Autumn lingers still - another beautiful day through which to wander by the shores of our beautiful lake.  Our sky, caught between two complex weather systems, is putting on a show....

and the lake is a mirror broken by the convoys of ducks that call it home......

The Council has almost completed its extension to the walking paths around the shores....

 and our wandering took us to the new viewing platform at the head of the western arm.

It is a comfortable place to sit and listen to the birds...

...and to soak up the calm beauty of the mountain bushlands....

The Early Bird

As the season cools towards winter, the flow of life in and out of my gardens is changing, too. The longer nights are generally quieter - lacking the shrilling of crickets and percussion ensemble of the various frogs along the creek and in the swamp.  Around midnight there is usually at least one burst of possum snarling, as territory is claimed and reclaimed, but, after the boundaries are sorted, silence returns.

Have they nothing to say, or are they anticipating the increasing hunger of roaming foxes? - always busier, it seems, in the colder weather.  Perhaps it is the foxes, too, that postpone the dawn chorus of small birds - finches, wrens, and silvereyes - until the first rays of sunshine reach in among the branches and make the world just that bit safer for the smallest denizens.

The first sign of bird life is generally the chorus of kookaburras, telling the rest of us that the eastern sky is changing from black to grey.  The magpies and currawongs are usually next, renewing their claim to lookout tree, nesting place, and grassy hunting grounds.  When they call, you know the sun is not far below the horizon.

Once the early, yellow light has banished the nocturnal predators - fox, cat and owl - to their diurnal shelters, the tiny birds give voice from within the tangle of twigs and thorns.  The satin birds begin to sortie out of the denser foilage, seeking berry and fruit, and the crimson rosellas appear to brighten the world.

This is a time when the shadows are long enough to give ample hiding places to the hunted, and the sky is bright enough to silhouette the early hawks and falcons.

In that still, cool, perfect early light, two crimson rosellas - brilliant red and blue - jinked and swerved through to trees to check out the feeder in the small oak tree.  Often loud and tuneful, they swooped in silence, and checked out their destination from the safety of the neighbouring liquidambar.  Their reflexive caution made me wonder if the cat from two doors up has again been conducting dawn patrols through the adjacent camellias.

Reconnaissance completed, they fluttered down into the feeder bowl and broke their fast, all the while conducting a softly muttered conversation.  The soft chirps and whistles didn't stop as I walked by on my way to the village - they know the humans who belong here, as do the magpies, and king parrots, and the cuckoo doves who spend part of each year here.  If they are gone when I return from the shops, the magpies will be waiting on the veranda rail for me, hoping for a treat, and the black ducks will be grazing across the lawn above the creek, where the fractal edge of tree-shadow gives them a sense of safety.  It would be a poor world without them.

As the day warms and the shadows tuck themselves in closer to the tree trunks, the birds seem to retreat as well, but the shadows will reach out again as the air cools, and the tide of life will flow again across the garden.

Small Wonders

Easter is past, and the calendar claims that Autumn is upon us.  While some of the trees are trying to agree.....

the vegetables aren't so sure.  The bees are still finding food from unexpected sources, as a late batch of corn blooms in our garden (we picked some today - sweet, and plenty more to come, which is unusual, as the frosts should have arrived by now).  The tomatoes and beans are still offering up food, while the pumpkins have ripened nicely - at the same time as the cabbage, cauliflower, brocolli, onion, and pea seedlings are all burgeoning.  A day ago the snow peas opened their first blossoms, so that it something to look forward to.

Other insects and small life are busy, too, and a porch light left on overnight attracted moths to the wall beneath it - to the delight of this tiny spider....

Yet, when I went fishing out along the Cox's River a couple of days ago, the algae that normally send the water green during the hot, slow days of Summer was flourishing.....

Flourishing to the extent that a blue-green algae warning was issued the next day for Lake Lyell, a few kilometres downstream from where this picture was taken. If you are wondering why there are no fish-pix, the big ones all got off after brief tussles - only the tiny ones were willing to pose for a photo.

Flat Spots

What do you do when a writing "Flat Spot" deepens into a trough of unproductive days, and then begins to stretch into an arid plain of empty pages?  Why does it happen in the first place?

There is plenty of advice about the importance and value of "turning up" and of keeping to a routine as ways to ensure writing success.  Daily life, though, can throw up legitimate obstacles to the writing life - first one, then another, so that flat spot happens, and pages remain blank.  A prior commitment here, or an illness there, and two or three non-writing days have stretched to a week.

There is a point during that week where guilt begins to nibble at the edge of the mind - promises made to one's self have been left unfulfilled - and even though each distracted day was so for a valid reason, that guilt goes from a mound that trips the writer up, to a mountain that looks too high to even attempt to climb.

Standing on the edge of that plain of empty pages, the mountain of guilt and self-accusations looming ahead, is a lonely place to be, it seems - but it is far from a unique position to be in.  There have been plenty of words written on that very topic, such as this blog post by Emily Temple, in which she examines the diary entries of famous writers who were published before their flat spots, and after, but had moments where all seemed lost.

What to do about it?  This article in The New Yorker, by Ferris Jabr, is a nice summary of the value of such a simple solution as going for a walk, while this blog post by Nicole L'autore explores other ways to regain your writing momentum.  Some of Nicole's suggestions do fit on the list of things I do to procrastinate, but others definitely seem worth a try.

In this case, it seems that writing about the reasons I have not been writing was enough to get the words flowing again - and that reminds me of the concept of morning words (another thing I have been less than scrupulous about, lately).  Julia Cameron, in The Artist's Way, seems to be the source for this idea, and she made the point that it really didn't matter what the words were, as long as they were allowed to flow from brain to pen to paper.  Those words might be, at their start, a litany of complaints or excuses, but once they are on the paper, there is room in the brain for the other words to come to the fore - and doesn't that feel better?