Midday in the Garden of Good and Evil

more on one blog or two....

2007-04-26T20:03:00.000+10:00

I've decided to stop posting to this blog and include future garden and travel posts in my mixed media blog at GRAMARYE - THE BLOG

I hope some of you will follow me over there and you can always subscribe through the RSS feed services like Bloglines (I know there are others but this is the one I use and am familiar with)

Thanks to Susan and Spike for your comments.

Susan: Now that Flickr have added the ability to make 'collections' of the sets, I've been sorting my pictures into some sort of order that should make it easier to find what you are interested in (but I warn you, organisation is not my strong point, so it could be a bit like walking into my sewing room)

Spike: I won't be deleting this blog, so hopefully it won't be nicked by spammers.

For anyone thinking of deleting their blog, read this warning first.

I'm not sure how long Blogspot lets a blog sit without postings, might have to pop in now and then with a quick word or two.

Why have I decided to stop posting here?
I think mainly the time involved in keeping more than one blog, I know those of you who post a lot of photos understand the tedious job of getting the html from flickr or waiting for blogger (which never put the pic where you wanted it)

I've decided to make any future travel postings a bit shorter and link them to more photos on flickr for anyone who wants to see more.
So time will tell how it all works out

Finally, thanks to all the gardeners who have been reading and commenting, I guess I'm like all bloggers, we appreciate comments, its nice to know someone is out there reading.

one blog or two....

2007-04-18T12:25:00.000+10:00

If you read my craft blog this is pretty much the same question I posed there....

I've been thinking over the inordinate amount of time I've been spending on the internet, I couldn't imagine giving it up altogether but I somehow need to cut back, and I've been wondering about whether I really need to have two blogs, this one, my so-called gardening blog (which also includes photos from our trips or days out)and my mixed media blog.

The mixed media blog was going to be just about my craft work, and the gardening blog was going to be more home-ish. (just so I don't scare anyone off - I have no intention of ever getting into the really personal soul baring style of writing, I wouldn't be comfortable with it)

But I have been thinking about combining the two blogs I have now and wonder how people feel about it.

Would you, my gardening readers want to move over to the other blog if I combined the two (the mixed media being the one with most hits)

Very often I find the plants I photograph find their way into my artwork or sketchbooks and our trips often include galleries or art shows, so it's hard to draw the line where they cross over.

On the other hand, a few bloggers I follow have been starting new blogs for their different interests...not sure how I feel about that, I do like it when I can read a post about someone's art work one day and see their town the next day, I can get a feel for where their work is coming from and appreciate it more...jumping around from one blog to another it is sometimes hard to keep track of who you are looking at.

So if anyone would like to comment, I'd appreciate your ideas and feelings about combining into one blog which would cover my art work, maybe cutting down (but not out) the length of the travel posts I've been doing and a few shots of what is blooming in the garden at the time.

Links to the mixed media blog are in the right column (and I DO have to start on Matilda again, poor girl got off to a good start but has been neglected)

Wotcha think huh???

aphids

2007-04-11T09:25:00.000+10:00

I know the large green bug is a different species to the aphids but as it was the first day of school holidays, it tickled my fancy that Mum had taken the kids out for the day.

"It happens every time I take them out, all they want to do is eat, it costs me a fortune, then they want to bring all their friends....."

Sydney Harbour ferry ride

2007-04-09T15:29:00.000+10:00

It's been many years since I've been on a ferry on the harbour, as teenagers we regularly caught the Manly ferry to the beach, hoping for a choppy sea as we passed the heads, bravely sitting outside being washed with spray while the oldies (that's me now!!) sat inside and complained.

So on a dull overcast Sunday afternoon, when we found ourselves at Circular Quay and our car parked across town at Darling Harbour, we decided to catch the ferry across.

Once away from the Quay, the ferry captain gunned it and we left quite a wake for the little boat crossing behind us.

Darling Harbour is on the western side of the Harbour Bridge so we had to go under it, but also had a few other stops on the way, criss crossing the harbour to the northern side then back to the southern side.

The scale of our bridge is only appreciated close up, and this was a great way to see it

This is looking back from the north toward Circular Quay and the Opera House.

The first stop after crossing the harbour is Luna Park, and just before it, under the shadow of the bridge, we pass North Sydney Olympic Pool.
When it opened in 1936 it was hailed as the "wonder pool of Australasia"
It has a lovely art deco fresco of dolphins and ...some sort of bird, which looks like a white cockatoo from the beak, but I can't help thinking a wading bird might be more appropriate, or a seagull? but I'm sure it's a cocky...probably with galoshes.
There is a little about the history on the North Sydney website
Lots of world records have been broken in this pool, but couldn't tell you which because I'm not into sport at all...

The Luna Park site was used as a workshop area when the Harbour Bridge was being built then in 1935 the storage buildings were leased as an amusement park.

There is an interesting history of Luna Park on their website

The apartments behind arrived considerably later which hasn't stopped the residents from complaining about the noise.....gee, if you buy on top of a fun park you'd never expect it to be NOISY, would you???

After leaving the Milsons Point wharf we pass Blues Point with the controversial Blues Point Tower designed by Harry Seidler.
Last year the tower apartment block turned 40 years old and no other building in Sydney has been more despised or criticised, and what does Harry Seidler say about this criticism - quote:
"It doesn't worry me that people have criticised the building," he says. "What do you expect from illiterate people? They're insensitive and uneducated so why should I take that seriously?"
(I'm tempted to say 'up yours Harry' but that would only prove his point wouldn't it)

The Blues Point area of North Sydney was named after another controversial character, convict Billy Blue, who ran a ferry boat service across the harbour in 1831 - not a ferry as we know them today, he rowed his customers across, and continued to do so until in his 80's.
Old Billy Blue is a twig on a distant branch of my family tree, my gt.grandmother's first husband was the grandson of Billy Blue - I'm descended from her 2nd husband so can't claim old Bill as my own, but I've researched his history and have made a web page about him here

At this point we cross back to the southern side of the harbour, passing the mouth of the Parramatta River

A stop at Darling Street Wharf at Balmain East, then past Illoura Reserve at Peacock Point on the tip of the Balmain peninsular. Across the water you can see the triangular span of the Anzac Bridge at Pyrmont.

As we head into Darling Harbour, we pass the National Maritime Museum.
On permanent display is HMAS Onslow, an Oberon class submarine, destroyer HMAS Vampire, not sure which ship has the tall mast in this picture, it could be the Endeavor replica, the James Craig is usually here, but it was moored at another wharf this day.

As we pull into the Darling Harbour wharf, we pass the new Sydney Wildlife World, under this dome are housed 6000 furry, scaly, hairy and spiky creatures, all conveniently packed for the busy tourist, who wants to pat a koala, but not leave town to do it.

This is the busy side where most of the passengers leave, but we stay put and across Darling Harbour *again* (didn't we just come this way I ask, but he says not) and we leave at the Casino wharf, no one getting off here looks like a big spender, but I guess the high rollers don't arrive by ferry.
Our little ferry stays at the wharf just long enough for us to walk around and talk this shot of it starting the return trip:

Across the road to the Sushi Star for a good Japanese meal and home

Water Hyacinth

2007-04-05T21:29:00.000+10:00

According to the CSIRO the water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) native of the upper Amazon, is one of the worlds' worst aquatic weeds, forming a dense mat that can double in size in a few weeks, totally clogging waterways.

It was first noticed in Australia about 1890, probably brought in as an aquarium plant and has now spread to all states.
In the 1970's and again in 1980's biological controls were introduced with the release of a variety of weevil and a moth which has worked well in sub tropical areas of the eastern states, and another weevil species was released in the 1990's.

The plant shown here is growing in my frog pond, I have to thin it several times during the summer growing season, the roots form a big thick fibrous clump under the water.
It is probably something I shouldn't grow, but then that could be said of most of our introduced garden plants.
I make sure the discarded plants go into the compost bin, and cut the flower heads after flowering. As we are not close to a waterway and have no run off I grow it simply because I like the flowers.

Tempus fugit

2007-03-29T11:40:00.002+10:00

...it seems to fugit something awful lately, here we are a third of the way through another year, and I have a very large birthday looming in a few days which is a depressing thought, but at least I'm still here having them, which isn't as depressing as the alternative.

I still haven't totally converted this blog, whilst I changed over painlessly I still am not using their widget thingies because I'd have to copy and paste all the links I have in the side panels and I just haven't felt bothered enough to spend the time, I think that's why I kept putting off writing here.

My garden suffered terribly through summer (as I did!) neither of us handle the heat well, but now we've entered autumn, had a few cooler days and a good drop of rain to boot.
So because I haven't been blogging here, I've a little backlog of trips to post about, we visited Mount Tomah Botanic Gardens in the Blue Mountains and had a walk around the old brick pit at Homebush (doesn't that sound exciting!!)
Over the next week I'll sort out the pictures and get going here again....
Meantime..
Our first solid rain in months had me out with the camera..

and you know those jobs like cleaning the gutters and installing rainwater tanks...well they didn't happen, so here is my patented rainwater catchment area, right under the leaky gutter

Looks like I'm going Beta

2006-12-11T10:44:00.001+11:00

just logged in and got the message from Blogger that it's my turn to change over to Beta - having heard some nightmare stories and knowing the amount of tweaking that I've done to my present blog I am not rushing into this overnight, I need a few days to copy all the bits I've added and do some more reading up.

just warning you incase things start looking weird
...if anything drastic happens and I totally disappear, check my web site at
Gramarye and I'll put a note up there to let you know what's happened

Agapanthus time

2006-12-06T10:49:00.000+11:00

I know when the anniversary of my mum's death is coming up because the agapanthus bloom.
In the last couple of weeks of her life I'd take her for a walk in my garden, frail, fragile, she'd stop at the agapanthus, which were just nose high for her, she would smell them and say 'beautiful'

Years before she'd joke about how she had no sense of smell and aggies don't have perfume, but there was enough of her fading mind left to know that flowers should have a scent and she loved them all.
At her funeral in the middle of the service, all the floral sheaths around the coffin slowly toppled sideways and we knew she was re-arranging them - never could resist having a fiddle with things me mum.

