On Sunday mornings Radio national 621 has an item called Tweet of the Week. They play a bird call and ask listeners to identify the bird. Yesterday morning I missed the question but heard the answer when it was announced an hour or so later. Before revealing the answer and the name of the first caller to correctly identify the bird, they play it again. I heard, on the radio, the familiar sound of the striated thornbills which I hear nearly every morning outside our bedroom window or in the yard as I pick the herbs for our morning tea. So I said to myself that's the striated thornbill. Sure enough, that was the answer, with only one caller correctly naming the striated thornbill although numerous callers rang in with the answer thornbill.
Half an hour earlier while I was taking Lib beakfast in bed we watched nine of the little fellas flitting about and bathing in the bird bath outside our bedroom window. What a joyous thing it is to watch.
Yesterday evening I came home from my duties on roster at the Emerald Museum and was doing my evening chores eg watering pots and seedlings and feeding my birds. I looked up into the foliage of a peppermint tree (eucy) and there was a group of striated thornbills working away presumably eating leaf lerps as they are known to do. For this I'm grateful. Prior to 2009 we had no small birds as the bellbirds hunt them out and farm the the lerps like ants do aphids for their sweet secretions, leading to tree defoliation and mortality well documented. The heat wave in 2009(?) a string of days 45C, pissed off the bellbirds and they have not returned. Immediately our eucys improved and the loss of a couple a year dead out stopped.
Monday, February 19, 2018
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Music is Magic
Sunday evening I slipped into the hot water in the bathtub with my little Sony transister radio and my current book. It had been a trying weekend to say the least and I was in need of restoration.
There's a radio station I have stumbled onto before on Sunday between the 8 and 10 on the tuning dial which plays brass band music after 7pm. Marching band music, which can be invigourating. As I fumbled with the dial while lying in the bath, unable to see the numbers as it was above my head, I came across it again and blow me down it was playing a band version of Pachelbel's Canon in D which was our wedding music 37 years ago.
This did the trick, not only were my spirits immediately sparked but it also brought many memories flooding back which took my focus away from the difficulties of the weekend and my frustrations. No doubt the hot bath helped also.
I worked pretty solidly Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the warm and muggy weather. With Valentine's Day approaching this week the florists had ordered bigger than usual and I had a one off customer with quite a large order as well on top of our regulars. By Friday night I was tired.
But the weekend was not restful. Lib had arranged that we visit her sister and her husband in Portarlington, at their new seaside residence which we had not previously seen. In fact Lib had not seen her sister in over two years during which time they had made the purchase and they now split their time between their longterm residence in Bendigo and Portarlington in their retirement bliss.
We left home shortly after 9.00am on Saturday and drove for three hours with a petrol and toilet stop. We took Pip with us as thunderstorms were forecast and we didn't want her left alone in the house as she goes nuts with thunder, and possibly she would scratch doors and walls in panic if left alone locked in. Driving to and through Melbourne is not my idea of fun, the traffic was heavy, and it was a slow crawl through central Geelong and bumper to bumper crawl through Drysdale.
We had a cup of coffee before a walk into town and down to the water and the pier where the swisho new ferry to Melbourne was moored. It was pleasant to see the expansive water view looking out over the bay. A nice lunch followed and about 3pm it was time to start the drive home, this time it took only two and a half hours as we didn't stop and the were no traffic jams. But 5 and a half hours driving for the day following three bigs days left me wrung out.
Sunday morning the phone rang at 8am. It was my friend Marguerita. She sounded despondent and said could I come out and water the vegies and her garden as she wasn't well, the heat knocks her round and she couldn't do it. She said she hadn't watered for three or four days and things were dying. I went out shortly after lunch and was there most of the afternoon, watering, weeding, planting out flower seedlings for her and carting some rubbish to her burning pile, with a wheel barrow with a flat tyre. I don't mention this to make myself out a good fellow, but to explain my state of frustration, that virtually a whole weekend passed without attending to many things that I would have liked to at home. And when I looked at my box of broccolli seedlings I was dismayed to see the white cabbage moth grubs had stripped em.
Lib and I were introduced to Pachelbel's Canon in D when we were frequent guests at Owen and Diane Murray's house on Sundays in Wangaratta in 1979/1980. Ow and Di loved classical music, and red wine and that's a good combo I discovered.
I think it was Lib who suggested we have that as our wedding music. When we told the Cof E Reverand Charles Helms that we had chosen that music he was somewhat surprised, saying it was usually played as a funeral dirge. The piece of music itself apparenly lay in obscurity for a couple of centuries and was only rediscovered and in recent times, and is now very popular at weddings and is often used in movies where a wedding is happening.
I remember at our wedding reception in 'The Old Emu' restaurant in Milawa Beryl and Fred Sargent were on the same table as the Reverand Charles Helms. Beryl, a heavy smoker, told me she was going crook at me and Lib under her breath for putting her on the table with the Reverand. Eventually she could take no more and asked him if he minded if she smoked. He said by all means go ahead and then asked her if he could bot a smoke from her. Sadly some years later Beryl died from lung cancer. Fred died in 1996. I think Charles would be long gone too.
So many memories flooded back as a result of hearing the music again on Sunday night. Memories of our friends that were at the wedding and the happy exciting time it was in our lives. Music is magic. For interest sake I cut and paste some info on Pachelbel.
