Rocks n Birds n Plants

I’ve been tumbling rocks constantly for the last few months since I bought the tumbling kit. After years of collecting rocks while travelling around the country, it’s great to finally be able to see some of them at their best, polished and shining. These ones above were from Tassie along the north coast where there are a couple of fossicking areas, I believe most of them are jasper, though there’s some agate in there and petrified wood as well.

And my quartz  jelly beans from the Tingha and Stannifer areas in NSW have come out sparkling like jewels. They looked interesting to begin with in their natural rough form like this.

But polished up they truly sparkle. The experience of polishing the outside skin so you can see within the quartz is super rewarding, different to other rocks like the jasper at the top of the page where you see a shiny outside, the quarts opens up a whole world within the quarts because you can see into it and often see right through it.

You see little air bubbles sometimes, scattered, sometimes in layers or planes through the rock, you see veils, phantom crystals telling a story of the crystals growth over time, small pieces of other rock that the crystal has grown around and enveloped. There are “Chevrons” forming strong “V” patterns like growth rings of a tree, and some you would swear had misty smoke trapped within them like a three dimensional photograph, some of them white smoke, others whisps of golden yellow or orange, right through to deep browns.

I’ll take some close up of these at a later date, I might do a complete post on “what’s inside the beans” but the weather is rubbish and I already have a load of other photos I should put up. So we’ll draw a line under this for now.

Yeah, not really funny, and not really a line, I know.

 

 

 

I do love these little birds visiting the birdbath, they come down in such huge numbers. I wouldn’t love them so much if I had fruit trees near me, they decimate the orchard up the hill when fruits are in season.

 

It’s that time of year again when the Drosera’s are out, time for insects to beware, it’s not just all the birds after them but also the plants.

 

 

 

 

A fairly short post this one as I’m out fossicking and want to start writing up a new post about fossicking spots in W.A. while it’s all fresh.