So each December, when the first aggie blooms in my garden, I stand in front of it and have a little cry, and then I get on with life.....

but I miss my mum

Technorati tags: Flowers

Territorial frog

2006-12-01T18:31:00.000+11:00

We have a homing frog in the little fernery next to the house,
I have a waterwell pot with a scraggy looking fishbone fern, it's been there for years and is pretty ordinary, sometimes I remember to water it and fill the well.

Waterwells have a black plastic tube running from the top of the pot into the well at the bottom, if you keep the well full then the water is supposed to draw up into the bottom of the pot keeping the plant watered but not too wet.

I was pouring water down the tube when I noticed a little leg scrabbling on the clear side of the well, there was a frog inside the tube.
I carefully unscrewed the well and took him up to the pond in the new fernery, nice cool dank with water hyacinths and weed already for a frog inhabitant.

A few days later, filling the well again (it's been hot!) he's back in the tube - don't ask how I know it's the same frog, I just do!
Took him out again and back to the pond.

You guessed it! he's back in the pot.
How on earth he navigates his way across our yard and into the same pot beats me.
He probably curses me when I go out to water, "here's comes that damn woman again, I hope she leaves me alone this time"

so I have....

and you will just have to take my word for it that this is a frog's bum....

Technorati tags: frogs

Travel: Wine and quilts at Mittagong

2006-11-28T12:05:00.000+11:00

We haven't had a Sunday drive for a while so when my quilting teacher, Carolyn Sullivan, told us she had a quilt in an exhibition at a winery, I thought what could be better than visiting both his and my favourite subjects on the same day.
We hopped onto the new-ish M7 expressway and headed south, I haven't been on this road before, it cuts out loads of traffic and lights but, like all expressways, is SO boring

In no time at all, we were off the main road and on the dirt track to Bou-saada Vineyard at Mittagong.

We had stopped at Mittagong RSL for lunch but found that we could have had lunch at the winery.

here are the quilts and a corner of the gallery

Outside the grape vines were looking very green but the rest of the countryside was brown and dry, we saw cattle and sheep on farms picking at what looked like dead clumps of grass in red earth paddocks. On the news last night was an article on how the farmers are getting $600 per steer and we are paying $2000 in the supermarkets for the meat.

We found this little group of gnomes having a game of cricket, with the bush fires still around Sydney I won't jinx these little guys by mentioning Ashes.

Bou-saada also grows proteas

I went to look at the quilts while he had a wine tasting at the cellar door...I came out just in time to see the credit card being handed over for a carton of wine......mmmmmm, now where have I put that brochure about the embellisher machine......

we then cruised on to Berrima but I might do that one later.
Technorati tags:Sydney travel

Blue Mountain fires

2006-11-22T15:40:00.000+11:00

As I've been uploading the shadehouse photos to flickr and writing the last entry, I've had the radio on, the bushfires raging in the Grose Valley of the Blue Mountains has again jumped containment lines and is threatening the small towns of Hazlebrook and Linden. It started 10 days ago from lightning strikes in inaccessable country.

The sky over Sydney is brown with smoke and the wind is hot and fierce.

So far no properties have been lost but it's getting closer to built up areas.

...and the native animal losses we will probably never know, except for those who are found with burns.

It's not just the Blue Mountains, there are about 60 separate fires being fought around the state.

Summer in Australia isn't all surf and beaches.

reports on the Sydney Morning Herald site

The tale of the cats and the shadehouse - part two

2006-11-22T14:35:00.000+11:00

When you take a break from blogging for whatever reason it’s hard to get back into the swing of things, you think of things to blog about but feel a need to play catch up first, and so it keeps being put off.

So having left you all with part one of the cats and the shadehouse, I know you have been on tenterhooks waiting for the rest of the story.
Haven’t you.....say yes or I just won’t be able to go on....

We were offered an old shadehouse framework which was once in my sis-in-laws back garden but had been dismantled years ago and was taking up needed space.

It arrived with no instructions, brother in law gave us a vague notion of how it went together but it soon developed into a giant meccano set as we measured and imagined where the bits belonged.

But where do the cats come into it I hear you ask?

A friend showed me the purpose built cattery that her daughter had installed in their backyard to give her Siamese some outdoor time.

It had a sort of raised mesh tunnel linking the sleeping quarters to the enclosed outdoor yard. It is after the style for sale here - these don’t come cheap you’ll notice, this girl paid about $2000 for hers.

Well, our little brats already had their garden apartment but I thought of linking it to the shadehouse with a raised run to give them some extra space…..not that they are particularly energetic, they spend most of the day in a prostrate position, it was just my guilt feelings for locking them up, guilt fed by looking at this site and thinking how hard done by our kids were in comparison.

First we had to find the right spot, not easy, we don’t have a lot of space, so we decided it should go here, my favourite spot for a chair, book and coffee.

One of my concerns was that I didn’t want to lose the big birds nest fern

There was also an old melaleuca which had a lovely twisted trunk that I had been ducking under for years and would probably need a trim.

When we measured, we found the melaleuca was in for the chop – this is not a sight I want to see in my garden very often – Tom the toolman with chainsaw in hand.

We eventually had a relatively clear space, I tied up the birds nest and removed everything else that I could, then came the fun and games.

My husband has a *thing* about asking people for help, he’d rather struggle on his own with me holding up my end. Massive great sheets of weldmesh are not light and they sure don’t manoeuvre easily, we were able to carry the walls around into position but the roof had to be lifted on by going up and over the pool fence…..it was a stinky hot day, there was even a little local scrub fire, so the smell of smoke was in the air as well.
But..we did it...without too many injuries, minimum swearing and we are still talking to each other...

By this stage I was thinking bad thoughts about the cats.

Merlin inspected the space then went back to bed.

Two little frogs inspected the space and decided they liked it.

It was then I decided it was for me and the frogs

I divided up the staghorns, replanted the bromeliads and the tree fern was happy to have its corset removed.

We went to Bunnings and bought nice little table for two.

and early morning sunlight with coffee is just wonderful

Technorati tags: garden gardening frogs

The tale of the cats and the shadehouse - part one

2006-09-27T11:54:00.000+10:00

I am not a cat person

(I can’t say or read that phrase without thinking of the Terry Pratchett book ‘Moving Pictures’ – the starring actress, when confronted by Gaspode the wonder dog, says she is a ‘cat person’, Gaspode under his breath, says ‘wash in your own spit, do you?’

start again, I’m not a cat person
When I was a teenager (mumble mumble years ago) we had a pure white tom cat who terrorised me when I came home late at night by bailing me up in the yard with claws drawn and refusing to let me in the house.
I also remember a neighbour calling over the fence that their cat just had kittens and two were white – no prize for guessing who dad was – this was before council registrations and de-sexing of cats.

Tom the cat was my mums’, although knowing cats better now, I think maybe she was his. Tom met the fate of most city cats who go on the prowl at night.

He was our only foray into cat ownership – after his demise, we as a family went back to owning dogs.

Until my son came home one day about eight years ago with the cutest little black and white kitten who was as smart as a tack, he named her Newton because she investigated everything til she figured it all out.

Because he was at work all day, I persuaded him to leave Newton with me through the day so she wouldn’t be lonely, he finally said “there is still one kitten left from litter if you want it, it’s the runt”

Who could resist that offer, the runt arrived, ginger and white and as placid and dumb as her sister was bright. I named her Merlin before we found out she was a girl. The two little sisters finally settled at my house when son moved.

Then I made a big mistake while visiting friends with a Siamese.

I’d never come across a Siamese before, I guess I was attracted to it by its’ doglike qualities, and I foolishly joked ‘hey, if you ever want to get rid of your cat……..’

Si arrived complete with his own litter box when the friends were moving, (and after all their other friends had turned him down)

Si the psycho Siamese proceeded to terrorise our two little girls, hiding behind corners and jumping out at them, and he wouldn’t just move away from the dog, he would come out fighting.
Newton hated him, she hissed and spat when he came near, it all became too much for her and one night she just didn’t come home.
We never found her, what ever happened I just hope it was quick.

Then both Si and Merlin started to mark their territory the only way a cat knows how…inside the house, so they were booted out, and only came into our back sunroom to be locked up for the night.

Every morning I washed down the sunroom walls til I was at screaming point.

I had Si’s bags packed so many times for a one way trip to the vet but my softie husband always saved him.

They had to move out of the house, but I don’t believe in cats roaming free all day and night but especially in the night, so they had a garden apartment built for them, the old cubby house was fitted with snug beds and litter box and food table and access to an enclosed yard with outside climbing shelves and sand tray.

At this stage softie husband was starting to say things like ‘a piece of lead in the ear would be easier’ (inserted with a .22)

So now they are allowed out most days for a stroll around the neighbourhood (they don’t go far) rainy days they stay confined and at night they are always locked up when they come home for tea.

I don’t like this arrangement – every pet we’ve had has always been part of the family with access to the house (and me) and I don’t see the point of keeping animals if they have to stay in the yard, but unable to break them of their spraying inside, there’s been no alternative.

...and I feel guilty about leaving them locked in their pen too long, even though it's for their own good, and the good of the neighbourhood and wildlife......

To be continued…

Technorati tags:> cats

silver beet

2006-09-27T09:50:00.000+10:00

a week of heavy rain, unusually hot spring weather and the garden has gone beserk!
Look at the size of the silver beet, I don't think it's ever been so big, and it hasn't even had it's chicken poo yet!

Technorati tags:garden Gardening

snug as a bug

2006-09-27T08:42:00.000+10:00

I never wanted to be a bug
Until I found one safe and snug
In the velvet heart of a pale pink rose
With petals tucked about his toes.

Marion Lee 1945, "Lap of Luxury"

Technorati tags: Flowers

ducks

2006-09-21T19:36:00.000+10:00

I've posted before about the first ducks of summer splashing down in our pool.
I wonder if these were the same ones as last year because they weren't at all timid and came straight over expecting some bread.

I won't back excuses for the swampy appearance of the pool - well, yes I will, it was windy and the jacarandah was still shedding leaves - and those weeds in the crack in the concrete... must have just sprouted, I'm sure they weren't there last week...

