Beautiful weather over the weekend. Not a cloud, and starting with a cool 12C then quickly warming up to a max of 24C. The sky a deep blue, not as dark blue as I have seen it, when it is as dark as the green of the rainforest, but showing that there is little moisture, smoke or dust in the atmosphere.
Washing trees and sky
I have thought about why it is sometimes so dark blue in Oz when I have never anything but a faded pale blue in England. I have seen pics from Kate in Perth of the darkest blue skies. Knowing that the red end of the spectrum penetrates dust, smoke and moisture from following astronomy, it is obvious that in clear air I will see the black of space lit only by the back-scatter of the atmosphere. This also accounts for red dawns and dusks as the red light can penetrate through a longer path through the atmosphere and the blue light is scattered away.
I can put up with a bit more of this. For a while. Then I will start whinging about the lack of steady rain to replenish the water table so the creek will flow well in the dry season, so I will have hydro-power later in the year. Ungrateful sod that I am. I have had about median rainfall of about 1300 mm so far this year, but it arrived in huge dollops and didn’t soak in, but rushed in floods to the creek and away.
Random pic taken today near the homestead
Then I think about the farmers stricken with drought that are always with us in this dry dusty country. Where every rain period is just a short reprieve from the next drought. They watch their livelihood and income disappear as the sun sears crops, and the lack of fodder causes the stock to stagger and die. And I whinge about an inconvenience I can see happening sometime in the future.
Because I have travelled a lot in my earlier years, I have some first-hand experience of the difficulties faced by people who have very little resources. Who are totally self-reliant and do not expect, and are unlikely to receive, any help when disaster arrives. People in the Horn of Africa for instance, who are stricken with the double calamity of drought and war. I have this yardstick to compare my difficulties against those of the least fortunate in the world. Then I realise that the slight problems the variables that the weather throws at me, is within my power to control. For so many it is not.
I don’t know where the world is headed, but I do know that I have lived a charmed life being born in a rich country, and moving to an even more bountiful one. See the picture of orchids and elkhorn epiphites, and the ferns that are epiphites on epiphites. So this suggests that I should enjoy this beautiful day, not dwell on the future’s possible problems, and relax in the confidence I can deal with with it. I sometimes live in the past, the present, or the future, but the most satisfying is the present.
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