Days of Summer

 Hi everyone. I hope you and yours are doing well. Life has been so busy - so something a little different today. It has been a hot summer - so here is a poem I wrote from a writing prompt at my writing group. 

DAYS OF SUMMER

A gaggle tumbles from the bus

We unstitck our legs from vinyl seats

Clamp sunhats on heads

Tramp up the sand hill hauling bags, esky, sunshade

Sand drags at our thongs

Dry grass scratches legs

A lizard turns to stone

Cicadas sing

We emerge from the peppermints

The ocean shimmers, beckoning.

Impossibly blue cloudless sky

We claim our spot on scorching sand
Struggle to tie down the sunshade

Slap on slippery sunscreen

Children shriek, diving into the biting chill
and surface laughing
Dogs sniff unfamiliar smells
Dads organise beach cricket
Frisbees fly, balls tossed
Bare skin sizzles.

Squawking seagulls snatch chips

Sand crunches in our sandwiches
Sticky icecream drips
Watermelon smiles.

Children burrow creating worlds draped with seaweed

Water drains from moats
Couples snuggle
Waves slop lazily on the shore
Parents doze, sunglasses askew
An open book falls
Flies crawl into crevices, hover, cluster, annoy
Babies grizzle.

The wind tries to claim our sunshade

We collect abandoned buckets, shovels, thongs
as the ocean engulfs sandcastles,
retrieving its pretty treasures
The sun slides silently into the ocean and over the edge of the world.  

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Maggie & Milly & Molly & May went down to the beach to play one day

Life is a Beach in Western Australia

Coral Bay in Western Australia - blue on blue

ps - the people swimming over the top of the fish is actually two images combined which I did for Photography Group. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

If you are looking for a translator - there is one on the right hand side where you can select your language. 
   

Mosaic Monday @ Soul & Mind & So On

Saturdays Critters - Viewing Nature With Eileen

Travel Tuesday

Talking About It Tuesdays @ Slices of Life

ThroughMy Lens 
Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity. 
       and Little bird - Pienilintu
Thankful Thursday 
Welcome to Nature Thursday

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

Until then, enjoy your day...Life only comes around once, so do what makes you happy and be with people who make you smile. 

Christmas in Australia

 Hi everyone, I hope you all had a happy and safe Christmas. 

It was so hot on Christmas Day that our grandson fried an egg in a pan on the driveway. On Boxing Day we measured the temperature under our patio - 43C (109F)  and over 50C (122F) in the direct sun! - thought we had better bring the thermometer in before it exploded! 

A lot of people here go to the beach, but we elected to stay home and relax most of the weekend. Far to hot outside for us. 

It got me to thinking about Christmas past when I was a child and we lived in a weather-board house with no insulation and no air-conditioning. And my Mum cooking a Christmas roast dinner on a wood stove in over 100F heat! 

Here are a few lines taken from a poem of memories I wrote recently...

Do you remember sister.......

Laying reading on the cool passageway lino on hot summer afternoons.

The Secret Seven for me and the Famous Five for you. 

The delights of push-up ice-creams,

with luscious strawberry syrup at the bottom.

Fruit Loops eaten straight from the packet.  

Cordial iceblocks in a plastic cup. 

And Dad buying bucket icecreams with little spoons at the drive-in. 

                                    (this one below says chocolate, ours were strawberry)

Summer holiday cottages at Palm Beach and Safety Bay.

Doublegee prickles in the yard,

the enclosed verandas looking out to Penguin Island.

Swimming lessons at Palm Beach,

I was too scared to lift my feet off the bottom.

Burning hot sand and rocks at the beach.

Jelly fish as big as dinner plates at Como beach swimming lessons. 

                                    (some old pics of my sister & me from the 1950s-60s)

Evening walks on the jetty

watching the crab nets being pulled.   

Dad stringing Christmas lights in our pine trees,

the Salvation Army singing carols under our corner street light.

 Laying on a tarp on the back lawn on hot summer nights

gazing at the stars and playing I spy.

Grape vines on the trellis,

and making grape jam on the wood stove in the heat of summer,

squishing the grapes in my hands for their juice.  

Running under the sprinkler

and playing in the bath on hot summer days,

sliding down the sloped end,

flooding the floor with water.

Simple pleasures

I remember them well.

Do you have simple pleasure from your childhood? Perhaps you would like to share them in your comments. These days summer holidays seem to demand more zip and going places and doing things and whiz-bang. Perhaps I am getting old, perhaps I just yearn for the simpler days when we kids were content with less. 

But whatever the decade or age - there must be icecream and a cold drink and somewhere to relax in the shade with a good book. 

Wishing you and yours a very safe and happy Christmas spent with those you love. 

Here is a little summer Christmas video for my friends in the northern hemisphere:

(ps - it starts with Maori New Zealand counting)

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Stay safe and have a wonderful week. 

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!
   
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf
Sharon's Sovenirs 
Our World Tuesday
Pictorial Tuesday 
ThroughMy Lens 
Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity. 
       and Little bird - Pienilintu
Thankful Thursday 
Welcome to Nature Thursday
The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

Thongs are like footprints

It is summer, and I am just reconnecting myself to life after a week away at Summer School in Albany on the south coast of our State. (it was fabulous! - more about that later!)

Yes it is summer. I thank everyone most sincerely for their thoughts and prayers over the last couple of weeks while I have been blogging about the Australian bush-fires. Your comments and thoughts, and those of you who have helped in other ways, really means more than I can tell you. I am happy to report that there has been some relief on the fire-fronts with rain over the past week. However there are still bushfires burning. 