I tried the movie setting on my camera for the first time and uploaded it to YouTube - makes rivetting viewing (big grin)

Red geranium leaves

2006-09-06T10:39:00.000+10:00

What are they putting in our water these days??
(although my garden gets so little tap water it wouldn't matter, maybe it says something about our bath water)

Strolling around the garden I spotted this geranium with bright red leaves - I'm sure it has some dire portent but who cares, I like red

Technorati tags:
garden Gardening

paintbrush lily

2006-08-23T20:42:00.000+10:00

I've been having a busy week with work to finish for my art quilt class, then the Stitches and Craft show in Sydney today and tomorrow I'm off to Parliament House to sit with the ATASDA textile exhibition, but on Saturday I had a lovely lunch in a friend's garden and took lots of photos of her spring blooms including this unusual paintbrush lily - a south african friend tells us she had them growing in SA and they are either Haemanthus coccineus or Scadoxus puniceus either way they belong to the Lily family: Amaryllidaceae

The last rose or the first...

2006-08-13T18:03:00.000+10:00

Everyone has been commenting on the strange behaviour of their plants.

Do we blame global warming ?
(I refuse to call it 'climate change' - that just sounds like moving to Nimbin)

Here in Sydney it's the last month of winter and my roses should be bare or at most just starting to shoot little leaf buds, but this miniature rose couldn't make up it's mind if it was late or early

Travel : The Pinnacles, Western Australia

2006-08-12T22:49:00.000+10:00

In 2005 my daughter and I went on holidays to Western Australia, I was going through the photos tonight and added some to Flickr, so I thought I might write them up here. I don't think I have the energy to write up the whole trip chronologically, (although I have it all in a travel journal that I wrote up during the trip) so these are just a few snippets from the trip. I'll add more over the next few weeks.

I haven't reduced the size of the pictures on Flickr so you can click to go to the very large size

One of our trips out of Perth was on a 4 wheel drive tour to the Pinnacles.

The Pinnacles are in the Nambung National Park, 245 kms north of Perth (about a 3 hour drive from the centre of Perth)

Thousands of huge limestone pillars resembling tombstones, rise out of a stark landscape of yellow sand. Some are up to three and a half metres tall.

The raw material for the limestone of the pinnacles came from sea shells broken down into lime-rich sands which were brought ashore by waves and then carried inland by the wind to form high, mobile dunes.

The sightly acidic winter rain dissolves small amounts of calcium carbonate as it percolates down through the sand. As the dune dries out during summer, this is precipitated as a cement around grains of sand in the lower levels of the dunes, binding them together and eventually producing a hard limestone rock.

Sub surface erosion from decaying plant and animal materials eroded the limestone bed until only the most resilient columns remained.

This erosion would have happened over thousands of years - Aboriginal artefacts at least 6,000 years old have been found in the Pinnacles Desert despite no recent evidence of Aboriginal occupation which suggests that the Pinnacles were exposed about 6,000 years ago and then covered up by shifting sands, before being exposed again in the last few hundred years.

This covering and uncovering by the sand is still occurring.

Some of the outcrops have been given names, this was Casper the Ghost:

and this is Batman:

On the way back to Perth I saw my first emu in the wild

Technorati tags: Western Australia travel

grevillea

2006-08-11T21:58:00.000+10:00

I really need to start using a tripod for my macro shots in the garden - balancing on one leg and holding my breath while I press the shutter just isn't cutting it.

tag: flowers

Full moon

2006-08-09T22:42:00.000+10:00

Went out and braved the cold tonight to watch the brilliant full moon, the wind was gusty and the clouds moved so fast across the sky.

I haven't done any night photography before and didn't do too well with the settings which is a pity because the whole scene was special, and fruit bats were flying over but they were too fast for my camera.

......full moon and bats, what more could an Anne Rice fan ask for.

reflecting in the pool:

a prickly bed

2006-08-09T21:41:00.000+10:00

The first ray of sun after a week of cold and rain and the little skinks were all out soaking up the warmth.

The first little fellow scampered off his rock when I got close but soon came back and the second time I got the camera near enough for a shot, he just turned his head and watched.

His friend didn't have such a warm solid spot, he was contentedly draped over the cactus, must have been a fakir in a past life missing his bed of nails.

more Aussie gardeners

2006-08-06T17:43:00.000+10:00

In Brisbane Queensland, Roy has the Frog Garden
nice photos of his plants, hints and some local gardens

Also found Dirt Under the Nails from Perth Western Australia
and
Neil Cameron from Melbourne Victoria has Enjoying My Garde n

the last two haven't been updated for a little while but are still interesting

I've added them all to my Aussie gardening links in the side bar

rusted Victorian ironwork

2006-08-02T15:06:00.000+10:00

When we moved into our house 38 years ago, my father-in-law was in the process of throwing away these pieces of Victorian wrought iron which came from the balcony of the old terrace house they lived in - it was in the era when renovations ruled and balconies were being closed in - we weren't sure what place they would have in our new brick veneer but we took them anyway and they have lain propped against a wall in our backyard for all that time, gently rusting and peeling paint with the ivy slowly fixing it in place, I think the texture and rust is more interesting now than it was thirty years ago, it's more like us now, old, rusty and flakey.

Pregnant onion

2006-08-02T14:01:00.000+10:00

This would have to be the most useless plant I have in my garden, I have no idea why I keep it, you can't eat it, the novelty value has worn off, the flower stalk is uninteresting and the rate of reproduction could quickly turn it into a pest except that the young plants stay close to mum and are easy to remove.

So what was the novelty value that initially endeared it to me:
the bulbous 'tummy' swells and swells until the skin splits and the baby onions pop out

I've had it growing now (not the same plant) for over thirty years,

which means about the time I was given the plant, I was popping out my own little onions, maybe that's why I can't bring myself to rid my garden of it....just one mum relating to another

Do you have a plant you can't bring yourself to remove? and why do you keep it?

No room for plants

2006-07-30T16:28:00.000+10:00

Son has just moved to a flat over a factory with no balcony, so he brought his plants for me to mind - he has great faith in his mum's gardening ability, we could almost say I taught him all he knows about plants - but when it arrives looking like this.... I guess there are only two options, grow or the compost heap.

Once the Australian dream was the suburban house on a 1/4 acre block, now those 1/4 acres will fit a block of units or a row of townhouses, as we lose more and more space people are losing the chance to get down and dirty in their own garden, I was doing some web searching looking for an art gallery in the Sutherland Shire and on the council site stumbled on their council run community garden
Will this be the future for city gardeners?

nephelococcygia

2006-07-30T15:59:00.000+10:00

On those days when you've laid on your back and found horses and castles and dragons in the clouds, did you wonder if there was a word for what you were doing (no - "skiving off on the back lawn" is six words)

The word is nephelococcygia - apparently thought up by Aristophanes for his comedy, "The Birds" (414 BC). In the play, two characters turn into birds and plan a cloud city which they decide to call "Nephelococcygia." another character in the play calls them mad so the word came to mean Cloud Cuckooland
You can hear it pronounced here

This cloud is called "Betty eating her green chew stick"

tomatoes

2006-07-28T17:11:00.000+10:00

Great minds etc...was taking a look at the garden today and decided I have just the spot to try some tomatoes this summer, and then Sweetpea wrote about her tomato obsession, her perfect tomato is called 'brandywine' - I'll have to have a look for it.
My past tomato growing attempts have been a bit of a disaster, back when the children were young, they didn't trust my tomatoes, we had to cut them open and watch to make sure nothing was moving inside them, kept telling them it's all good protein but they didn't believe me.
My mum would say "if the bugs won't eat them, there must be something wrong with them!"

Travel : Penrith Regional Gallery and Lewers Bequest Gallery, Emu Plains, NSW

2006-07-27T11:14:00.000+10:00

tags: travel

Picked up some friends yesterday and the five of us went to Penrith for the day - first stop was the mid week markets at the Paceway, it's not an arty crafty type of market, it's fruit & veg, cheap clothes, bags, plants and lots of dust collectors for the house.
One of our favourite stops there is Henny's paper - Henny sells all kinds of luscious papers and card, pens and all kinds of scrapbooking supplies - I don't do scrapbooking but like browsing all the products, so I bought some nice embossed cardboard from her but was very restrained with the rest of the market.

Then we had lunch at Panthers and off to the combined Penrith Regional Gallery and Lewers Bequest Gallery where they are showing Operation Art - a collection of work from NSW school students, 50 of these works will be selected to become part of the permanent art collection of The Children's Hospital at Westmead, these will also be exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW in December and tour regional art galleries across NSW the following year.

Other selections will become part of Operation ArtBank, some will be presented to the children's ward of a country hospital and others will be on display at various other sites.

Still more will be chosen for GlobalArt and will hang in children's hospitals overseas.

One of the friends with us yesterday has a grand daughter with art in the exhibition.

This was taken inside the Penrith Regional Gallery section of the building, isn't it a great space!

It was interesting reading the childrens' comments on their thought process for their paintings, saw a lot of teachers influence in some of the 'art speak', but then a piece of direct innocence like the 8 year old who painted Sydney Harbour, he said "I like fishing, last week I caught a snapper and an octopus"

The Lewers Bequest Gallery was established on the site of the former home of sculptor Gerald Lewers and painter Margo Lewers, the Regional Gallery was added in 1981 with a large purpose-built exhibition space. It's presently undergoing a lot of building alterations to extend the newer gallery areas, but the old historic house will remain the same.

The history of the house and the Lewers family is here

This is the entry area to the old building which houses the Lewers Bequest Gallery section:

More of the exhibition inside the house:

Looking through the front door into the garden, where the gardener was getting ready for spring - lots of winter flowers were blooming

This boab tree was in the grounds, I wonder how old it would be, compared to these it looks like it has a way to go yet.

Lots of bird baths around the garden, this one sculpted by Gerald Lewers

A rather strange thing to have in a public building space was the thriving vegetable garden, but I'm guessing it was probably there when the Lewers family lived here, and the grounds are being kept authentic to the era.

and this next? how to disguise your water tank so no-one will notice!

technorati tags:travel sydney

on a cold wet winter day

2006-07-21T12:27:00.000+10:00

We haven't been doing any thing in the garden, it's been too cold and wet and I've been spending solid time on the computer setting up my Etsy shop

This morning the sun was shining after a wet night, so I dragged Betty from under her blanket and we had a quick wander around the yard.

Lovely little raindrops on each plant:

the freesias and bulbs are all shooting:

bromeliades are blooming:

then our little patch of blue sky disappeared so we scuttled back inside:

Snakes alive!

