Week 42 of 365 Challenge Landscape Week

This weeks images were all taken from close to home as the weather all week has been lousy. Lots of thunder storms and much as I love listening to them at night I'm not so keen on them spoiling my plans during the day. There was even a small tornado that ripped through some nearby farmland one night. It destroyed 125 gum trees, a barn and a wool shed and strong winds threw a lot of family trampolines around, but thankfully no one was injured and damage to houses seems minimal. 

These images were all taken between rain showers in local parks, except for the two mountain images. I hunted around town a bit trying to find a high spot with a view of each of them. In the first mountain image you can barely see any of it for clouds but I did catch a tiny bit of rainbow.

On the second mountain image more of the mountain is showing in spite of the clouds. It's not actually a cone shape like it looks though. It's actually a range of peaks leading off behind but they're not visible from this angle.

Next weeks theme is Tools. Now this brings to mind hammers and spanners etc but I've been thinking a bit about what other tools we use around the house so hopefully I'll be thinking outside the toolbox as it were :)

Have a great week!

Autumn Collage Fun

Autumn Leaves

Golden and red,

spinning,whirling, dancing

in circles to the music of the wind.

The trees shake off their autumn coat

to dance naked in the winter chill.

The ephemeral mists silkily

caressing their limbs,

before abandoning them to

sway in gentle rhythm

to Mother Natures music.

- Carolyne MacMillan (me)

About two weeks ago Miss 7 and I collected lots of autumn leaves from our garden and pressed them for a week. The Liquid Amber leaves were particularly lovely shades of pink and red. Yesterday we decided to collage with some of them. Miss 7 also used some of the other paper collage items we had lying around. I also found a packet of skeleton leaves I didn't remember we had and we started to create. The images were to represent our vision of Autumn. 

It turned out to be an interesting exercise in patience for Miss 7 who had trouble with everything sticking to her fingers and not to the paper. Dried leaves are very fragile and for a while I thought she might give up but after a lot of effort though she got everything where she wanted it and started drawing with felt pen within her collage. In the end she decided that it needed to dry out before she could do any more and we packed up for the afternoon. I was pleased when she asked could we do this again next weekend, I wasn't sure she had enjoyed this exercise as much as some of the others we have shared. So hopefully she will finish her collage next weekend and I can add a picture here.

Autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the colors all pinks, reds, oranges and shades of brown and the misty cool mornings. I think it's the best season for early morning walks with my camera. Winter is a close second for me though. We don't get snow here but crunching through icy grass on a cold morning is fun and I love the stark tree shapes half hidden in the mist. It's a great time to be alive.

You can keep my Spring though, too rainy and it spoils the flowers and Summer is just too hot to bother with really. 

The photo above was taken by me back in 2009. It's taken on a walkway around one of our local lakes and our families favorite place to go for walks. I never have to ask twice if anyone wants to go for a walk around the lake :) 

My collage is a mixture of acrylic paint and leaves.