There weren’t many flowers at the National Rhododendron Garden on the weekend, but I did manage to stumble across this one, hidden in the shrubbery. If you know what it is, can you please let me know in the comments? Thanks 🙂
Tag: garden
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Just hanging on …
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Pink today … just because!
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It seems ages since I’ve posted a photo … in fact, it’s been over a week. This was a flower I captured a few weekends ago, in the Castlemaine Botanic Garden. Do you know what kind of flower it is? If you know, could you write the name of the flower in the comments please?
My absence from blogging has been due to the amount of marking I’ve had to do over the past week or so. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a university lecturer and this semester, in addition to my new full-time job (which I started two weeks ago), I’m teaching a unit at a different university on facilitating engaging learning experiences.
I’ve come to recognise that my approach to marking is a dialogic one. I tend to comment on students’ ideas, or I ask questions of them, or I put forward an alternative perspective. I seek to affirm, yet challenge and extend students’ thinking, and that’s challenging because I also have to be nice – and that’s one of the things I find most difficult to be. One consequence of this approach is that marking takes ages! Markers are allocated about 20 minutes per paper for marking, but I often take an hour per paper – even longer when the ideas are trapped inside somewhat clumsy expression.
So that’s what’s been taking lots of my time and attention. Up at 6 most mornings, mark a paper or two before the hour-long commute to work, work, hour-long commute home, more marking. It’s an intellectually draining process and I find that I don’t have much headspace for other things. Getting my head around a new workplace, new colleagues, new relationships, new places and ways of storing information, new processes, new location, is difficult enough when that’s all that’s going on in your life. Marking on top of that means my head is well and truly full.
Except, that I have to keep some space free because my youngest daughter is getting married! In 13 days’ time. In Tasmania. There are so many decisions to be made, so many details to organise, so many conversations to have, so many others to consult … not being in Tasmania is making the whole thing a tad more difficult, but we’re on the phone to each other a few times a day, and sometimes late into the night, and that helps in terms of decision-making and keeping each other informed of what’s happening.
There’s a lot going on!
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Getting close up to flowers with my macro lens can be dangerous, particularly when there are bees around, but I managed to avoid the bees on this rose. The depth of colour in the centre and the delicacy of the outer petals initially drew my attention. And then I noticed the water droplets from the recent rain. So much beauty in one single flower.
This was taken at the Castlemaine Botanic Gardens where the roses were so tall I couldn’t reach most of them.
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Today was my second day at my new job (yesterday being ANZAC Day) and apparently I have to go back again tomorrow!
I have a flower sitting on my kitchen window sill, waiting for me to shoot it. Hopefully I’ll get to it before it starts to fade – although there’s a certain beauty in a faded flower.
In the meantime, I’ll content myself with a flower I shot on the weekend at the Castlemaine Botanic Garden.
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I was drawn to the delicacy of each petal … the potential encapsulated in the bud …
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It’s like the sun shines from the inside.
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I wash my hair, towel it dry, shake my head … and it looks like this flower (just not yellow!).
The chrysanthemums were large, diverse, and plentiful at the Bendigo conservatory. Just like the people lining the streets.
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Another dahlia today – this one with loads of squiggly bits (which will only mean anything if you read yesterday’s post). This dahlia was dancing in the slight breeze- which is fabulous, but it does make it slightly tricky to photograph.
Imagine, if you are so inclined, your favourite music and this dahlia moving along with the beat – whether that’s dreamy, or pumping, or folk-y, or blues-y, or pop-y, or perhaps a little bit classical. The flower doesn’t care what it looks like when it’s dancing, but most of us are not so free.
Over the summer, Tim and I went to the Queen Vic Night Market a number of times. We’d grab a chair and sit and listen to the fabulous music from the likes of Opal Ocean and Horns of Leroy. One of the delightful sights was the little children creeping away from their parents to move to the middle of the stage, stare at the musicians and then dance. Their delight in the music was clearly evident and they felt free to express that delight. Most of the adults were like Tim and I – happy to listen and to dance on the inside.
This dahlia wasn’t keeping it on the inside … that’s something we can learn from flowers. And from little children!
Musings from the cold 