2006-07-10T13:57:00.000+10:00

I'm a city girl, born and bred, give me a nice solid pavement under my feet, my rare bushwalks are limited to well trodden tracks, rustling in the shrubbery is enough to send me scuttling back to the car park.

I've had two close encounters with red belly black snakes in my life - as a child, we were on holidays in Queensland, snake was sunbaking on a footbridge over a stormwater canal near our bungalow, I had new shoes with slippery soles and as I ran back up the concrete path to the house my shoes kept slipping, I had nightmares for days of me sliding down the hill into the snakes' gaping jaws.

Next encounter was as a teenager, again on holidays, (why do we have this urge to escape the city on holidays, cities work for me!) friend and I were sitting on the lawn sunbaking when my father said quietly but firmly "don't move!" we froze as a red belly slid between us and went on its way, so you can imagine why this site really gave me the shudders, and another reason to stick to the city.

thanks to Barista for the link and lots of other interesting reading.

moon planting

2006-07-09T17:53:00.000+10:00

If you are a gardener who takes notice of the moon cycles for your planting, then the Cosmic Gardener has a chart July planting guide for Australia listing the dates for each moon cycle and the plants according to the areas (cold, temperate, tropical etc.)

Haven't much to report from the home front - husband has been under the house with what I think in the trade is referred to as an 'acro, jacking up the house supports and putting packing under them - the last several years of drought has resulted in the beams and foundations parting company in several places, with walls inside developing cracks and floors creaking and big gaps between floor and skirting boards.

I'm just hoping he doesn't get too carried away with the packing, I worry that if we ever get back to normal rain and the ground swells again, the house will just go 'pop' and bounce right off its' foundations.

Travel: Winter Magic Festival, Katoomba (lots of photos)

2006-06-24T22:04:00.001+10:00

After raining all night, the day dawned with another thick fog and we were in two minds whether to head off up the mountains to what looked like being a cold bleak day, but by the time we crossed the Nepean River we had left the fog in Sydney and the mountains were clear and sunny and a brisk 10 degrees C.

The Winter Magic Festival celebrates the winter solstice each year, in a true hippy pagan heaven.

There's more pictures from other festival goers at the Flickr Winter Magic Festival page

By the time we arrived the main street was packed, with the scent of patchouli in the air and the soft swish of lots of panne velvet.

Yes, all those little dots spreading up the hill of Katoomba Street are people, we joined the throng and shuffled our way along the street stalls.

Just reached the top of the street as the crowd parted and the parade started.
The lovely thing about this festival is the participation by who ever wants to dress up and join in - there were lots of families, old and young.
We were surprised to see some friends dressed up and in the parade, didn't get a photo and couldn't find them later in the crush.

there were stormtroopers

and a bear raising money to free captive bears in asia

there were lots of dragon fly motifs, because the Blue Mountains is home to the endangered Giant Dragonfly - petalura gigantea and the push is on to try and save it - (it's survived 190 million years, but good old mankind and his urban development is about to wipe it out)

don't know who this was, but guessing, being a solstice festival, he's probably the horned god

These young green frogs hopped all the way up Katoomba Street

while this little viking took the easy way on dad's shoulders

the socialists were all dressed up to plot John Howards' downfall

there were big mermaids:

and little mermaids:

there were little fairy princesses

and big fairy princesses

some had lots of panne velvet

and others just had a smidgeon

there were witches in black

and witches in purple

and witches with drums

this was a float in the parade - don't ask me to explain why an animal of indeterminate breed (wearing his pj's) is on a surfboard atop a two headed snail - I guess you had to be there when the planning committee met.

Lots of stilt walkers in the parade, and coming up behind this one you can make out the bright pink and green feathers belonging to....

...well, you tell me who!! "Her" feathers stretched right across the road and we all had to duck them as "she" passed. Would have loved a full on photo but it was impossible in the crowd.

It seemed everyone had their dog with them, most dressed for the day - there were big dogs

and little dogs

and some just hoping that mum will take them home soon, before their friends from puppy preschool see them in this getout

After the parade had passed, we again joined the shuffle to the Carrington Hotel area were we watched the most fantastic performance by tribal dancers and drummers , "Hands, Heart and Feet" from Blue Mountains Drum and Dance group

the girls danced for ages, individually and together, so much energy! then these three young boys took over

and then the guys in the group showed what they could do

we wandered up and down the street a couple more times, met people we knew, (what a small place Sydney is!) stopped for soup and chicken focaccio then watched the gypsy dancers

At the other end of town were folk dancers dancing to an irish sounding jig, having a great time but seeming subdued after the tribal dancers

As we watched them dance, I thought they had a sort of 'cult' look to them, then saw their food stall later and realised they were from the Peppercorn Creek Farm which sounds all warm and fuzzy but hasn't always had the best press

By late afternoon the main street looked like it had even more people in it than in the morning

We had shuffled up and down several times, bought a leather belt for him and a silver dragonfly necklet for me so decided that was enough for the day.

On the way back to the car we passed some of the old mountain houses that I drool over

and then a last stop at a lookout as the fog started to settle in the valley and off home

pea soup

2006-06-23T17:14:00.000+10:00

Not frequently, but now and then through winter we can expect a pea soup fog to descend on us, it closed Sydney airport and disrupted the ferry services on the harbour, the Sydney version can be found here but out in the 'burbs it was enough just to be able to make out the birdbath in next door's front yard - end of the street was shrouded away - I like it, has an ethereal 'werewolf on the moors' feel about it,

Travel: Fairfield City Museum, NSW, Australia

2006-06-16T20:36:00.000+10:00

Near the busy intersection of Horsley Drive and the Cumberland Highway in Fairfield (western suburbs of Sydney) is the Fairfield City Museum and Gallery.

The original building was built in 1913 and served as the council chambers until 1920 when the property was sold to James and Florence Morris and their daughter Maisie.

In 1980, when Maisie died, her final wish was for the house to become a museum. Fairfield Historical Society lobbied council, who bought the property and the museum became a reality.

Since then, several old buildings have been relocated here, creating the working village in the ground, very popular with school groups.

There is also an art gallery here specialising in textile exhibitions.
It was the "Quiltessence II" exhibition that brought me here this week,
I've been meaning to photograph the village for some time, and didn't really pick a great moment, as a visiting school group was all over it, so I had to try and avoid the children, sad indictment of today when you have to avoid photographing children in public.

This first photo is looking down the main street of the village

This is a collection of old machinery

The first building along the street is the Victoria Street Schoolhouse

School groups love this one, they have a lesson inside and get to write with pen and inkwell (hey, I remember them!) I remember desks like these too, (of course I was very young - a child prodigy)

Next is the slab hut

The 1880's slab hut is made from roughly cut Australian hardwood and is classified as a heritage item. It is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the Fairfield area. Thought to have been constructed as early as 1836, it was taken apart and carefully reconstructed here at the museum.

Caversham Cottage was built in 1880 on Smart Street, Fairfield, dismantled and rebuilt at the museum. An example of late Australian Victorian period Georgian style weatherboard cottage.

Caversham is a one room cottage, the inside just as it would have been at the turn of the century (1900 that it, not 2000!)

In the corner next the Caversham, is the blacksmith shop, with a couple of very incongruous modern witches hats.

On special open days, a blacksmith gives demonstration in here

Along the back of the property is the garage

and next door is "The Biz" which was the local newspaper for many years, first published in 1917 - this reproduction of the newspaper office has the original printing press used to produce the newspaper.

Next is Wheatley's general store which dates back to 1892, this is a reproduction of the original building which still stands in The Crescent, one of Fairfield's main streets.

Inside the shop

haberdashery:

a lovely collection of green depression glass (now worth considerably more than 7 pence!)

and some nice pottery which I think could be Carlton Ware - hmmm, I'd give them 8 shillings and 3pence ha'penny for the set of leaf plates.....

and just before I leave to tackle the traffic outside on Cumberland Highway - the Italian bread oven, not just a decoration, it produces delicious wood-fired bread

what kind of flower are you

2006-06-12T14:27:00.000+10:00

thanks to Stuar t, the happy little daffodil, I've just found out that I'm a Morning Glory - "Dedicated is one word for you. You have a tendency to overwhelm other people occasionally with your enthusiasm for life."

I am a
Morning Glory

What Flower
Are You?

Sounds great except that in Australia it's a noxious weed
...and I think I recall something from the '60s about hallucinogenic seeds
....not that I ever did anything like that in the '60s
.......me mum would've had a fit

Pacman

2006-06-09T21:36:00.000+10:00

tag: cacti

here's one for the cacti lovers, taken at the Botanic Gardens Sydney, and reminding me of the games that came with our old Commodore 64.

Pacman was released in 1980, and is still around - want to play? or here

red clouds at night

2006-06-07T20:07:00.000+10:00

tags: clouds

I was bringing the washing in off the line just as the sun was setting and a flock of noisy cockatoos made me look up at the sky where this was happening:

Our house is in a dip so I never seem able to get a clear sky shot, too many roofs and wires overhead,
I just had time to run inside and grab the camera, the sun slipped away as I was watching.

technorati tags: clouds

end of summer roses

2006-06-07T08:47:00.000+10:00

I've been playing with my macro settings again:

I find a sculptural beauty in the dead heads of the roses - I think I need to use a tripod though, I seem to be lacking the sharpness of the photos in the macro pools, where they leave comments for each other on their wonderful DOF - had to google for that one, it means Depth of Field - if you hang out in the macro circles you have to know these terms.

Then there is COF, which is Circle of Confusion (said to be a group of photographers trying to understand DOF)
I move in a permanent COF so before it widens further, here's my dead heads:

rainbow

2006-06-06T20:05:00.000+10:00

I meant to post this photo last week on the first day of rain, it seemed like a promise of what was to come - the view through the telegraph wires isn't the most aesthetically pleasing but it was a superb full rainbow

and it wasn't a bad sunset either, through the bare tracery of the crepe myrtle (not as good as Alice's sunsets, but it's the best I could do from the backyard)

Rain, rain..don't go away

2006-06-06T19:23:00.000+10:00

tag: flowers

We've been having some nice steady rain around Sydney, gardens are lapping it up, unfortunately not much is falling in the catchment areas at the moment but it's predicted that those areas should get some falls through the coming week.

