Tullycavan in early Autumn

 A view across the gully, note the collapsed wattle in the foreground, killed by mistletoe.

 Kangaroo Apples?

 Flowering Mint

 Beans.

 Spinach of some sort.

Spring Home

Fledglings have flown

A turbulent summer cold front has wrenched it from its branch

now lies forlorn

Late Summer at Tullycavan

 Pine needles glowing in the evening light.

 Red Delicious apples waiting to be picked.

Against the sky.

An Agrarian Idyll

A day at Tullycavan doing stuff.

In the distance smoke rising from what I assume is a controlled burn, but autumn is the time for farmers to burn off piles of trees that have been drying during the summer as well.

Late Evening at Tullycavan

We spent the night at Tullycavan enjoying the space around us.

Warm weather at Tullycavan

I went to Tullycavan today to finish the first round of ragwort spraying and I spent some time cutting up a Blackwood that has come down over a fence.

The Pawlonia is flowering.

The Blackwood. They are not a long lived tree and having a load of mistletoe didn't help it.

This little worm was hiding out among the wood. I presume that the colour is a warning not to eat.

Sense of Place

Yesterday I went to Tullycavan to do some work, which was basically the continued bracken  cutting. When I'd finished I was worn out, but the day was glorious so a walked around to survey the place. I don't think that I can capture the sense of place that this gives me. In summer the dragonflies wending their way in search of? I love the randomness of the way that the grass grows, its fecundity in season. Its variety and variousness. I love my sense achievement in knocking over the bracken, perhaps it's sad for the bracken, but it lets other plants grow free and says that in the future we will be productive here. When I walk to our wood lot I look at the fat blue gums and feel the danger that there would be in felling them to get their wood for the fire. From the cusp of the gully I look down at the waterhole and know the importance of its water through the summer of livestock drinking from the troughs it supplies. Lastly when I walk to the studio to collect my stuff I find a potent accumulation of memory, verdant with life. On this piece of land I feel a sense of being able to walk free in a way that I can't in other places. There is something personal about this place, an embedded relationship invested with emotion and sentiment, poignant with contingency because we may not hold it forever. Circumstances may call us to move too far away to hold it, to move on. I pray and hope that this isn't what we're called to.