Sunday Scribblings Wedding. Floriade. Lizard.

G'Day,
The Sunday Scribblings prompt for this week is "Wedding". Well I've been to Floriade, again, and I thought I could tie some of my pictures in with this theme, sort of anyway, He he.
This first picture is of a permanent sculpture of a flock of pelicans which is in a shallow pond in Commonwealth park where Floriade is held. It found it very disturbing. The pelicans are beautifully made but they are tethered on steel stilts which I think is really horrible because they look like they are trying to escape and are impaled on spikes. I don't know what the artist intended but I don't think it would have been the same as my impression. I tied it in with the wedding prompt because I know that many marriages are not happy. I am lucky though in mine.















Here is a sculpture of our former Prime Minister. John Howard. He was wed to this country for many years. The sculpture was ugly and humorous. Carved out of polystyrene.

At Floriade each year, for $10 you can buy a terracotta gnome, paint and decorate it and enter it in a competition. The little guys here are representing Aussie movie characters.I couldn't work out who the 2 in stripped shirts were though. Unless the one in red and white is meant to be "Where's Wally?" You never know where you will find him. The entry was from a primary school so ... maybe.
The penguin is from the "Happy Feet " movie.













The next lot of little gnomes are in the theme of an Australian movie called "For the term of his natural life" which was about the early convict days in our history. It was a very early film, originally made in black and white with no sound.I think it got remade much later as tele movie in several parts. Also fits in with the bad marriage idea. See the mischievous look on the middle gnomes face. They are wearing a ball and chain around their ankles. Ball and chain is slang for wife.













Well no this picture does not fit in with the theme. But I liked it. This little lizard had found his way inside our back bedroom a couple of days ago. We took him outside as he was cold and stiff from being out of the sun, but after a few minutes being warmed up in my hand and in the sun he became active again and was able to go back into the garden. I think he is a skink but I don't know what kind as the common ones I see have paler stripes running down their backs. He is sitting on the last issue of my favorite magazine.













And the little lizard again in my hand. I love the fine details that show up of his tiny feet and toes in this pic.













This happily wedded family was enjoying the spring weather at Floriade and the special attention while posing for the cameras.













They are black swans and are native to Australia. As if you didn't know, and they had a clutch of four babies to show off to the crowds. Teaching them how to be cute to get tid bits to eat. He turned his head a way at just the wrong moment for my picture.The whole family was there, Mum, Dad and the kids.
I took over 75 photos at Floriade and I will put some of the flower ones up here later.
The Floriade festival is a spring flower festival we have annually here in Canberra. There are thousands of Tulips planted with an understory of other annual flowers in garden beds all over Commonwealth park. It runs for a month and attracts thousands of tourists from both local and interstate areas and must make the organizers and therefore the govt. by default, lots of money, even though entry is free. It has been going for 14 years with a different theme each year. This years theme was "Films that Shaped our Nation" , so the floral displays were designed around Aussie made movies.There is a tent there showing excerpts from Aussie movies held at the national film and sound archives. Yesterday we saw excerpts of old movies such as;
"They're a Weird Mob" which was really funny.
"The Wog Boy", also a comedy.
"Tall Timbers" an old black and white film that made me shudder to watch the destruction of a forest when they blew everything up with dynamite, destruction that would horrify us today for the sake of making a movie.
"The Club" about an football club in the 70's which I didn't enjoy watching years ago but yesterday it made me laugh, how we change.
"The Man from Snowy River" a wonderfully scenic movie taken from a poem/story about the early days of settlement in the snowy mountains and written by Banjo Patterson a very famous Aussie writer.
If you are reading this from overseas, see if you can find the movie "They are a weird mob" It is really funny, made in the 70's and set in the 50's I'm guessing. It pokes fun at Australia, it's language and customs. The excerpt that was shown yesterday was of an Italian on his first day in Australia going into a pub and trying to get a beer while working out the lingo.
This week I have had a visit from my Mother in Law and my Daughter, both from Wagga. Peter is driving them home this morning. The visit with my mother in law was good and I enjoyed her company, it was probably the most time I have ever spent with her since I have been married (27yrs). I had some bad feelings towards her in the past but all seems well now, so... Plus she is getting older and mellower I guess. Though we are still different people we do have some common ground. Anyway, I love my husband and would never have let any feelings between myself and his family put that in jeopardy.
I am really annoyed and hurt by my daughter at the moment but I won't talk about it here.
That is along the wedding theme for this week too isn't it?
O.K. Bye for now.
Love Linda.