Today we had a short sunny spell between showers and the rain drops were glistening on all the plants

The bromeliads have some nice flowers appearing, I like them for their low care and splashes of colour when not much else is happening.

The zygocactus was looking lovely a few days ago when I took this photo but now after the rain its flowers have a decidedly soggy compost look to them.

another aussie gardening blog

2006-05-27T12:49:00.000+10:00

the Cosmic gardener in Tasmania looks like being an interesting read - I found it during a google search on planting by the moon- the cosmic gardener says:
"This blog combines my own garden experiences with some comentary on moon phases, plant lore and whatever I feel like writing."

Sydney photo blog

2006-05-17T12:53:00.000+10:00

You might have noticed I love showing off my city so was delighted to find Paul Murphy's blog "Sydney Webcam" - Paul posts a daily photograph and his photography is brilliant!

Travel: Newington Armament Depot, Homebush NSW

2006-05-13T20:38:00.000+10:00

I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, getting a display ready for the Sydney Miniatures Show and a demonstration I did for our little textiles group, so we’ve been missing our Sunday drives.

However, a couple of weeks ago, daughter grabbed me late one afternoon to go with her to see the Artexpress exhibition at Homebush.

Artexpress is a collection of work by high school students submitted for their High School Certificate examination in visual art, because of the quantity of work it is usually divided between a number of exhibitions spaces.

The venue we went to was at the Newington Armoury which is on a section of the Bicentennial Park next to the Olympic Park at Homebush, NSW

We didn’t allow enough time to find the place, so got there very close to closing, on a cold afternoon, I was more interested in the history of the site itself and promised myself another visit later.

In 1882, approximately 88 hectares of the Newington Estate on the Parramatta River was resumed by the Government for the development of an armaments magazine.

The armoury gate house was built in 1897.

In 1921 management of the Depot was transferred from the Royal Marine Garrison to the Royal Australian Navy and the complex expanded into adjacent grazing land and wetlands.

The largest expansion of the site was between 1941 and 1944 when the site expanded south, providing space for the construction of additional magazines for the US Navy and the Royal Navy as support facilities for the US and British Pacific Fleets.

By 1950 demolition of war time stocks had commenced.

Conflicts between the Naval Depot and surrounding commercial and residential areas occurred in the 1960s, when tear gas and other noxious fumes escaped and affected nearby office workers, and in 1961 certain explosives were removed from the site and relocated to the Kingswood depot.

Landfilling had been occurring around the site since early 20th century and there were a number of areas (including the Olympic site) where wastes were dumped or that operated as municipal and industrial waste tips.

Historical naval records indicate disposal of residues arising from Depot activities including laboratory wastes, burning ground wastes, detonated and burnt ammunition, military waste including containers, boxes, petroleum, obsolete stores and propellants in the Nature Reserve Saltwater Wetlands and other land areas.
A large proportion of the Wetlands has consequently been fenced off to the public due to the possible existence of unexploded ordnance.

It was a standing joke in Sydney when the Olympic site was being constructed that it would “tick”, and everyone knew someone who had worked at Homebush in the chemical plants or the state abattoir, and had stories of buried toxins and chemicals.

All of this dumping just another tiny example of the horrific things we do to our planet, and dumping in a wetland, where seepage carries into the river - what were they thinking??!!

None of this has been good for our long suffering Parramatta River, this old sign on the armament site not only shows the usual workplace warnings but also against eating fish caught from the river.

Earlier this year commercial fishing was again banned in Sydney Harbour.

One small saving grace was the discovery of the endangered green and gold bell frogs on the Olympic site, the presence of the frog meant the building plans were halted and a frog habitat had to be created nearby.

The Navy vacated a portion of the site in 1996, when ownership transferred to the State Government to be developed as the Athlete's Village and the suburb of Newington.

However, they did not leave the Armoury Precinct until December 1999. The last ammunition operation was conducted over the wharf on 14 December 1999

So back to our visit – a long stroll from the car park to the wharf –

Then we followed the little railway tracks:-

from the Light Railway Research Society of Australia -

“From 1909 – 1999 an extensive network of lines carried armaments from the wharf to a series of storage bunkers. The line was worked by battery-electric locomotives”

through the tunnel to the gallery which must have been one of the storage buildings, a bunker almost buried in the centre of the hill.

Outside, before we entered the tunnel, were sculptures (not made by students but, I think, left over from the annual “sculpture by the sea”, I should have paid more attention to the signage)

I really liked this table, cast metal with a camel theme, bit strange finding it standing in this open field with "buffer zone" sign next to it - what was it buffering, I wonder.

(is this what they mean when they say “it was outstanding in its field”)

behind it you can see the hill of the bunker.

And this piece with a wave motif

So getting cold and late we headed off home til next time.

(...and how *do* you spell armoury - according to my dictionary it's armoury and armory is the US spelling, so why does the Sydney Olympic site keep calling it armory - another takeover/corruption of our spelling - I get really annoyed when Australians use US spelling, I have enough arguments swearing at the microsoft spell check)

apropos nothing.....

2006-05-02T14:20:00.000+10:00

I really hate cooking, I mean I *REALLY*...*HATE* cooking, which has always been hard to reconcile with the fact that I like eating - I cook because I have to, not for pleasure, so what ever possessed me to buy 1kg of ricotta cheese at the supermarket....I mean....1 whole KG for heavens sake!

Husband suggested I could make cheese pies (like mother used to!!)

Couldn't find a pie plate in the whole house that hadn't been used to mix paint when I suddenly remembered another of my impulse buys - a pie maker - another of those whatever possessed me moments, what did I think I was going to do with a pie maker - you can't even dye stuff in it!!!

So here it is - the first and most likely the last time you will see my cooking on this blog!

Pythonesque

2006-04-30T18:07:00.000+10:00

For weeks I've been insisting that the grevillea was not dead, it was just resting, but we've reached a point where I'm sounding like a Monty Python sketch, and I have to admit that it is, indeed, a dead ~~parrot~~ plant.

It was growing happily in a pot, flowering like mad

but I foolishly sat the pot directly onto the garden bed, and not content to stay in the pot, it had sent a tap root through the bottom and into the garden, when I went to move the pot, well you know the rest.....grevilleas do NOT like having their roots disturbed.

So my lovely pink and cream grevillea, whose name I have lost, has gone to the big compost bin in the sky.

Travel: to the top of the hill

2006-04-28T19:07:00.000+10:00

I've been on a mission,
after my post about our hill, I was determined to take photos of the other side of the hill decimated by 100 years of quarrying.
No luck, over the other side is a brand new industrial estate, with HUGE complexes, they all had security guards, boom gates, the lot, between the buildings I caught glimpses of cut away red clay hillside but there was no where I could get close enough to photograph. The bits I saw make me wonder about long term erosion.

So then we determined to climb the hill on our side, through the hole in the chain wire fence

and up the track which will one day be the rest of the main road through the estate

at the top of the track were some big boys toys,

but we still couldn't make it to the very very top of the highest point, it was all looking very scrubby and snakey, although I guess the snakes could be bunking down for winter now, but I didn't feel like ploughing through this to find out

so I settled for a photo of the view from part way up the hill - no wonder Gov. Phillip was so impressed,
click on this to go to flickr and then go to all sizes and look at it full size.

and the next photo is the housing estate creeping up the hill -

what do you think, will they be able to squeeze a garden in those yards, or swing a cat?

Anzac Day 25th April, 2006

2006-04-25T09:46:00.000+10:00

an Australian tradition....and travels around Eastern Creek

2006-04-24T22:49:00.000+10:00

.....the unofficial extra long weekend.

As we have a public holiday on Tuesday for Anzac Day, we joined those carrying on the long held Australian tradition of taking Monday off (not a sickie in this case, but a very much owed day in lieu)

"So do you want to out? - get your camera and we'll go for a drive"

(he's learnt a new way to get around me!!! offer a photo opportunity)

Ahhh, green plains, rolling hills, trees, cool autumn breeze, the scent of eucalyptus in the air.......

no.....wait......that's not eucalyptus...

it's racing fuel!!!

I should have known there'd be an ulterior motive.

Our son's friend is racing tomorrow and he is her mechanic, so today was practice session and time trials, and last minute adjustments to bikes. Yes, the girls don't just hang around the pits looking glam these days, they race the guys (and still look glam!)

Back in the pits the next generation mechanic (or rider?) watches fascinated.

Did you know that the bike tires have their own little electric blanket to warm them up before the race? I could use one of those around my feet at the moment.

and me? I was happy...I had lots of bright shiny coloured bits to photograph...
I like these shapes, I should try and work out some sort of quilt thingy with them.

Travel: Once there was a hill.... a modern fairy tale

2006-04-22T16:33:00.000+10:00

Once upon a time our suburb had a hill.

It was a fine hill rising to 60 m above the surrounding country and 122 m above sea level. It is 2.4 km long and 1.4 km wide.
Our hill is Jurassic doleritic laccolith and shale - blowed if I know what that is but it sounds pretty old and dinosaurish.

Our hill had a little spring which fed a swampy area at the bottom of the hill where ducks frolicked and mosquitos bred.

We couldn't climb the hill because it belonged to a quarry and was fenced off, but it had lots of trees, was nice to look at as we drove past, and the sun did a very nice sunset behind it.

In 1789 Captain Tench observed the barrier of the Blue Mountains to the west from the summit of our hill.

In 1790 Governor Phillip and Captain John Hunter, commander of the HMS Sirius, took an after dinner stroll from the new settlement at Rose Hill to our hill about 4 miles away.

In 1791 Governor Phillip granted land to 13 people at our hill.

In 1800 the population around our hill was 16.

Between 1790-1802 the local aboriginal Pemulwuy led his people against the white settlement around this area, he thought himself unable to be killed by bullets because he was shot seriously twice and survived both times. He was proved wrong.

In 1830 Nelson Lawson, son of the explorer William Lawson, built a house on the hill and called it 'Greystanes'.

In 1836 Charles Darwin noted the basalt of our hill and mentioned it in his writings on the voyage of the Beagle.

In 1839 geologist Rev. W. B. Clarke (who baptised my gt. grannies children)pointed out the columnar nature of the basalt to J. D. Dana when the American Fleet moored in Sydney Cove that year.

