2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Tuesday, April 07, 2015

My Year with Bluestone: Little Gulley

After a rather dry few weeks, it is bucketing down heavily in Melbourne this afternoon. I'm at home on the last day of our Easter break, trying to lock up a paper I'm giving next week, so some shorter bluestone posts over the next little while, I think, as I work on one of my other more medieval projects. I have several loads of washing drying in front of the heater; two cats making a cubby under the sheets; and am still digesting a rare toasty cheesy lunch. On a day like this, water will be rushing down all the bluestone laneways in the city and suburbs and especially down this unusually narrow and deep bluestone waterway between two houses, just down my street.  

I'm often amazed, after quickly snapping pictures like this on my phone, at the amazing patterns that cluster around bluestone. Vertical green corrugated iron: red bricks giving the depth of field here, the new wooden fence and the surprisingly tropical-looking disorder of that plant: is that a monstera deliciosa? (I grew them as a kid and a teenager: perhaps it's time to start with them again?)



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