How many tags/awards are there? And why do most of them get awarded for no particular reason? This one is called the Infinity Dreams Award but what does it have to do with dreams? I cannot answer these questions.

 Well, as you may be able to guess I was awarded another award thanks to (you would not have guessed) Lydia from C'est La Vie, so thank you Lydia. And this award has rules which I have kinda broken as I often do.

Here are those rules: 
Use the Infinity Dreams Award picture
Thank the blogger who tagged you
Tell us 11 facts about yourself
Answer the 11 questions
Tag 11 bloggers

Eleven Facts About Myself:

• I like using my own pictures for things. So I googled Infinity Dreams Award trying to find if the original picture was any better. Which is the original though? As you can see I found lots.
• I have a pet peeve about photos that are not clear or are pixelated or even just almost pixelated. Hence I could not while staying in my right mind use the "Infinity Dreams Award" picture which is probably not the original anyway. SO I used six...aaannd made my own.
• Anyway I spent hours on Friday making the picture at the beginning of this post. And this is a perfect excuse to show it off because is it cool.
• I made the picture out of seven separate images

• I am currently wearing a dark purple cloak for no reason whatsoever and also a purple and white check shirt and jeans.
• I now have my own computer which is so convenient.
• The person in the photo is me and that me has almost published 500 posts on her blog! And want's ideas for what she should do for the 500th post. (I have a few draft posts which make it look like there are already 500)

• I can really walk on spiderwebs...... oh okay, but I can.... they are just squished and trampled in real life.
• I did not take any of the photos deliberately for the picture, I just decided I wanted to make one and looked back through my photos to see what I had.
• I am currently reading: The Roots of Endurance by John Piper
• I can sew shirts, well I have made two (tunic shirt things) one of which I am wearing in the photo. Obviously it would be difficult to wear two at the same time. (and now that is eleven or I can't count)

Lydia's Questions for me to answer:

1. What is your biggest hobby?
Photography, it is a lot bigger than a hobby now and yet it still is that too.

2.Who is your biggest inspiration?
Ah...God and his creation, and his everything.

3. What is your favourite piece of music (can be either classical or modern)?
Whatever I want to listen to at the time... I do rather like the song "I Still Call Australia Home"  I am not musical in a lot of ways but I can sing I don't know how I do I just do and according to musical people I sounds really good, and they are the musical ones, so I believe them.

4. What is something you wish you knew more about?
A Time To Rise..... I want to know what happens but it is not published yet and so I wait. Other than that I just wish I could remember stuff I already know.

5. What is your favourite quote?
My favourite! I have no favourite, too many, but here are the ones I have added to my goodreads quotes place most recently.

6. What is something you look forward to doing each day?  
Eating breakfast .

7. What is your favourite way to get exercise?
Um....walking... playing badminton...neither of which I do often enough.

8. Describe yourself in three sentences:
I am thoughtful, and like to know things, but I am good a keeping secrets, probably because I forget them. I stand and watch and don't like large groups, but I really like talking in small groups or one on one; I am better at listening than talking unless you get me onto a subject that I am passionate about. If you wanted to know what I look like then use your eyes and look at the photo of me. back near the beginning of this post, or the one on the sidebar.

9. What has been your biggest life achievement so far?
Having my own photography business.

10. What is something you learned recently?
Sometimes things are not worth doing if they are not worth dying for. "If it is not worth dying for it is not worth doing" If you know it is right and biblical you should be doing it even if you may 'die' (or be heavily persecuted) for it. I was struck by this one because it has come up in my lectures on world view things, and on a video we watched and possibly some other place too.

11. Where is the most interesting place you have ever gone?
Well there was this time I walked on spiderwebs, and another when I went to Elsewhere and I found that I could change whatever I wanted, but I also wanted to to be believable so everything has to happen so that people would still have enough suspension of disbelief  (Elsewhere is the world my novel is set in). I don't know which was the most interesting, but recently I was just sitting on a lounge babysitting and I drifted off to a far place or cyborgs, princes and Luna queens. So I suppose I have been many kinds of interesting places. 

Okay now I need to tag/award other people if you don't want to do it that is fine, but if you do have fun:

Sarah @ Novus Papilio
The other Sarah @ Trusting in the Lord
Emily @ Amity
Jessica @ Dreams Really do Come True
Julia @ The Barefoot Gal
Sophie @ The Techno Maid
Zach @ Zach's Abode
Rosie @ Rosie's Treehouse I will tag you just so see if you are still alive there, I have't heard from you for so long.
Hannah,Anna,and Emma @ The 3 Musketeers That actually makes 11 if I count each of you as one :D

Here are your questions:

1. Do you often dream when you sleep?
2. What is the scariest dream you have ever had?
3. What is one of your dreams for yourself for the future?
4. What is one for your dreams for the world?
5. How many tags/awards have you done?
6. What is a question you want to answer?
7. Can you answer it for me now?
8. What is your favourite dreamy/relaxing music or soundtrack?
9. What is infinity times eleven?
10. What is a dream of yours that had been fulfilled?
11. What place have you been where the scenery seems to go on for an infinite distance?

