The House(s) of Fran_mart

As will be revealed when I analyse the March weather records I have decided that in this area Summer ends at the end of March rather than the beginning.  Thus taking the following photos on 31 March was doing the business in Summer rather than Autumn. It is often said that Buddleia is the Butterfly Bush.  We have a couple of specimens of that genus which are just about 'over' at present.  However we have some Westringia which is proving very attractive. Australian Painted Lady Always good to see Cabbage Whites doing something other than laying eggs on Brassica!  The image shows how a Common Blue resembles the flowers on Westringia. Meadow Argus  A day flying moth. This red and blue beetle was in the house.  I have taken many images of them on plants but thought this one with its shadow was quite amusing. I have posted a couple of times about the swarming flies, which I first noticed on 13 January.  They are still going most evenings!

Today I decided to go for a cruise to a few birdie spots.  The weather was OK, but allegedly 'cloudy'.  Now my understanding of  'cloud' is water droplets.  This view of the dirty 'cloud' trapped in the Murrumbidgee Valley by an inversion suggests that if there is water in it, it has coalesced around the smoke particles generated by State-sponsored vandalism in the form of huge habitat reduction burns. It bewilders me that we have just had the fire season extended because of elevated risk levels while the RFS are carbonising everything they can apply a match to. The overcast - whatever its cause - made the light rather polarised and thus difficult to get acceptable snaps.  However there are a few which might be of interest in what follows. I began by heading east to check a few dams near the Mills Cross Telescope in case the Plumed Whistling Ducks had returned there.  They hadn't, but there were 13 Australasian Shovelers - a high number for this area

I have put quotes around the word 'day' as in modern times a fair proportion of voters will already have voted.  This makes it doubly annoying to have got a phone call at about 9:45 from the NSW Electoral Commission (I presume) urging me to go and have my say! At least that is less annoying than it would have been to get an SMS from Mike Baird while I was watching the footy last night.  According to the SMH many folk weren't as lucky .  If they were Rabbitoh supporters they'd have been really gutted: your team gets flogged and you cop a spam text! The current sportsbet market on the election is $1.01 for the Coalition and $21.00 for Labour.  (By the way I do know the Party spells its name without a 'u' but that is merely an example of the impact of a poor education system so I ignore it!)  In the same way that I regarded an earlier price of $12 as good value but essentially meant you'd do your dough, I reckon only the numerator in the fraction changes -

An excellent day! We had a very easy drive in to Deakin, despite the early start and set off on time.  It was a tad disquieting to find a couple of overweight cyclists taking up the whole road going down into Urriara Crossing.  There were quite a lot more of them just over the Crossing. Apparently they were heading for Sydney, and had chosen a scenic route.  Some of them must have been from overseas as they didn't which side of the road to ride. Others were on the right side of the road (just) but averse to the soft shoulder. Stone the crows - at the end of Fairlight Rd (about 5km after the Crossing) they all seemed to be having another rest period.  Fortunately we were able to get past them all and head off to Taemas. The business there was spotting the limestone outcrops, forming the eastern side of the anticline of which we were to see the Western side at Wee Jasper. After Crossing Mountain Creek many more outcrops were visible  on the lower LHS of the road towar