Solace

The mess that I alluded to last post is still not resolved. It's unlikely to be resolved for some time probably. Messes generally aren't.  I liken it to a ball of wool that's been played with by a kitten (or a toddler, as the case may be). It takes time, patience and a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones to untangle the mess. But eventually you do get there. And we will too.  

I start a new job next week and I'm quietly optimistic that it will be good. It will be different at any rate and at the moment different is good. 

If you're curious about the photos - I took them as part of my latest photography assignment - the Yarra River by night.  Despite owning a tripod, I've been quite lax in using it and have almost never ventured out after dark with photography as the main objective. The Yarra takes on a split personality at night - all sexy on the south bank with a quiet, slightly seedy undertow on the north. I found myself drawn to exploring the industrial lines and the solitude of the north side which somehow perfectly captured the sentiment of the river on a cold, wet night in May. 

Cranbourne

I went on a school excursion to Cranbourne Botanical Gardens a few weeks ago. I was a little sceptical at first - Cranbourne doesn't exactly spring to mind when you think about beauty or adventures of a photography kind - but it turned out to be wonderful. The gardens are new, the last section was only opened last year, and they still have a bit of growing to do before becoming properly established but even now they showcase Australian flora in a way that I haven't seen before and it it's really quite wonderful. 

The structures of the garden are supposed to take you on a journey from the outback to the coastal inlets and out to the sea. Personally I didn't really buy into all that, I just enjoyed wandering around and discovering what was around the next corner.  All of the plants have been carefully selected to represent the different parts of Australia and yet none (none!) have the ability to seed at become weeds in the surround bush. This in itself is an amazing ecological feet.  If you're Melbourne based, the gardens really aren't so very far away and they're well worth a visit. I'm already looking forward to my next trip back when the trees have grown just that little bit more.

Contemplation

I'd forgotten about these photos. Fragments of an afternoon spent exploring the Canberra Botanic Gardens.  

I've been in a bit of a creative funk of late, I pick up the camera and think "now what?"  It all seems too hard.  Perhaps I'm over thinking it.  Anyway, I feel like I need a bit of a creative kick up the backside, something to get me moving beyond the funk and back towards making and creating.  And while I've never actually managed to complete a 365, when I look back at some of the photos I took during my failed 365 challenges, I like the photos I took.  Not all of them, no definietly not, but some of them I like.  And some of the best ones (in my opinion) were taken at the 11th hour when I had nothing to give (or so I thought) and I just picked up the camera and snapped. "Hey presto. Photo done. Onto the next task of the day." So I'm contemplating doing a 365 again. 

Maybe I'll start on Monday.

Beginnings

It's no secret that our house has been having a few sleeping problems. E has never been the greatest sleeper, even at the best of times she has always struggled just to let her little body relax into dreamland. Although in hindsight we did have a pretty good thing going when while we were living in Germany.  Once she actually got to sleep, she generally slept well, waking only occasionally for the odd top-up. No problem.  It all went to pieces when we moved to Australia.  I was jetlagged, she was jetlagged and in addition to that completely overwhelmed by the move. For a while we clung to each other like it was nobodies business, an overtired Mama nursing her little girl everytime she made a peep (and she made plenty).   It took a few weeks but we eventually got over the jetlag and Emilia settled into her new home.  Only problem was that the lasting legacy of the whole thing was a fairly fractured sleep routine.  Everytime Emilia woke up she needed me to nurse her back to dreamland.  Sometimes it was twice a night but more often it was 4 or 5.  Last weekend we hit crisis point. There were tears and a sudden realisation that I just physically couldn't keep doing it anymore. What was broken needed fixing.

And so last weekend I stood in a section of the bookshop I never thought I'd be in and spent a good half an hour reading all the baby-sleep bibles. Turns out there's a lot.  With a little bit of reluctance I bought one that sat somewhere between "let your child cry it out" and one that promised a "no-cry" solution.  Nice as a no-cry solution sounds, it just doesn't seem realistic. We started lastnight. Safe to say I didn't sleep much lastnight. Crossed fingers we round a corner tonight and by the end of this week we'll be one the road to recovery and mending our broken sleep. And then... and then I'm hoping that I'll be able to emerge out of the foggy shadow of tiredness that is lurking over me and enjoy the summer.

The picture above is my first selfie for a photo project that I'm doing as part of Urban Muser's "In the Picture" challenge - a selfie a week for 2012. Hopefully I'm up for the challenge.