Have fun!

A photo post! I don't seem to often do posts that are just photos nowadays, but this one shall be. Saying that, if you don't like bugs or at least photos of them then there is not much point in looking further because that is all there is here. I took these photos while observing flowers and pollinators for the Wild Pollinator count. I don't own a macro lens, so these are taken with an everyday kit lens with a filter which is kinda like a magnifying glass screwed onto it.

I also saw a cool looking leaf cutter bee, but I just could not get a clear photo of it..... or any for that matter she just flew to fast. All of these critters are quite small.

  

Our church had a ladies dessert night last night. Bel Thompson gave her testimony and sang some of her beautiful songs. She reminded everyone of how special each of us are and how much God loves us. Which of course is true and I enjoyed it very much. 

I did think this though;

It is not just about love.

Love is only one of the first baby steps.

Our journey with God is so much more

our life, in EVERY way should be dedicated

devoted to God

ALL we do, say, think, should be for

the GLORY of God

I scribbled this onto a serviette while I was listening to one of her songs. 
Feel free to use the wallpaper if you wish, but for personal use only.

I have no photos of this event so you shall have to imagine it from my words, and really when it is as dark as the other night, even I can not take a really good photo. 

Motes of hay drift up, hay that has the slightest dampness to it. We leave our places, by the warm fire crackling behind us. We leave the orange glow and settle down on the hay and lean back against another bale. All along the trailer people talk, I am too far away to hear most of what is said. Wordless voices rise high and fall. 

Rumbles of the tractor engine drown out some of the voices. It lurches forward throwing us all sideways and against one another. Red taillights flash, the head lights cut a bright swathe through the grass as we turn and bounce on. We leave the flickering flames behind. Not a trace of their warmth is left. Chords, strummed on strings. Upon one of the topmost bales a shadow sits strumming her guitar. I reach out and touch her as she plays. 

Music wafts through the star spangled night. Overhead the Milky Way stretches, stars glow brighter as we leave other lights behind. The two pointers shine bright, I follow their pointing with my eyes and find the Southern Cross. It shines right overhead in the middle of the misty streak across the heavens, the  Milky Way. I wonder at the vastness of he who names the stars. His Glory is plain if we only but look. 

We rattle past round bales, fences, a dam. Six wallabies start up in surprise as we rumble towards them, fixing them in the tractors headlights. They flee in all directions, we give chase. "Kangaroos" comes the shout, "Look, there!" Voices exclaim, hands point. Some of the wallabies hop along a fence, trying desperately to get away. They bound through the grass and melt into the darkness.

The tractor and its heavy load rattle away to into the darkness. Back to the fire, back to warmth. As we go voices are raised in song from the rear of the trailer. As those in the middle can't make out the words we begin our own. Song, laughter, hay, starry skies, a beautiful memory, a beautiful world, a great God.

 Green and gold light speckling the grass. Vibrantly green buffalo grass, a lawn. Birds call, ever so softly from every side. The grass is soft against your back, for a while. Your checked, long sleeve shirt and jeans stop the grass from itching its way to your skin. Trees block out the suns glare. The leaves above rattle and click in the slight wind. Secrets are whispered from air to tree that travel down into the earth. 

Past the branches and leaves fluffy, white clouds float in the blue sky. The leaves shake with gladness. Soft music plays. All is beautiful.

Eventually you realize your head is lower than your feet because of the slight incline of the lawn. The grass has found a way through your shirt to itch your back. So you shift over and lean against a rock, it is rough and cool, but comfortable. Where you lie is actually a tamed ridge line. Rocks, like the one you lean against poke  up like breaching wales from the green lawn. Rocks of a volcanic sort. The one you lean against sucks warmth from your back. The breeze is almost cold. 

Insects are on the move around you. Ants trail up a tree, bees fly around and around a mosquito hums. Which in the end destroys it all because in this life nothing is quite perfect, not for long. But we have assurance, that one day, we will be brought home. To a perfect home, the perfect home, the perfect place, perfect for eternity.

Fisck hummed through the evening air towards her favourite haunt; the cave of unguarded skins. She darted straight towards the small tear in the gauze, and slipped inside. Heat radiated from three bodies in the room. The time had not yet come for they were still moving around. So she rested behind the stiff curtain of blue that hung down from the roof, waiting good-naturedly.

