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Pelican Yoga Posts

Summer solstice in Perth/ seasonal greetings to all

 

 

 

In the title-song on her 1974 LP, Court and Spark, Joni Mitchell called Los Angeles city of the fallen angels.

In December 2023  “The Terrace” – the unusually long through street in the non-Scottish Perth’s CBD – has a lot of upstanding angels, along with banners that declare Christmas Lives Here.

Needless to say, their presence will be brief.

And – as you can see in the featured image – they are dwarfed by towers, named after the temporal powers that have prevailed here, year round, since the 1960s.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#16 in series)

 

 

Until now, every episode in this series has featured a “local” hero.

In most cases, the relevant flowering plant has been (and will be, in the remaining few episodes) one that naturally occurs only in some particular parts of southwest Western Australia.

Today’s exception is an interloper from the Mediterranean basin.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#15 in series)

 

This post’s photos were all taken on 30 October 2023, when the sun was high in an unclouded West Australian sky.

Each picture looks more-or-less straight down at the harshly-lit ground in so-called “northern Jarrah forest”, circa 60 kilometres southeast of Perth.

Much of this forest/woodland (this bit included) is in reality definitely-not-virgin, mixed forest/woodland, typically co-dominated by jarrah and marri trees, or by wandoo.

Even within a small, walkable area – as is the case here – the apparent “richness” or “poverty” of the forest floor is hugely variable, depending on precisely where one is standing and on what is going on at the particular time, within any particular year.

”Exactly the same place” can appear “utterly unlike itself”, from one time to another.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#14 in series, with musical bonus & Australian tour alert)

 

 

 

One of the nigh-infinite pleasures of walking in southwestern Australian forest/woodland/bush:

once “attuned”, you begin to notice that the “forest floor” – when viewed at or near ground level, up close – often looks like a multi-layered, uncommonly-colourful “forest”, in its own right.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#11 in series)

 

 

In this episode no flowers are readily visible, but its heroes are flowering plants.

Their genus has circa 700 species and its tallest members are “our” planet’s tallest flowering plants.

Most Eucalyptus species call Australia home, although many now flourish – some of them rather too well – on every other human-inhabited continent.

They dominate most Australian forests and woodlands.

Wandoo woodlands exist only in certain parts of Australia’s southwest.

No matter how well-travelled, persons lucky enough to have experienced wandoo woodland tend to regard it as something unique and highly likeable…notwithstanding the “unhappy” fact that ticks are also partial to it.

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#10 in series)

 

I am almost certain that today’s hero is a fellow member of the genus Patersonia, but not the same species as those in #7 through #9 in this series.

To me, it remains a UFO – an unknown flowering organism.

If you can positively identify it, I’d be glad to be enlightened, and would then update this post.

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Word power(lessness): fatuous sentence of the year award

It is hard to imagine how anybody could top ABC News Director Justin Stevens’ latest  contribution to the ever-burgeoning array of managerial weasel-speak.

Today, when announcing the “difficult” decision to axe The Drum, “as part of a wider restructure which would see a programs team on the ABC News Channel disbanded and one executive position abolished”, Stevens delivered this 100% pure nugget of fools’ gold:

Stopping things does not diminish their previous value or contribution,

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October 30 2023: Darling Range flora, “up close” (#9 in series)

 

 

This post features this series’ closest views of “purple flags”…with a gnat included, at no extra cost.

Not all “flags” are purple, but the flowers of most members of the Patersonia genus incline to purple. (the exceptions incline to yellow or white)

Patersonia are members of the iris family; most species are endemic to Australia, and the majority are WA-endemic.

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