Elizabeth is taking up a marketing position at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and she'll do it well. That's her above at the Christmas lunch we had at Dijon. Thank you for the lunch, and good luck in Sydney Elizabeth

The rain (yeah!) had started to split the cherries, I waited for a few days but decided to pick them when another shower was forecast. They were still not really ripe, there were occasional darker ones, but they were all quite fleshy. We ate the really ripe ones, and after the others sat there for a few days, I pipped and dried the others. Drying concentrates the sugars and the become like a big dark red sultana. The bowl of them on the table didn't last very long. I polished off the last few on top of my morning muesli.

Have a look at the website, you'll get a fair idea (sorry) of what the content is. There has been an attempt at creating a thorough history, so there's a lot of very ordinary photographs (and a few paintings) included that seem more at home in a museum than in a quality portrait gallery. There are short pieces about why each of the people are important that will take you an hour to read (again of varying quality - almost as if they ran out of steam in researching) but you'll gauge all that from looking at the website and seeing the comments.

There are some standout images however, the poster image of Sydney restaurant Aria's chef Matt Moran taken by Murray Fredericks and Lisa Giles is pure Caravaggio, quite stunning. And I really liked the quite image of Lynwood Cafe's Robbie Howard taken by Martin Mischkulnig.

I'd been planning a visit to the Portrait Gallery and happily it coincided with a concert of Moya and John's combined choirs - Worldy Goods (that Jan sings in), Can Belto and their Tuggeranong older people's choir Out of the Shower.

In the main entrance hall with the Christmas tree and the lovely chocolate box picture of John and Janet Howard on the wall at right, I felt I had to take some more pictures for them as well. The concert was really dynamic, the sound in the hall bright and clear.
It's beginning to look like Christmas.

There are some old style roses growing on the fence between our front and back yard, I've photographed them often. They're such a delicate flower, while I was photographing these, one of the petals just dropped of in a slight breeze. They're perfect for an instant and we enjoy them as we can.

A lot stronger are the pomegranate flowers when they first form. (The pomegranate tree featured in a diary entry here).
They've a tough shell that splits and folds back, exposing the centre.

Then they unfold this this startling red flower, that drops after a week or when they get blown around a bit. This red is one of those colours that are made for a computer monitor, you'll never get a pure photographic print of one.

These moths arrive at this time every year (I'm sure there's already a diary entry or two). The white bar along the top are their antennae and they're not usually folded against the body like this, usually two feathery horns. The body camouflage doesn't work on a house wall, but against the right tree trunk, the serrated edges and almost cork like pattern would fit right in.

Tuesday 21 December '04

Schools out. And Bungendore is still the kind of town where kids can still safely pull their sister along in a billycart on the bumpy footpaths.