Sud Kunstpark

Sometimes in the most unexpected places you find curious things. Like this Artpark, tucked away in a remote and very small village in the Austrian countryside. The name is as much of an enigma as the works within - there is no north, east or west Artpark to speak of. If you were geographically minded you might argue that the park sits at the southern tip of the village, but geography has never been my strong suite so I really couldn't say. Anyway, there it is, nestled between the forest and the vineyards, a curious collection of bright, whimsical sculptural pieces by a Canadian artist.  You might also wonder what a Canadian artist is doing in southern Burgenland but that, again, would be something I couldn't answer. 

So with very little explanation other than the little I have said above, I give you the artwork. I loved almost every piece. Some made me smile, a few made me giggle. The man in the second photo only began to relieve himself when you stood within a few metres of him. Fun to see a group of adults regressing into 5 year olds when the question of wee comes up. Poo and wee jokes never really get old, do they?

But I think this little girl was my favourite of the lot. I've forgotten the title now, but it was something along the lines of "dirt in eye". There was a small amount of moss growing on her gumboots from her constant crying which somehow added to the whole piece. And I just love her posture and the position of her feet. The artist got it just right.

 

A small break from the August break - not my photograph... and a few words.

Just before I had Emilia I met Beth at a "Bump's Lunch" and arranged for her to take a few photographs of our family while all four grandparents were in Berlin.  Matthias and I have very few photographs of "us" together and given that we live far from both our families the chances of us all being together again in the same place was probably going to be few and far between. Add to the mix Emilia's birth and me coincidentally meeting an Australian photographer a week before Emilia was born and, well, it seemed only right.

So five days after Emilia was born (a little crazy perhaps in hindsight!) we organised a celebratory brunch at our house and then a short walk through one of my favourite parks in Berlin. Beth joined us for the morning and took some photos - the result were some very special pictures that will forever remind me of the day and of 'my' Berlin. The picture above is one of my favourites from the day - the whole collection (including some stunning photographs of our apartment) can be seen on Beth's blog here.

A 60th Birthday on the Spree - August break

Umbrellas, Gumboots and Raincoats - August Break

Too Hard to Keep

Do you have any photos that are just too hard to keep? Jason Lazarus has started a blog and respository for all those photos that are just too hard to hold onto. Any theme, any memory. The photos will be stored away in Chicago so that they may exist without being destroyed. And you never have to look at them again. The blog is an interesting peak into the unknown world of other people's "too hard to keep" box. And it got me thinking about my own little collection... what would be in yours?

Relaxation

Well, I'm only a few days late with this and it somehow seems appropriate to be kicking off my maternity leave by posting about Relaxation. Do you remember how I issued that challenge at the beginning of May? Did anyone else feel up to joining in?

I actually found this a lot harder than I first thought. Five photos around one theme in one month. Surely not too challenging... You'd think. I umm'd and ahh'd and procratinated and thought and pondered and did very little picture taking. But here it is - my response to Relaxation. Quite early in the month I decided to focus on how people in Germany tend to gravitate to outside spaces when the weather is sunny, which led to reading in parks, which led to reading the news. I somehow found this an interesting juxtaposition - we read the news to stay informed and yet apparently it's a wonderful way to relax as well! 

So... not my five best photos of all time. But five photos on the theme with ample wiggle room to improve.

If you also played around with the theme relaxation this month, leave a comment and a link to your blog/flickr/instagram site. I'm really excited and curious to see what other people came up with. If you want to join me for the month of June I've decided that I'm going to be exploring "Hands".

June: Hands

Alice takes a Sunday Snooze

I had quite a few people comment on the last photo that I posted on Monday so today I thought I'd show a few more of the photos that I took of the her dozing in the park. She was quite captivating and posed for me (unintentionally and unawares) quite beautifully over the space of about 5 minutes. I'm naming her Alice, because she somehow reminded me a little of Alice from Alice in Wonderland. And the weather on Sunday was very Alice in Wonderland like with a cool-ish breeze and warming sun.

The last is my absolute favourite of all four photos. There's something about the light, the green of the grass and the way her limbs drape over each other. What do you think?