There's a radio station I have stumbled onto before on Sunday between the 8 and 10 on the tuning dial which plays brass band music after 7pm. Marching band music, which can be invigourating. As I fumbled with the dial while lying in the bath, unable to see the numbers as it was above my head, I came across it again and blow me down it was playing a band version of Pachelbel's Canon in D which was our wedding music 37 years ago.
This did the trick, not only were my spirits immediately sparked but it also brought many memories flooding back which took my focus away from the difficulties of the weekend and my frustrations. No doubt the hot bath helped also.
I worked pretty solidly Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the warm and muggy weather. With Valentine's Day approaching this week the florists had ordered bigger than usual and I had a one off customer with quite a large order as well on top of our regulars. By Friday night I was tired.
But the weekend was not restful. Lib had arranged that we visit her sister and her husband in Portarlington, at their new seaside residence which we had not previously seen. In fact Lib had not seen her sister in over two years during which time they had made the purchase and they now split their time between their longterm residence in Bendigo and Portarlington in their retirement bliss.
We left home shortly after 9.00am on Saturday and drove for three hours with a petrol and toilet stop. We took Pip with us as thunderstorms were forecast and we didn't want her left alone in the house as she goes nuts with thunder, and possibly she would scratch doors and walls in panic if left alone locked in. Driving to and through Melbourne is not my idea of fun, the traffic was heavy, and it was a slow crawl through central Geelong and bumper to bumper crawl through Drysdale.
We had a cup of coffee before a walk into town and down to the water and the pier where the swisho new ferry to Melbourne was moored. It was pleasant to see the expansive water view looking out over the bay. A nice lunch followed and about 3pm it was time to start the drive home, this time it took only two and a half hours as we didn't stop and the were no traffic jams. But 5 and a half hours driving for the day following three bigs days left me wrung out.
Sunday morning the phone rang at 8am. It was my friend Marguerita. She sounded despondent and said could I come out and water the vegies and her garden as she wasn't well, the heat knocks her round and she couldn't do it. She said she hadn't watered for three or four days and things were dying. I went out shortly after lunch and was there most of the afternoon, watering, weeding, planting out flower seedlings for her and carting some rubbish to her burning pile, with a wheel barrow with a flat tyre. I don't mention this to make myself out a good fellow, but to explain my state of frustration, that virtually a whole weekend passed without attending to many things that I would have liked to at home. And when I looked at my box of broccolli seedlings I was dismayed to see the white cabbage moth grubs had stripped em.
Lib and I were introduced to Pachelbel's Canon in D when we were frequent guests at Owen and Diane Murray's house on Sundays in Wangaratta in 1979/1980. Ow and Di loved classical music, and red wine and that's a good combo I discovered.
I think it was Lib who suggested we have that as our wedding music. When we told the Cof E Reverand Charles Helms that we had chosen that music he was somewhat surprised, saying it was usually played as a funeral dirge. The piece of music itself apparenly lay in obscurity for a couple of centuries and was only rediscovered and in recent times, and is now very popular at weddings and is often used in movies where a wedding is happening.
I remember at our wedding reception in 'The Old Emu' restaurant in Milawa Beryl and Fred Sargent were on the same table as the Reverand Charles Helms. Beryl, a heavy smoker, told me she was going crook at me and Lib under her breath for putting her on the table with the Reverand. Eventually she could take no more and asked him if he minded if she smoked. He said by all means go ahead and then asked her if he could bot a smoke from her. Sadly some years later Beryl died from lung cancer. Fred died in 1996. I think Charles would be long gone too.
So many memories flooded back as a result of hearing the music again on Sunday night. Memories of our friends that were at the wedding and the happy exciting time it was in our lives. Music is magic. For interest sake I cut and paste some info on Pachelbel.
Love it or hate it, Pachelbel’s Canon in D is one of the most famous pieces of classical music of all time, but the facts behind the composition aren’t as well known. Classic FM busts the myths behind this enduring work.
It’s as simple as three violins, one cello, and eight bars of music repeated 28 times. Johann Pachelbel’s Canon has risen in popularity to become one of the best-known pieces of classical music ever written.
It’s hard to imagine a time when this piece wasn’t a firm favourite at weddings, but in reality, not very much is known about Pachelbel’s most famous piece. We don’t even know exactly when it was composed, although it’s thought it was around 1680. There are a few unsubstantiated claims that the music was written for the wedding of Bach’s brother, Johann Christoph, on 23 October 1694, but this is pretty unlikely.
The Canon’s popularity snowballed in the 1970s, after French conductor Jean-François Paillard made a recording. Since then, the music has been recorded hundreds of times, and the iconic harmony has made its way into pop songs, films, and adverts. But even before the public got hold of the piece, classical composers knew Pachelbel was on to a good thing – Handel, Haydn, and Mozart all used the iconic bass line in some of their compositions in the following years.
It’s easy to be distracted by the tight harmonies and the three pretty violin tunes, but Pachelbel’s approach to writing the music was almost mathematical. He uses an ostinato (the same bass line repeated over and over again) and a canon (the same music repeated by the violin parts, in a round) to construct his piece. Listen out for the same music being passed between the violins.
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