Since the 1830's road surfacing material has been taken from our hill, long before Government Geologist C. S. Wilkinson reported on the economic potential of the deposit in 1879.

In 1883 Prospect Quarry was opened and over the years has had several changes of ownership until the 330-hectare estate was aquired by the present owners.
These companies proceeded to mine the western side of our hill, demolishing the fine old historic house 'Greystanes' but keeping the house gates for their entrance way.

Then the shale was all used up, so the mining company sold our hill to developers.

Our council wanted to have some control over what happened but the big bad developers took them to the Land and Environment court, who told the developers they could have their wicked way with our hill.

So now our hill has a brand new Woolworths and lots of McMansions and will soon have a new set of little lego box apartments.

Our little mosquito swamp has become the "Lakewood Estate" (free can of bug spray with each half million dollar block)

Our little stream now has a charming faux colonial bridge, which has already been tagged by the local artistically challenged.

We can now stroll like Governor Phillip to the top of our hill, being careful not to fall in the quarry on the other side. One day I'll take a walk up there and take some photos.

And poor old Pemulwuy has a suburb named after him, on the land he fought so hard to protect.

Travel: Observatory Hill, Sydney

2006-04-21T12:13:00.000+10:00

After saying I seldom go to Sydney to just wander and look, here I am in there again!

Twice in the same week!

A little group from our local arts and craft society decided to see the 'Salon des Refuses 2006' - an exhibition of landscape and portraits that did not make it into the annual Archibald Prize and Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW.
The exhibition was held at the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery on Observatory Hill.

We caught a train to Circular Quay and first stop was the Customs House building

where the foyer floor has been replaced with a glass walk on floor covering a scale model of Sydney,

Then up Argyle Street, under the Argyle Cut - in colonial days before the cut was made, the sandstone ridge was a major barrier to traffic crossing between Circular Quay and Millers Point.

In 1843, convict work gangs hacked at the sandstone with hand tools for 2 and 1/2 years before the project was abandoned due to lack of progress.

Work restarted in 1857, when drills, explosives, and paid labor completed the job.

At the top of Argyle Street, in Argyle Place, is the Garrison Church - first official military church in NSW which serviced the military garrison at Dawes Point, imagine the redcoats marching from the barracks to attend morning prayer. Officially called the Holy Trinity Church it continues to be known as the Garrison Church.

there is also this lovely sandstone bubbler - On the The Bubbler site, it states that the 'bubbler' was invented in 1888, the name patented by a waterworks company named Kohler in Wisconsin USA. According to their web site: the word bubbler is still used today in parts of the world; mainly, Wisconsin and Australia.

So why Australia? and is it all Australia or only New South Wales? I know that is the only word I've ever heard used to describe them in Sydney.

Up the steps to Observatory Hill, two beer bottles were resting their heads after a heavy night.

The Park on Observatory Hill is an absolute oasis lying right on the Bradfield Highway approach to the Harbour Bridge with the Sydney CBD on one side and the wharves of Walsh Bay on the other.

All around Sydney, in each park, are huge magnificent Moreton Bay fig trees.

The National Trust Centre was having a face lift when we were there, built 1815 as a military hospital, it later became the famous Fort Street School, first school to provide teacher training in the colony. It now faces and seems to be just metres from the Bradfield Highway approach to the Harbour Bridge. When finished it will be painted in the shades of grey as the finished corner. They were lucky enough to receive sponsorship for the restoration from Porters Paints, hence the big sign.

This round section is part of the gallery - again my favourite photo attempts to combine the old with the new:

We had glorious weather, look at that clear Sydney sky, for everyone going into spring up north, I'll bet our autumn beats your spring!! (big grin)

This next I wanted to put in my urban decay collection but they are renovating the National Trust building next door, I hope this will eventually get some attention, it is over the door to the cafe where we had a great lunch.

After seeing the art exhibition (which was a bit ho hum) and lunch, we wandered across to the nearby Observatory

The Observatory was built on the site of Sydney's first windmill built in 1795 by Jack Leighton, the area became known as Jack the Miller's Point and today is just Millers Point.

The observatory was built in 1858, and was best known by Sydneysiders for it's timekeeping. Every day at 1 pm the ball on top of the tower dropped to signal the correct time.

Looking west through a window of the observatory building

The Agar Steps lead down to Kent Street, but we just retraced our route back to Argyle Street - really liked the splash of the red door at the bottom of these steps

and lucky that we did go back this way or we would have missed the Town Crier

who then proceeded to embarrass our youngest of the group (who had come with grandma)
by announcing in a very loud crier voice that she had been made honorary bell ringer

In the meantime, grandma had been accosted by a convict who showed us how he'd escaped the troopers by pretending to be a kangaroo (remember The Rocks area is rich with our convict history)

Back at the Quay and onto the train home.

How are you enjoying my trips?

I hope my overseas and interstate visitors are liking them, I'm trying for photos that are a bit away from the usual iconic Sydney shots (although it's hard to avoid that damn bridge!!)

Flood prone

2006-04-19T11:39:00.000+10:00

We've just received a letter from our council to say they've rezoned our street "flood prone".....

can't imagine why......

do they think maybe we haven't noticed before....

aahhh...those were the days.....rain......

Travel: Botanic Gardens, Sydney

2006-04-17T09:30:00.000+10:00

A friend told me about seeing the "United Buddy Bears" exhibition at Circular Quay, and we thought we'd take a look, only to find we'd missed them (that'll teach me to check with city search first)

Am I showing my age if I say I can remember when going to "town" was only done on special occasions and it seems like that still happens to us, we only go into town for something we can't get in the burbs, and so we rush to whatever and don't take time to look and enjoy.

So we decided to do the tourist thing in our home town and wander up past the Quay to the Botanic Gardens.

Halfway up the hill we came across a little park at Macquarie Place with the historic obelisk marking the point from which all roads out of Sydney were measured.

In the same park was a lovely piece of Victorian ironwork which I'm guessing once housed a drinking fountain

On one side was the admonition to "Keep the pavement dry"

and on the other side was a quote from St. John "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst"
...that's why I think it was a drinking fountain, duh!

Also in the same little triangle of park was a tree planted by Queen Elizabeth in 1954, it seems to have grown well in those 52 years since I remember standing outside my school on Victoria Road with the rest of the kids, for what seemed like hours, waiting to glimpse the Queen as she drove past, and in sheer boredom cheering and waving our flags at the truck drivers who gave us the royal wave in return.

I thought this a poignant reminder of royalty gone wrong while commercialism rules.

I really love old buildings and all the little features our ancestors used to adorn them. The new never seems to have the character of the old, I sometimes think I was born in the wrong era (even though I love my 'puter)

Along Bridge Street we found these gems:

and do you ever look down to what your feet are passing? Can't you just imagine Banjo Patterson sitting behind this window writing to Clancy while he listened to the 'ceaseless tramp of feet'.

At the top of Bridge Street we reached the Conservatorium of Music and the Government House gates entrance to the Botanic Gardens and the Domain, where the sign invites you to walk on the grass and hug the trees.

This is Government House with it's high tech security hedge

We headed straight down to the harbour first, Tom hasn't been fishing for a while so he needed his fix of harbour views

Within the park is a small lake where we could see enormous eels basking around the shallow edges, I think I read once where they come up from the harbour through the stormwater drains, also around the park are the next urban pest, the ibis, though not in the numbers I had expected.

The Victorian Australians loved monuments, sculptures and fountains...and were never happier than when they could combine the lot as a monumental sculpted fountain.

This drinking fountain was built in 1889 by the family of Lewis Wolfe Levy, businessman and philanthropist who migrated to Sydney from London in 1840 and was a member of the Legislative Council.
The water nymph is Diana and the base is red and grey granite cut and polished in Cornwall UK. It was restored in 1999.

The Macquarie Wall - in 1810, at the instigation of Governor Macquarie, work began on a wall 950 feet long, to separate the government domain from the town. Only this small portion of that wall now remains (and no longer keeps the riff raff out)

At the end of the Macquarie Wall is the Lion Gate guarded by a lion and lioness

As well as my love of old buildings, I've also got a thing about trees and the gardens have a collection from all over the world, I'll just post a couple of pictures here of my favourites, I have more of them on my Flickr site

and then we came on the BATS!!!

To be correct, they are Pteropus Poliocephalus or Flying Foxes commonly called Fruitbats.

I knew the Botanic Gardens has been battling the bat colony for years as it continues to expand and permanently damage the historic trees, but until you see them you could not imagine the number and area they have taken over.

Looking like some kind of strange alien seed pod they hang from the trees

and talk about noisy!! I thought bats slept all day, but they flew and wrestled and squabbled constantly and loudly.

The Botanic Gardens have been given a license from the NSW Parks and Wildlife service to use "non-harmful methods" to discourage the bats from nesting here - it hasn't been very successful to date - not sure what the methods are - I once had a friend who (30 years ago) ran a peach orchard outside of Sydney and they could lose half their crop in one night to bats which will fly up to 50 km a night looking for food before returning to their colony. Back then my friend didn't use "non-harmful methods" - she sat her teenage sons outside with .22's......

Here the bats were all over a very pretty flowering Chorisia Speciosa "Floss Silk Tree" from Brazil

Further along was another of those monumental fountains, topped with our first Governor, Captain Arthur Phillip, and symbols of his nautical life.

including Britannia and these wonderful sea serpents

Phew...we are nearly there.....as we started back up toward Macquarie Street we passed the pyramid glass house

and reached the Palace Garden Gates

The story of the Garden Palace building I'll have to research for another time - I know it burnt down in the 1800's but I'm too pooped after loading all these photos to tell the story now.

Then out into Macquarie Street, a mix of new and old architecture, one of the more interesting buildings is the NSW branch of the British Medical Association
I know the symbol next to their name is supposed to be a cadeus, but it looks (more appropriately) like a dollar sign (Macquarie Street being the traditional stamping ground of 'specialist' doctors)

On the way back to the car park - some lovely mellow yellow Sydney sandstone

then driving through Sydney, under the monorail

to the Sydney Fish Markets at Pyrmont where we sat in the sun and had prawns, oysters and calamari while we wondered what the rich people were doing (they were probably eating the scampi at $50 kg - although the kg of prawns cost $25)

and that, friends, is where the camera battery died

I also have pics from the cacti garden within the Botanic Gardens but I'll save those for another post

Garden sculptures

2006-04-13T08:55:00.000+10:00

Follow links and you never know where you will end up:
reading Chloe's Place Chloe had a tantalising little hint about something she wants to make which led to Robyne Melia and her stunning wagga quilt (April 12 post)

Wandering through Robyne's blog led me to her fella Ross McLeod from Melbourne at Varporium

Wow, stunning stuff, Ross is a landscape gardener/sculptor/painter, check out all his Varporium links in his side bar for a real treat.

