Flashed flowers #9

From a callistmon street tree near the station, I am not sure what kind it is. It has a paperbark-like trunk and a downward branch growth. West German vase.

The thesis progresses... one more chapter to get to first draft stage, but it's the hardest chapter... the one that I am not sure what its purpose is.

Flashed flowers #8

Wattle season is over in Sydney, the Callistemon season has started, these ones are stolen from the neighbourhood. This one might be callistemon citrons, but hard to tell. Callistemon citrons is also know as "Endeavour", which is the one used in street planting in greater Sydney. It has taken me a long time to consider collision beautiful, as I associated them with dried up dusty suburban nature strips, their fluffy leaves blacked and polluted by parked cars. Haico loves them and he has opened my eyes to how the flowers are delicate and beautiful. Andrew McQualter and I have drawn them in our collaborative wall paintings "Constructed woodlands". The flowers on the type in the vase are slightly longer and fatter than the "Endeavour", and the leaves are smooth rather than fluffy.

Scaevola "Purple fanfare" from our garden- this one flowers all year round.

Kangaroo paw from our garden, photographed before, these have been flowering continuously for 3 months now.

All in 60s west German ceramic vases.

Flashed flowers #7

3 wattles from Canberra and Namadgee National Park. The last vase was too heavy to hold up.

Flashed flowers #6

Ornamental blossom trees outside the front of the Music School ANU.

flashed flowers #5

A green Cooks River wattles-I think acacia falcata based on the leave shape and the pattern of the flower pom-poms. It was in the bouquet from last week as well. The acacia longifolia have just about finished flowering, and the Sydney green wattle - acacia decurrens, are just about to come out. 
Gleaned from the Cooks River walk.

Ruben's magnolia

is flowering again.

On a recent trip to my parents I dug through a box of books and found some of my collection of artists books including one by Lucas Ihlein.

Lucas and Ruben. photo by Lizzy from 2008

Lucas and I where co-owners (? fans? carers?) of Ruben. The book was of some of Lucas's writing from 1998-1999 when Ruben was a kitten, and includes two Ruben poems/ stories. The first one is about his naming and the second a dream. Reading them really took me back to that moment in time. I could see the room we where sitting in when we had the below conversation and the bed we shared where the dream occurred.

click to make bigger to read.

flashed flowers #4

Three different kinds of Cooks River wattles- Acacia longifolia is one of them, the other two have been hard to identify. I have done a search on the wattles listed as local but the combination of flower and leaf structure didn't seem quiet right. There are about 700 Australian acacia.
All gleaned from the neighbourhood and the Cooks River walk.

flashed flowers #3

Kanagroo paw from the back yard: Anigozanthos Bush pizzazz

Early flowering grey wattle, stolen from the neighbourhood.

Rest in peace Kathy Eriksson

Flashed flowers #2

Stolen from my neighbourhood. Pretty sure this is cotoneaster - a weed. So I consider it a good deed to harvest the berry fruits for vases and then them discarded into the rubbish bin.

Flashed flowers

More hydrangeas from my garden in a 1950's hand glazed Italian vase.

Mambo's Hydrangeas in a West German ceramic vase plus a a small vanitas of a vintage paper scrap book illustration of a Dutch couple with a tiny skull sitting on the frame. Very Calvinist and reminder of the shortness of our lives.

Lilli Pilli from our side garden in the West German vase found for me by Regina's mother Seya. In memoriam.