new year garden snapshot with new camera

I have a new camera, a Pentax SLR with an extra lens for macro photography. The macro lens looks a bit complicated so I have decided to get to know the camera with its simpler lens first.

Here a few garden photos I hurriedly* took late this afternoon, as the light was starting to fade. I used automatic settings.

These are the seed pods of Nigella, or Love in the Mist. They are brown and dried up, so I use sepia to emphasize the attractive shapes of the pods.

Silhouettes and sky are two of my favourite things ...

The orangey red Calla lily flowers light up their part of the garden. They are a bit showy for my taste but were given to me years ago by a workmate and have naturalized so well I leave them to do their thing.

This Verbascum just appeared one day. It slumbered for more than a year, then put on this enormous growth spurt. It is a biennial so I guess it will die soon, having fulfilled its evolutionary imperative. Makes the calla lilies above look positively sedate and restrained. I wonder where the babies will plant themselves?

Thank goodness there are still possums in the suburbs. Judging by its poo this one is quite a size. I have heard the patter of little feet over my head so I suspect it's rejected the nesting box I provided for it, and prefers to nest inside our roof.

This is common old curly parsley but I find the seedheads intricate, decorative and statuesque.

*The hurry is because tomorrow we are going to Stewart Island for a holiday. Stewart Island is a small island on the Antarctic side of New Zealand and has far more birds than people - just what I need for a Nature Fix. Hopefully it will also lead to blogworthy photos and words.

Given that we will be visiting a bird sanctuary, it was sad and ironic timing to read in today's paper that six Australian birds are to be declared extinct after not having been sighted for 20 years.