Travel: Linnwood House

2006-04-09T18:59:00.000+10:00

Every two months Linnwood, an historic house in a nearby suburb, opens it's doors to the public, they have great activities, sausage sizzle outside, tea and sandwiches inside, lots of crafts people and really big grounds for family picnics.
I belong to the local arts and crafts society and we are regulars at the open days, displaying our work.
It's a really nice relaxed day.

Today the NSW Ambulance Corp band was there, and I'll tell you, Elvis songs sound great played by a big brass band!
These huge gum trees line the driveway from the road to house.

The house was built by George McCredie in 1891 - the whole history is on their web site but briefly the house has had a somewhat rough life - George McCredie died in 1903 and in 1917 his wife leased the property to the Education department as a Boys Truant School, the department later bought the property in 1921.

In 1936 it was converted from a Truant School to a residential girls school for State Wards aged 14yrs and up.

By 1966 it was being used as a Special Training School for Home Science for girls from deprived backgrounds - not strictly an orphanage, but for girls who, for various reasons, could not live in their own homes. The girls were taught housekeeping, cooking and needlework and were schooled on site. As was the case back then with most children in state care, the girls unfortunately were not left with very happy memories of Linnwood.

As the welfare system changed, homes like Linnwood gradually became superfluous to the Dept. and by 1999 all buildings on the estate were virtually empty.

The Friends of Linnwood was formed and now works with the Heritage Office to preserve this lovely old building.

The internal features of the house are really beautiful and considering the previous use of the house, I am amazed the woodwork and stained glass work have survived so well.
This is the entry hall, showing a closeup of one of the wooden panels

this is the glass panel over the front door - all the glass panels appear to be a combination of stained glass and painted glass pictures.

and the panels either side of the front door

Above each internal door is a painted glass fanlight featuring native Australian birds, once again it is surprising that these panels have survived.

In the main entry way is a small side table held up by this little fellow, you can see from the peeling paint behind him, that the house badly needs maintenance but as always in these cases, money is in short supply. Many of the furnishings are original and lots of the antique bric-a-brac in the house was found in storage around the property.

isn't he great, I just love him!

and over one of the fireplaces is this wonderful dragon

So that was my Sunday.

the cacti that ate Paris

2006-04-06T18:14:00.000+10:00

Many years ago, after my father died, my mum bought a house in our street to be near us.
As a moving in present, my father-in-law, who was a keen gardener, gave her some plants, including a sweet little cacti which was duly planted near the front door.

I've googled for images and think it might be a Cereus or Column Cactus, but wouldn't swear to it.
Over at This isn't Sydney Spike has a picture of one of these cacti growing in someone's yard at Woy Woy (which, by another weird coincidence, is where my father-in-law and the original cactus piece came from)

Over the next 20 years, the cactus grew and grew

Mum passed away and my son moved into the house. He thought the cactus was 'cool' even after riding his mountain bike down the front steps, catching the handlebar and landing head first into the cactus. He picked spikes out of his head for days.

Son moved away and daughter moved into the house.
She too, thought Nanna's cactus was 'cool' (although she is too cool to use the word cool)

We tried to persuade her that it needs lopping, for safety sake, it's awfully close to the front steps

and it almost lifted the gutter off the house at one stage, the weight in the stems is massive, if one broke and fell ....well, I wouldn't like to be under it.

The cactus only flowers at night, enormous pale yellow flowers which are finished by the next day, sometimes they develop a pod like this

Daughter often spends some quality time standing under her cactus at night, admiring the flowers, talking to the cactus,
She tells me a recent conversation went like this:

"Hello big cactus, your flowers are beautiful, you wouldn't fall on me, would you"

On cue the cactus dropped a flower on her head.

We haven't worked out what it was trying to tell her.

Travel: Sunday drive to Windsor NSW

2006-04-02T21:49:00.000+10:00

A wonderful fine cool autumn Sunday so we headed to the street markets at Windsor, an old historic town just before the foothills of the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.
The regular Sunday markets attract a lot of people, especially on a day like today.

As well as looking at the stalls we visited my favourite two shops, the Book Barn and the Fudge shop, we left both shops a little poorer (that's us, not the shops)

At the other end of town is the Macquarie Arms Hotel, favourite sunday watering hole for bikers, the array of motorbikes outside can be spectacular, opposite the pub is a park, with free live music and lots of family groups, nice relaxed way to spend an afternoon.

Then we strolled down to the river - keeping a watch for deep holes and shifting sands -

and discovered stairs and a path going under the road bridge, leading to the seamy underside of beautiful Windsor

but there is always someone who calls it home

Sunday drive

2006-03-29T18:43:00.000+11:00

Took this photo on our Sunday drive - no reason, just because the colour was so lush - and one of those strange coincidinks has Stuart at Gardening for Dummies writing about his experiences with kentia palm seeds.

I don't know which variety of palm tree this was, just one of those whoppers that seem to abound in council reserves with waterfrontages.

The currawongs (?) (sigh... have to admit to not knowing my native birds either)were madly fishing through the palm but I couldn't see if they were eating the seeds or the insects.

The ducks and gulls were more interested in our fish and chips.

I'm back...

2006-03-28T12:17:00.000+11:00

despite that brilliant last post in December, I had no offers to buy my blog so after almost expiring in the summer heat, along with my garden, parts of which did expire, I seem to be back.

We lost a few plants, my kangaroo paws planted in November curled up their toes, that's twice I've tried to grow them and have lost out so cross them off my list.

Over the school holidays GD helped me create a herb garden which seems to be doing OK - we are up to the armpits in basil - and in the process I moved a heap of jonquil bulbs which are now putting up green shoots (isn't it a bit early?) they hadn't flowered for a while so we'll see what they do in the new spot.

So next I divided some agapanthus and pulled out heaps of african iris one of those feral creatures that runs mad when allowed. Also divided some bromeliads and found this little fellow:

Doesn't he look in a contemplative mood, with chin on hand, wonder what he was thinking about - (no I didn't move his clump of plants)

The Great Escape

2005-12-09T21:39:00.000+11:00

We built them a nice little fernery,
Most of them seem quite happy....
I know sometimes I forget to water, and they watch their neighbours wither,
ok - I admit that's enough to make a few plants feel a little insecure and nervous,
but is it any excuse when my back is turned to do a Steve McQueen on me,
and does it have to look so damned happy about getting out!

Garden 2000 by Mark Quinn

2005-12-02T10:38:00.000+11:00

thought you might find this interesting,

Garden (2000) by Marc Quinn is a real botanical garden, full of plants and flowers from all over the world. They are displayed in full bloom, and are potentially eternal: the nearly 1000 specimens are immersed in twenty-five tons of liquid silicon....

Travel: Eden Garden Centre and Mother Earth

2005-11-16T09:53:00.000+11:00

Our Sunday drive took us to Eden Garden Centre at North Ryde (NSW)
I'd often driven past the centre and promised myself a look in, but didn't quite make it until I found out that they had an art gallery there and textile artist Fiona Wright has an exhibition currently on display.
The centre is worth a visit, apart from the huge range of sale items, they have a massive display area made up into garden 'rooms' which were wonderful to wander through.
I'm not getting paid to advertise them unfortunately, I just thought it was worth showing.
There were some amazing sculptures scattered through the garden all 'framed' by the backgrounds.

The river feature started here:

and meandered around:

until it finished in the recycling tank (where presumably all the many water features originated and went back to - the tank was lined with beds of rocks and water plants which I'm guessing acted as filters.

Some of the garden rooms:
This one I thought represented the desert until we reached the ground level and found it was the Blue Mountains and the three blackboy plants were the three sisters, can't quite work that out, especially with all the red earth.

The beachside room had a nice curling wave sculpture, somewhat spoilt by the galvanised cover on the lighting attached to the gum tree behind

The japanese room:

The formal garden and more water features, including a fish pond which I thought was very shallow for the size of the koi, and no shelter for them to escape from the sun until the leaves on the water plants grow a little more.

_______________________________________________

And then we went cross country to one of my favourites, Mother Earth Nursery at Kenthurst (which, it seems, is also for sale) - a totally different style of nursery, smaller, more personal, great restaurant in a lovely mud brick building, where they have someone who will paint Trompe l'oeil murals for your garden (or is that Trompe d'Oeil ? will have to check later) interesting which ever way, nothing like a nice muriel.

Catnip...

2005-11-15T17:54:00.000+11:00

The tag on the catnip plant reads:
"Cool Cats - this plant is for cats who want to turn on, tune in and drop out. Sniffing the leaves makes cats high. They love it"

When I waved it under their noses, my cats backed off and stalked away, now they are staring at me suspiciously.

C'mon kids, one little snort, when did you learn to just say no.

On the other hand, tea from the leaves is supposed to relieve stomach upsets, flatulence and colic in humans,

but don't inhale.

early start and Charles Austin

2005-11-10T09:55:00.000+11:00

Did I say in my intro something about "no longer liking to slog it out in the garden", liking and having to do it are two different things - a hot day was predicted so I thought I'd get an early start at 8 am and empty two compost bins. (well, that's early for me!) Three hours later the temperature must have been well into the 30's, I was soaking, exhausted and was that red face from the heat or was it a glow of satisfaction?

I have a David Austin rose called Charles Austin (I think I read it was named after his father)
at this time of year old Charlie boy really goes off! (charming turn of phrase picked up from my children)
I picked this vase full on the weekend
and this morning I picked another vase

10 most important gardening tools

2005-11-08T08:45:00.000+11:00

looks like some of us have been to visit Stuart's Amateur Gardening and have wondered about our ten most important gardening tools so I'll play too:
1. hand trowel
(my garden is so overgrown that a shovel and pick are out of the question)
2. secateurs
(I keep buying new ones when they eventually loose sharpness or springs or whatever makes them tick - I have a great pile of dead secateurs, one day my husband is going to teach me to weld and I'm going to make something clever out of them VBG)
3. wheelbarrow
4. electric mulcher
5. kneeling pad
6. saw - this must be accompanied by a man with a strong right arm (fortunately I'm married to him)
7. comfortable chair
8. sketchbook
9. coffee
10. table next to comfortable chair for sketchbook and coffee

garden seat???