Fisck listened as another of the Sanguinarius entered the room. She was not as patient as Fisck though. She buzzed through the air straight towards one of the heat sources who were not yet still. The buzzing stopped and began then stopped, Fisck continued to wait. A sharp slap echoed through the room. The Foolhardy One tumbled to the floor with the life crushed out of her.

As one of the elder Sanguinarius, Fisck knew how to bide her time. She knew it paid in the end, with blood. Lights winked out. Soon the only sounds in the room were slow breathing. The time had come. Fisck’s wings hummed as she flew through the cool night air towards the warmest heat source. She alighted on the wall and surveyed her prey. One of the Unguarded Skins lay spread out before her, arms, a leg, a head and neck, inviting her touch. 

Fisck dived down. The Unguarded Skin turned over, and Fisck zipped back up into the air. A soft murmur, then stillness came over the room. She hummed downwards and settled onto a wrist of the Unguarded Skin. There is skill even in where to take the blood from, in some places it is sweet and in others not so, in some places blood springs easily and in others it takes too long. Fisck had hunted for many weeks and by now was numbered with the experts.

Fisck plunged her sharp proboscis deep into the Unguarded Skin’s flesh and sucked. Blood drained into her gut. The surface under her feet twitched. The Unguarded Skin shuffled and slapped at her wrist, far too late, for Fisck now sat on the frame of a picture on the wall.

A few minutes later Fisck hummed down again and landed on the leg that stuck out from the covering, again drawing blood from her victim. A growl followed closely by a slap broke the stillness, but only after the quiet hum of mosquito wings. The Unguarded Skin pulled all her limbs under the sheet and listened to the zzzzzzzzz of Fisck wings as she circled. Fisck landed on the warm cheek of her almost sleeping quarry. The blood had a warm sweetness that satisfied Fisck greatly. 

For a second Fisck struggled to get away from the thrashing of sheets, and arms. She almost got stuck under a fold of cloth. Only one more bite and she would be full. But now the Unguarded Skin had covered herself in folds of the sheet. Fisck returned to the wall, waiting. 

Under the sheet the Unguarded Skin could not breathe properly and the cool night air could not get to her. She uncovered her head and stuck out one hand and foot. From her post Fisck noticed the movement. She buzzed downwards. While the Unguarded Skin thrashed and stilled and rolled over and lay still again Fisck took her chance and got the last sip from a finger and one for luck from the Unguarded Skin’s arm.

Sated, Fisck flew away into the night. She didn’t stay to hear the scratching noise, followed by rustlings and muttering that continued long into the light.

So dear Fisck, you have my permission to show this to the Sanguinarius. Go and rejoice at how famous you are, get to full of blood and explode. Obliterating all of your kind in the process. Sincerely, all of the Unguarded Skins.

Young Australian Raven

The Wood Ducks are all grown up now and look almost like their parents, now there is only the tiniest difference in size. The young raven still squawks from its nest, soon it will be gliding down to steal my chooks' food… and eggs with its parents. 


The many pairs of Australian or Noisy Miners that plague our place are building nests, sitting and feeding the young that have hatched. White eggs, speckled with brownish orange, particularly so at one end, sit in one little nest lined with stuffing from the padding off our trampoline. While I stood watching, a miner bird flew onto the side of a shed and perched on a metal strip that ran all the way around it. The bird peered down into one of the holes the strip and the corrugated side of the shed made. Poking his beak into the hole he tried to reach a creature in there, failing that he clutched onto the metal strip and looked up into the hole from the bottom then poked his beak in that way. Then he tried the top again and finally the bottom once more and succeeded this time. He flew off with most likely a large spider in his beak.

Walking through the paddock I could hear the little blue wrens calling to one another and far off a Willy Wagtail. A Straw-necked Ibis took off from an old, dead gumtree. I often see the Common Myna by the side of the road while driving to town, no doubt plotting which bird they will assassinate next. They are not a welcome site to any lover of Australian native birds or even other animals, like sugar gliders. The Common or Indian Myna will knock young birds from nests, and, if it does not stoop to that, they will at the least steal hollows in trees to nest in; meaning there is another place taken from our native rosellas, cockatoos, possums and other birds that nest in hollow trees. 

I had another amazing find. Last year a pair of Wedge Tailed Eagles hatched a chick so I did not expect that they would be nesting again this year but they did. The chick had already lost all its white fluff by the time I first saw it. Adult feathers covered its body and were starting to appear on its head. I went down the cliff a little way to get a better look. One of the parent birds took off from a nearby tree and glided gracefully downwards, spreading its wings in a two meter wingspan. 

What would it be like to be a butterfly?

