, and National Park’s ranger local Brinja-Yuin woman Trisha Ellis officiated at the opening ceremony of the second section.
Trish Ellis opening the Dreaming Track extension
Trisha was taught by her grandmother about the Dreaming Track between Congo and Bingi, and the walking tracks along the coast used by people to access the abundant resources of fish and shellfish in this area. Elders speak of camping along the coast here feeding on kangaroo, and eels as well, while they were taught traditional lore.
“….’Bingi’ is a Dhurga word meaning stomach. When repeated as in Bingi Bingi Point it
indicates abundance and therefore is interpreted to mean an abundance of food is available in this area. The Bingi-Congo walking track forms part of the Dreaming Track utilised by the Brinja-Yuin people prior to European development. The walking track (as did the Dreaming Track) brings you in close proximity to shell middens, stone quarries, napping sites, campsites and fresh water sources. There were also beacon sites for sending smoke signals, areas abundant in a particular foods and lookouts traditionally used for spotting schools of fish and visitors (wanted or unwanted) to the area. The Dreaming Track although used as a highway had a much deeper spiritual significance to the Aboriginal people in that it was, and still is believed, that the Spirit Ancestors of the people created the Dreaming Track in the journey of creation across the land. ……” [Trisha Ellis 4.2.2006].
Here are some notes to help you understand the concept of Dreaming Tracks:
“The Dreaming” or “Dreamtime”as it is called in English refers to the creative era when the landscape was given form by the activities of Spirit Beings, the spiritual ancestors of
Aboriginal people today. In the southeast coastal region, the focal Creation Beings were
Biame and his wife Birrahgnooloo, who gave form to waterways, landforms, animals
[including totems], humans, power to ‘clever people’ and the overarching Aboriginal Lore.
Rivers and valleys mark the route taken by Ancestral Dreaming beings. These routes are
often called Dreaming Tracks. Along Dreaming tracks waterholes and mountains mark
places where the ancestral beings camped and meet, for instance. These places are often
referred to as ‘sacred sites’ and often relate to the availability of water and other natural
resources. Some Dreamtime mythologies cover vast distances, traversing tribal and linguistic boundaries, whilst others are more localised and mark discrete territories. Through traditional ceremonies, usually involving songs, Aboriginal people describe, or retrace the routes travelled by spiritual beings in the Dreamtime past
For children and adults alike it is a great adventure to be out of the house in the night-time, cooking around a campfire. Just getting away from walls, roof, phone, television is a new experience for some. Here we are cooking “twisties” on the fire last year, with the dark trees around us and a twinkling starry sky above. A little bit scary, but so much adventure and fun.
Cooking on the Campfire
See more adventures at Island Traveler‘s blog!
In our world of troubles religion is sore point for many people, with wars fought to eradicate those who do not think quite the same way as someone else. Here Buddhism is so valuable, showing the way towards accepting others as they are, towards valuing each different view, towards loving one another in the way that Jesus taught. Buddhist countries build beautiful temples decorated with valuables as an expression of devotion to the teachings of the Buddha and man’s search for enlightenment. Here is a photo of Swayambhunath Stupa Kathmandu, also known as the Monkey Temple.
To see other entries look at http://jakesprinters.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/sunday-post-valuable/
My B story tells of the bounty bestowed on us by mother nature. Australia has had two very wet years, some kind of record, but nature is taking advantage of the bounteous rain to crop prolifically. I could have shared photos of our laden fruit trees last summer, or the groaning branches of the citrus right now, but somehow these fruits of the Crinum Lily say it all, round, abundant and bursting with life. Enjoy the bounty of nature with me!
Crinum Lily fruits, about to fall and shoot
heartfelt images 