Just this afternoon a suspected deliberately lit bush-fire has started up only about 20kms north of where we live in Western Australia.  It continues to baffle me why people deliberately light bushfires. The water bombers have been flying overhead this afternoon. I feel relatively safe here as we are in the middle of suburbia, but I hope they can put the fire out quickly.

More than 10.7 million hectares of land have burnt so far in Australia’s bushfires – larger than the total area of South Korea, or Portugal, and 1.3 times the size of Scotland. The Guardian - Australian bushfires from the air.

However, not to make light of the situation, but I have decided on a change of pace today, with an ode to the typical Aussie summer footwear - thongs. I planned a couple of months ago to write this ode to thongs - so here it is.

I've borrowed from Australian writer and poet Colin Thiele from his poetry book - "Songs for my Thongs" - this is "Thongs are like Footprints" -

 and "A thong is just a Friendly Sole" -

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week.  

You might also like:
Summer salad days 
In the summer time
 
I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

   
All Seasons
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity.

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

April Randoms

Can you believe it is the end of April already? I'm not sure where it has disappeared to. In the southern hemisphere we are enjoying the cooler days of autumn, while in the north you are, I hope, reveling in the spring sunshine. I've compiled a few of my April randoms, with a few links to previous posts if you care to look over there.

April is: 

Quinces - stewing delicious quinces "which they ate with a runcible spoon". Autumn is the time when the quinces ripen and are available in our local farmer's market. Have you tasted them? You can't eat them raw, but cooked they are delicious! We have just planted a quince tree, and I am so looking forward to picking my own quinces in the future! The quince is an old orchard variety that is making a comeback. 
I've blogged about them before here - The quince, the symbol of love in ancient Greece and Rome and And slices of quince which they ate with a runcible spoon

In the summer time

It's summer here in Western Australia but we are enthralled watching the Winter Olympics. I love watching the events on TV and seeing the speed and exhilaration of the sports. These winter sports are so different for us, as we only have a couple of areas that have snow in Australia, and certainly not in Western Australia, except for an occasional light dusting on Bluff Knoll in our south west. 

Medals for Australians at the Winter Olympics are few and far between, so when an Aussie wins a medal, or in fact just gets into a final, it is a reason for celebration. So it was exciting to have just watched Matt Graham take silver in the moguls, our first medal at this Olympics.   Daily Telegraph - Winter Olympics. Congratulations Matt! 

But as I said it is summer in Australia and this last weekend we had a very busy weekend immersed in summer life. 

We had family come to stay so there was a BBQ on Friday night, and then Saturday morning we went to a waterfront restaurant for breakfast. The water was sparkling and the icecream van was already cranking up for the day.  Our town is surrounded by water on three sides - the Indian Ocean, the Leschenault Inlet, and Koombana Bay, so beach and water activities are a big part of our summer

In the afternoon we went down to the Inlet to watch our sons compete with their dragon boat club, Forza, in their local annual regatta. Dragon Boating has been a part of the landscape of our town, and our family life, since the first regatta was held here in March 1990. We have seen the big days of the sport when our local regatta was a two day event with over 70 teams, to the small regatta it is today. Our main competition is held in Perth, our capital city. Our local event was for teams of 10 paddlers, rather than the usual 20.

 On Saturday evening my husband and I drove up to the Ferguson Valley, a wine region only about twenty minutes from home, to enjoy a Spanish Sundowner at Green Door Wines. My Spanish friend Montse and her partner Laura, from Food with Passion South West cooked up a storm, including a variety of tapas and a huge paella. Delicious. 

And the light coming through the west facing window in the late afternoon was amazing. 

In between courses Flamenco dancers, Nicole and Susanna from Sol y Sombra Spanish Dance Company danced for us. Unfortunately the low light, the fast movement, and my skills didn't do their dancing justice, but you can get an idea of the colour and movement in these couple of images. 
These two talented ladies are our Flamenco teachers at Sol y Sombra. I've blogged about them several times before - Ole - Celebration of 25 years of flamenco

It was a fabulous evening. Oh, and don't forget the Sangria

On Sunday morning we had an early get up to travel down to Busselton to see our eldest son compete in the around the Busselton Jetty swim.  This is an annual event, which started in 1996, and which now attracts over 2000 competitors. The course is a swim of 3.6 kilometres from the shore, around the Busselton Jetty, and back to the shore. People swim solo, as my son, nephew and his wife did, or relay teams of two or four can nominate. 

Below you can see the start line and the end of the jetty where they swim round and then go back down the other side. 

And my son on the return leg.  We only managed to spot him because he was swimming alongside the jetty instead of further out. He said he was having difficulty dragging his arms out of the water at this point, but he managed to sprint the last few hundred metres to the finish line - what a welcome sight it must have been. We are so proud of him that he achieved this swim.

Thank you for stopping by everyone. I hope you have enjoyed this little look at summer in my part of the world. What is happening in your corner of the world? Are you watching the Winter Olympics?

I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week.  

You might also like
A celebration of 25 years of flamenco 
Belonging and choosing happiness 
Busselton jetty swim - 2015 

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

   
All Seasons
Mosaic Monday 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

Through My Lens 

Image-in-ing
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global
Travel Photo Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at Deep Fried Fruit
Little Things Thursday 

Sky Watch Friday

Life in Reflection

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

You can also link up here Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global.