To journey on delicate dust powdered wings

To live a short life, that is long for all you know

To never have knowledge passed down

From the generation that came before

To live amongst flowers, the bright colour

Then to be destroyed by time and wind

To lie dying by the rough road

Then to be gone, utterly and forever

But to fulfill the purpose of living

To be a glimpse of the wonder of your creator

To be a butterfly?

No it does not rhyme.... and it is, in my point of view not really a poem.... it is a collection of thoughts.... it is what I call a pondering, a wondering, what happens when thoughts fly, on dust powdered wings. (and i'll also say I have no wish to be a buttery, this is just thoughts about them) 

Is not something at all easy to do, especially if the mantis just wants to walk north.... I have no idea why but no matter how many times I spun it around the mantis always would be trying to walk north. If I happened to be holding her I had to make sure I faced north or else I would find a mantis on my shoulder....trying to climb higher.

She had huge eyes...like all mantises and could turn her head around a full 180°!!! In fact she would sometimes just face straight ahead and roll her beady black bit of her eye around and look back at me... which is rather creepy, but so is turning her head all the way around.

Cool fact 1 : the praying mantis has just a single ear, located on the underside of its belly, just forward of its hind legs!

 Cool fact 2 :Their eyes can see movement up to 18 meters (60 feet) away

While I was trying to do the 'photo shoot' of the praying mantis a vegy headed, one hopper legged, grass hopper, interrupted us. So I took a photo of him too, but then he hopped off.

I could not convince the mantis to stay still! Even if she was not walking steadily north she would sway back and forth...in and out of focus.... and then jump up onto the camera and start crawling up the straps and rather close to my face.....

She does have rather spiky legs

My other problem was that I found a nest of small black ants.... only slightly annoying if there is one.... but when there are a jolly lot of them climbing up my legs and inside my trousers...

so the ants brought the photo shoot to a sudden end. So I left the mantis to walk north.... I have no idea what she wanted to do that for...

Ants have been wandering across my desk for a week or so and I have been squishing them. Just little black ants, but they get very annoying. The squishing didn’t stop them. So last night I decided to track them. Their trail lead me to the printer. I opened up the place where paper is put for scanning. Inside, under the glass, I saw a massive group of ants, baby ants and eggs. INSIDE THE PRINTER!

We unplugged the printer and opened it up as much as possible. The ants appeared to be leaving.... well they left, that part of the printer. They have gone deeper in. 

So next I put a puddle of ant poison on a piece of plastic and put that in the printer and the ants are eating it! Then we realized the ants were all going back inside the printer. So there would be piles of dead ants in there somewhere.

Our latest Idea is to take out the plastic the poison is on and bang it outside occasionally. But the ants are still coming, and some are going back in there to die.

Besieged By Bugs and Troubled by Termites. Last night I sat on a lounge under the dimmest light in the room, reading Systematic Theology. I kept being interrupted by the other occupants of the room, as they growled and swatted. We were under siege. Tens, possibility hundreds of bugs were climbing up the gauze of the door and pushing until they came through. Then they charged in and sashed themselves into our lights. The people sitting under the two brightest in the lounge room were showered with wings, wingless and dazed bugs, that found landing on people didn't make them any less dazed, they often ended up dead, or wingless. 

Bugs smashing into lights makes a sort of annoying noise.

Other invades found the crack below one of the gauze windows in the kitchen and came storming in. They bashed themselves into the big light in the kitchen. We left it on so they could die in there and I finally finished the chapter and got a flyswatter and waked most of the besiegers out into the other room. Were they continued to smash into the light and find ways to crawl inside and found some of their long dead grandfathers in the grave yard that is in there. Those who got in never returned and stayed to join their dead.

This morning the kitchen floor had masses of wings scattered under the light and a few wingless termiten attackers (termites) still crawled around, but were soon after squashed by huge feet as they moved about the kitchen. We had conquered.... until tonight I suppose.

Another totally different thing, which happened a while after I had got home from church. And after I had spent what seemed like a long time trying to out wit the ravens which were back again. but that is for another post, maybe when I finally work out what to do..... could be a long time. 

So..... I put the bread knife into into the nice soft loaf, I could almost taste it. As I cut myself a slice the knife grated against something. Black stuff appeared all over my slice I stared into the loaf. Something black poked out into my slice from where it had hidden itself inside our bread loaf. I pulled at it, it slid out. A piece of black plastic and a rusty screw? I inspected the bread maker, nothing seemed broken. Then I noticed the place where dried fruit can be put if one wants to make a fruit loaf, part of it hung at a wonky angle. The screw and plastic had fallen from there and got into my piece of bread! how dare they!

If you hadn't already gathered we make our own bread and according to every sensible person that has ever tried it, it tastes better (except for the screws) than any bought bread. (that they have tried)