Welcomed by the blossoms of Maleny - white, purple & red

 

We are back in our Maleny home and gradually getting in the groove. In this Wednesday blog post I share a mixture of standard photos and others taken with portrait mode. There will be three sets of beauty - white, purple and then red. The opening photo though is white and purple.

Here are a few of the purple images.

And rounding it off with reds.

So much beauty to behold and be uplifted by in the spring.

Farewelling the beauty of flowers in the cottage.

 

As much as possible Fiona ensures that we have fresh flowers in our Maleny home and our Scottish cottage. Where possible the flowers come from the garden.

We have been very fortunate this trip that the montbrecias, hydrangeas and various other wee flowers have graced our yard - so some were harvested regularly to up lift our home; and a rose and bouquet gifted by a friends.

I set myself the challenge to photograph quite a few of F's installations using the portrait setting on the iPhone. F taught me this trick - it tends to blur the background and make the subject a bit mysterious.

The opening and following photos simply celebrates the beauty of simple flowers.

As always simple beauty can uplift the spirit. This blog will publish as we start the flight home - farewell dear cottage and highlands.

Finessing and finishing

 Between periods of bad weather I managed to get out into the Wee Workshop, aka garden shed, to grind and sand four of my cupped stones. One was given away a couple of days ago; and the rest will head back to our Maleny home. 

Whilst I have cupped mainly roundish stones I wanted to have a go at a square piece of stone I have had in the yard for a few years. I love the layers in the stone. As you can see from the opening and following photo the cupping process has highlighted the beauty of the layers.

The four finished stones.

The three that will head home with us.

And the one that was gifted - oiled with vegetable oil so that it brought out the dark colour and can be used for salt etc once the surplus oil has been polished off.

Stone work has now been finished for this trip.

Refreshing installations

 

As we get to the end of our time at the cottage we have been doing quite a bit of gardening and sorting in the yard. This has included adding to and moving some of the larger stones and assemblages around. 

We were gifted a very heavy stone with lovely contrasting lines. The stone was dropped off in the front yard by a local fiend who made it look so easy to load and unload. Together F and I found it quite the challenge to move it into its new home. The opening and following photo show it installed next to the Cabinet of Curiosities assemblage

We moved a couple of large stones to the corner of the before installing the striped stone. As you can see from the photos below this encouraged us to move F's assemblage post and the stone cottage on the post - see below.

We tidied up around the post near the fence; and the wee arch piece collected a peace weathergram.

A few bits of rust and a board with rusty bits was added to the bin enclosure.

Moving and adding to installations seems to give them a new presence.

 

Random fragments

 

A few random fragments from the phone - changing colours of autumn, the moon, red is the new colour in the garden and a couple bits of indoor cottage beauty.

First the changing colours on the lochans and hills opening and following photo.

Some recent moon photos - on cold nights.

Red, red, red ....

Flowers and wee installation in the cottage.

Random fragments of beauty remind me of hope and kindness.

Cupping stones - bowls for salt or special objects

 

Over the last couple of days I have been 'cupping' some stones collected from the cove stone beach on past trips. Cupping simple refers to carving shallow cup or bowl shaped indents-depressions in stone. In the late neolithic and early bronze age people carved cup and ring decoration into some standing and reclining stones. There is no clear story as to why this was done or how they were used.

As you can see from the opening photo I thought such cups in smaller sea tumbled stones could be used to hold salt; or they could hold special personal or sacred items such as rings or gem stones.

I used a diamond grinding disk in my side grinder to carve the stones. Bit of a tricky task as the grinder vibrates quite a lot, the side grinder is quite heavy with the battery attached and the work is very much hands on - not for the faint hearted. Needless to say I was gloved, masked and goggled up!!!! A few progress-process photos follow.

A few photos of finished cupped stones.

A few of the stones were given a coat of vegetable oil to bring out the colour.

Final photo is another of the striped stone that will probably make it's way home with us.