And I'm linking up to Lisa's Creative Exchange again this week, two weeks in a row. It's almost a record!

weekend-ing

We had plans to visit one of Berlin's lakes this weekend but once all was said and done we instead decided on a rather smaller expedition to our local park. The lack of water didn't distract from the experience at all. We ate. We slept, read, knit and slept some more. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about picnics which always makes the food taste so much better. The tomatoes were the best of the season so far. The cherries were the juiciest. Even the baguette, which had somehow got wet, didn't distract from the deliciousness of our little feast. I'm tempted to say that it was almost the perfect way to spend an early-summer Sunday in Berlin. Except that I'm not going to - because that might jinx the weather - and I'm hoping for lots more days like this to come.

Chairs

I'm a little consumed by creating collections of photographs at the moment. You might remember that a couple of weeks ago I talked about how this month I'm experimenting with 'relaxation'. While that little collection is slowly forming I thought I'd go back through my archives and see what else I could rustle up. These photos are all from last summer - taken on a walk past some of the cafes in Prenzlauerberg. I love the different personality of all the different chairs; the cool regularity of the Berlin cafe chair, the fun infused into the American Diner and what I think is the quiet elegance of the Parisian wicker chair in the photo above. But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. They are just chairs. Or maybe not.

What I do know is that this last photo refused to be changed into a duller, slightly more sophisticated, black and white version of itself. No sir-ee, it was staying bright and cheerful no matter my coaxing and pleading. And I kinda like it that way too. Hope your weekend is as happy and full of relaxation as this swinging chair with it's friendly bucket of flowers.

Something New

You may or may not remember that my word for this year is 'Rhythm'. Well, rhythm has been a little lacking lately, there have been a lot of comings and goings and rhythm doesn't really seem to be something that gels particularly well with pregnancy and I assume, even less with the weeks and months that come after a baby arrives. In hindsight perhaps it wasn't such a great word to choose. Or maybe it was. Who knows, regardless, I'm still committed to trying to incorporate aspects of rhythm into my life here in Berlin.  

That, my friends, was a rather long-winded way to announce that I'm starting something new at Pampelmuse and Me. Every month I'm going to select a word at random and create a photography series around that word.  This month the word is Relaxation. The photo above is one of a few I've taken so far around the theme. At the end of the month I'll be posting my series of five photos here on the blog. 

I'm not really sure where I'm going yet with my series - at the moment I'm playing with the idea of exploring how people use parks and outside spaces to relax, but it may change. I think that's the beauty of having a month. I'm sure this idea will grow and develop and morph as I continue to add to my pool of photographs.

I'd love for other people to join me in this little challenge of mine. I'm not fussy about the camera or the photographic style - iphone, film, your trusty point and shoot or a whizz-bang SLR - it's all the same to me. What I'm most interested in is how different people interpret the theme and the process of creating a series of photographs. If you think this is something you'd like to do too, then get your thinking caps on and start exploring the idea of relaxation. We can all join back up together at the end of the month and see what we've all come up with.

These clouds have been hanging over Berlin for most of the week. Dark, menacing clouds that have occasionally opened up and released some fairly heavy rains.  Oh, I know Spring rain is good for the plants and quite possibly good for the soul as well, but when you have things to do and were so happy so finally be wearing cute ballet flats again, after months of boot wearing, it does put you a little out of sorts.  

To encourage the sun to come back again I've been playing around with a few photos I took over the weekend when the sun was out and everything felt very early-summer dreamy. The photo below reminds me a little of what you might see if you'd just opened your eyes after having a quick little cat-nap on your picnic rug. Everything is just a little bit blurry, the sun is warm and your not quite sure whether you should close your eyes again or keep reading your book.  

Wishing you all a lovely weekend which is hopefully full of sleepy picnic rugs and not too many clouds!

Lackenalm

A few more photos from my week away in the Austrian Alps.  On one of the days I managed to convince Matthias not to ski and he joined me and his mum on a walk through the high Alpine plaines.  This was my first time in the "proper" mountains (Australian high country not with-standing) and it was really incredibly beautiful.  I kept having those 'oh this is just like in the movies' moments.

An alm is apparently a small lake which provides water to cattle grazing on the high pasture during the summer. Too early for the cows, but we had a lovely walk listening to the birds busily preparing their spring nests and the water melting into rushing streams. At the end of the valley was this cute little Jausenstation serving small refreshments.  Jausenstations traditionally only serve cold meat and cheese, but this little one had homemade Tirol dumpling (Tirolerknoedel) and Sauerkraut - perfect, hearty alpine food to warm us up before the walk back to the Valley.