optical illusion of a dog skateboarding dogs on scooters

Here's a really silly post about Penny having a snooze on her mat while I play with a little notebook I bought. It has an optical illusion on the front cover, and if I didn't think I could pull off the cover when the notebook's full, I would think it was a bit of a waste of money.

But the dog looks so like Penny. And Penny can ride a skateboard, even if not a scooter. Well, sort of.

So I played with my new toy while Penny, more mature than I am, used her time wisely to snooze.



On the back I read that it's manufactured by mooviestudio.com. They sure have some cute pictures.

The picture reminds me that I still have the cute canine optical illusion from Dog Trick Academy.

dogs and lost consonants

As I was thinking about the English language and writing a (long overdue) post for my other blog, I came across one of Graham Rawle's "lost consonants' humorous artworks.

For fifteen years he produced collages for The Weekend Guardian. He would use actual pictures and scissors, rather than digital manipulation, to produce a picture of a phrase where one consonant was missing. For instance, 'Statistics showed an increase in violet crime', or 'An accident had left him with a small car over one eye'.

A Google search of his name comes up with lots of examples of his work.

But my all-time favorite would have to be:
Every time the doorbell rang, the dog started baking.
(You'll have to magnify it on your screen to see it clearly.)

beautiful poem about a dog

I've just been reading a copy of the 30th anniversary edition of the literary magazine Going Down Swinging and I was moved by a poem by Chloe Wilson about the chained dog who died in the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii.

When an exhibition about the lost city of Pompeii came to Melbourne in July 2009, I was saddened by that cast of the dog's body.


[Photo by Wknight94]

I think it would be okay to reproduce here some of the lines from the poem. If you can get a copy of the anniversary edition of Going Down Swinging you will be able to read the whole beautiful poem. In part it says:

it's the brass
collared dog
who's most articulate-

through its contortion
we can see the cloud advance,
the sulphur exhaust expanding

and another couple of stanzas...

does the dog not seem to suggest

that while we may be
overwhelmed, it's still worth flipping
ourselves inside out,

or sticking up our defenceless paws-
anything, anything that proves we tried
to hold the fire back.

The line about the 'defenceless paws' really gets to me. Our pets are so vulnerable to how we treat them. And there have been so many terrible events around Australia and around the world, and I always wonder how many animals are caught up in these disasters.

eucalypts drop branches when you don't expect it

When we were in Darebin Parklands the other day, we met some people at the big pool in the bend of the creek and stood discussing the recent floods.

Crack! A branch dropped straight down from one of the trees around the edge of the pool. No warning except that infamous sound.

A young boy and his pup had been standing there only moments before.



Of course, inquisitive Penny (and her humans) went over to have closer look. Probably not too intelligent, but we were working on the theory that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot.



It seems that it's not known why some trees (not just eucalypts) unexpectedly drop limbs.I haven't found any information on the internet about the actual process of dropping the limb but here is an interesting article. I took a couple of closeups of the end of the branch, and I don't know if it looks as if there is any particular disease at that spot.





And a shot of the place it dropped from, high up the trunk.



As we wandered further through the park, we came across an even bigger branch that had dropped previously.

floods in Darebin Parklands

For the last fourteen years or so we've been wishing for rain.

And this summer we have had plenty!

Our famous Australian poem says, in one stanza:
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

Droughts seem to have taken a back seat in Victoria at the moment, in favor of the flooding rains.

A couple of days ago, Penny took as down to Darebin Parklands to see what has been happening and we saw the results of the recent flooding.



In one way, the rain is beautiful, and I think no-one regrets the water that has sunk into the ground and replenished our water table, reinvigorated our creeks and rivers and added to our water storage. Look how green the parklands are at the moment:



However, there's been a lot of damage in the park and it will take work to get things back to normal.

Here's some of the fencing that protects the new plantings.



But much of it has been uprooted.



And there's junk everywhere.







And big logs thrown around.





It wasn't too hard to work out which direction the water flowed.





There's to be a clean-up day on February 26th and another on Clean Up Australia Day on 6th March.

a blogging friend in a commercial

I just had a look at Amber-Mae's post about her shooting of a commercial. Wow! It was amazing how many people were there to do the ad. Amber-Mae was just great. She looked beautiful and behaved just as she was asked.

Congratulations, Amber!

And congratulations to her human, Melissa!

spiders, a dog and some fruit bats

Penny has been out in the garden the last couple of evenings, enjoying the amazingly cool weather and making sure the pesky fruit bats don't get too much of our fruit.

I've been out there at the same time photographing the exquisite spider - I think a golden orb - that builds an intricate web each night.



I've decided it's a girl, seeing she works so hard getting her home organised each evening. Here she is doing her weaving.





She takes no notice, even when I stick the camera practically in her face.



But she did have to take notice when Penny came ambling through just now and took out the long strands that anchored the magnificent structure to the ground.

And I guess even though I can admire such a beautiful creature, I'm still nervous of her. She got a fright when the bottom half of her web 'popped' out of existence, and I leaped back with a small scream as she swung perilously near my face.

Here she is with only one section of her web left.



Now I'm in here playing on the computer and I guess she's out there repairing the damage caused by Penny.

EXTRA NOTE: Amber-Mae's comment got me thinking about whether these spiders are poisonous. I've never thought so. The main problem with them is that the webs are all over the place in summer and the thought of getting a big spider on my face is scary.

So I just had a look at the Australian Museum and read

Orb weavers are reluctant to bite. Symptoms are usually negligible or mild local pain, numbness and swelling. Occasionally nausea and dizziness can occur after a bite.

Seek medical attention if symptoms persist.