2005-11-06T14:11:00.000+11:00

could you honestly imagine working around the garden with one of these strapped to your behind?
garden seat

(enough for today woman!! get off this blasted computer!!)

Grandpa's Garden - a poem

2005-11-06T13:02:00.000+11:00

I have a friend J… who is a graphic artist but like me, dabbles in many things. She felt our area didn’t have enough outlets for dabblers so she started a writers group. I was dragged kicking and screaming to the first meeting because, she said, I am a published writer.

(I should point out here that I wrote one article for our local family history newsletter, I should also point out I am editor of said newsletter – it really helps getting your writing published if you are the editor)

So I spent the afternoon listening to singers, musicians and writers perform their original work sinking lower and lower into the floorboards each time J… introduced me as a writer and I thought about how far one can go in literary circles on the strength of one small article, not too damn far at all I decided.
I also decided that the writers group was not for me, but I as pondered on the literary world in general I was inspired to put pen to paper again and wrote a 'pome', here for your entertainment is “Grandpa’s Garden”

(note: I had to give myself a sex change in the poem because the only thing I could think to rhyme with joy was boy – another reason it’s probably good that I gave up the group – I’m sure Thackeray would never have had that problem)

Grandpa's Garden ©
Grandpa has a garden,
It's his pride and joy.
I remember playing in it
when I was just a boy.
Trees were wide and spreading,
limbs reached to the ground.
Hedges thick and verdant
cast their shadows all around.
Ivy clung tenaciously, the agapanthus flourished
as every spring, with cow manure,
the garden was tenderly nourished.
Paths wound past scented petals,
grass grew long and green.
Oh, the sprouting in this little patch
just had to be seen.
To a small child at play, the garden
held many a nook and cranny,
it even had a secret place
where granpa hid from granny.
Now I am grown and a gardener I am not,
but even I can see a change happening to granpa's plot.
The change has been subtle, it began last May
when we arrived with presents laden, for granpa's birthday.
We gave him lots of potting mix, blood and bone, and Zest,
then one present stood out from all the rest,
when my little 'nipper
gave granpa a whipper snipper.
Do you know the change that happens
when a man gets a new power tool -
Granpa has become a clippin' snippin' fool.
The trees are bared,
the beds are squared with nothing out of order,
I even found the pathway really has a border.
And the neighbours gaze with reverence
at granpa's topiary elephants.
Now is it my imagination,
or is there a trembling in the hedges
when granpa says to granma
"I just go and trim the edges".

health warning

2005-11-05T14:02:00.000+11:00

It doesn't pay to read health warnings if you intend to ignore them and you are inclined to be an LNH (late night hypochondriac)

As I shoveled bags of cow manure and pot 'n peat around my wheelbarrow yesterday, I scoffed - yes, *SCOFFED* at the warnings.
"HAH" I said to the bio-aerosols and the micro-organisms "HAH"

Then I woke at 4 am with a tight chest and dry cough convinced I had Legionnaires disease - so do I lie awake until daybreak wondering how much life span I have left or do I get up and make coffee and watch the sunrise.....

I went with the coffee...

feeling better now,

things are always different in daylight

Wollemi pine in danger

2005-11-05T12:04:00.000+11:00

Well, good onya mankind, you've done it again. Not content to leave the location of these rare pines a secret, people have been actively searching them out even using helicopters to fly over the national park, and wow, how clever they were - they found them!

The Wollemi pine http://au.news.yahoo.com//051103/2/wne3.html

Friday November 4, 01:01 AM AAP

Tree disease hits historic Wollemi pine

A cluster of one of Australia's rarest trees has been infected with a disease thought to have been brought in by unauthorised visitors.

The Wollemi pine, which dates from the dinosaurs' era, was thought to be extinct until park ranger David Noble discovered the species in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, in 1994.

The NSW Department of Environment and Conservation said tests this week had confirmed the presence of the plant disease phytophthora cinnamomi in wild stands of the trees in the Wollemi National Park.

The Botanic Gardens Trust will carry out further testing to map the extent of the infection.

The department's deputy director general, Tony Fleming, said the infection was found in material taken from an individual pine during routine monitoring of the grove by rangers last month.

Experts met to devise a contingency plan, which will include extra surveillance of the area, treatment of affected trees with fungicide injections, widespread soil sampling and isolation of the affected trees.

"Phytophthora is a soil-borne fungal disease that causes root rot in many native and introduced plant species," Dr Fleming said in a statement.

"While it is controllable in horticulture, phytophthora can be devastating in the wild, which is why we need to act immediately to establish the extent of the infection, isolate any diseased material, treat the infected tree, and stop the phytophthora spreading."

Dr Fleming said it was not known when or how the plants became infected, but it was likely to have been introduced to the grove by "unauthorised visitors".

The site where the Wollemi pine was discovered in 1994 has been kept secret ever since.

Fire and phytophthora were considered the biggest threats to the species' future, Dr Fleming said.

boosting the economy of the gardening industry

2005-11-04T10:55:00.000+11:00

The nursery industry in Sydney is supposedly in a slump due to the continuing drought and water restrictions so I thought I'd help them along a little yesterday.
Pots were on half sale and I bought a couple of pretty little drought resistant kangaroo paws.
My helper (the dog from the hell dimension) otherwise known as Betty, is ready to supervise the repotting.
Plants won't know what hit 'em when we get started!

rainy Sunday

2005-10-30T15:19:00.000+11:00

Lots of lovely wet stuff falling from the skies over Sydney, started last night and has kept up all day so the garden is getting a really good soaking, let's hope some of it is landing in the catchment areas.
So what do you do on a rainy Sunday, you surf the net of course.
Sonia left a comment on my lilium so I went across to Brazil to visit her garden where she has the most amazing fruit tree called a Jaboticaba tree (Jaboticabeira)
I think sometimes we have such preconceived ideas based on our own experience (such as what a fruit tree looks like) and to see something so exotic and different is to understand how wonderfully diverse nature can really be.

Drum roll please........

2005-10-29T13:16:00.000+10:00

TaaaaDaaaa....
the mystery whatsit bulb has flowered:
what do you reckon? a lillium?

romantic roses

2005-10-29T11:51:00.000+10:00

Way back in 1996, (I know it was then, because I still have the catalogue) we visited Honeysuckle Cottage at Bowen Mountain (in the Blue Mountains of NSW)home of "Roses of History and Romance" and I fell in love with a exuberant weeping miniature rose, spilling lush, luxuriant and copiously from a large pot.

It wasn't for sale but I bought one of the same variety, planted it into a pot, put it in a sunny spot next to the swimming pool and waited....and waited...

Mine was far from lush and luxuriant, it was more lax, limp and lacklustre....probably because it had moved from the cool Blue Mountains to the sweltering west...and probably because I often forgot to water it.
My guilt about this pretty rose got the better of me and I moved it to a spot where it is much happier and I can enjoy it with a clear conscience.

banksia rose from hell reincarnates

2005-10-27T13:04:00.000+10:00

why can't the plants that I *want* to grow be as stubborn as this one,
haven't looked at this corner of the garden since the weather warmed up and look what the determined little buggar has done!

I'm warning you buddy, the napalm comes out next!

Travel: Sydney and Redcliffe Qld

2005-10-26T11:32:00.000+10:00

there are just a couple of photos I can show
This is my view from the plane window as we left Mascot on an overcast day, just before we reached the cloud cover, my beautiful Sydney, I love this town, with all its faults (like greedy councils, see below)

and this next is the free council swimming pool at Redcliffe, Brisbane Queensland, near my brother-in-laws place.

It looks more like it belongs to a luxury resort, the water is pumped and filtered from Moreton Bay which is just on the right. The bottom of the pool is sandy and goes from a childrens wading depth to swimming in the centre, there is a lifeguard on duty and all around are childrens play areas with wading pools, fountains and slides.
The path on the right goes right around the bay from the beach at Margate and on to Scarborough.
The main pool here is not fenced off, you just wander in from the path or the shops on the left, I couldn't believe how nice it was, if it was in Sydney, the council would have a wall around it with a $5 charge to go in.

avocado and orchids

2005-10-26T11:08:00.000+10:00

oohhh, I HATE it when I exceed my downloads for the month and optus slows me down - how did we get by on dial up....
anyway, we're back from Queensland - hot, humid Qld. and it's only October, there is no way I could ever move there, I would never survive summer.The wedding was nice, and we had a good couple of days catching up with relations.

Here is the progress of my avocado seeds, they are all starting to sprout after about 2 months sitting half in water

and here's a couple that have been growing in a pot,

and here is another of my rescued dendrobiums from our friend.

another gardener

2005-10-20T19:50:00.000+10:00

Have just discovered Melissa's gardening blog Sweetpea's Garden, after she left a comment on my wool blog (Melissa has one of those too!)

Husband and I are off to Queensland tomorrow for a nephew's wedding, will be back late Monday.

the first rose of summer

2005-10-12T14:18:00.000+10:00

...and those droplets on the rose are rain! yippee!!

(we are on level 3 water restrictions here in Sydney - that means we can water the garden with a hand held hose twice a week - my garden doesn't even get that, so it's smiles all round when we get a rare drop of the real thing)

g'dammit - I broke the whole stem off my cattleya trying to photograph it - oh well, it looks nice in the vase

we have a friend who grows orchids, these were his discards, he called them rubbish, luckily I was visiting that day and caught them on the way to the compost heap.

the plot thickens....

2005-10-09T02:10:00.000+10:00

....as my mystery bulb grows (I think it is some kind of lillium)

ummmm.....just wondering.....is anyone actually reading this? would you like to say hello in the comments (and maybe pull a couple of weeds while you are there?)

yippee!!! we have frog spawn!

2005-10-07T15:23:00.000+10:00

tag: frogs

Thinning out the water hyacinths from the frog pond and found that we have frog spawn -

lots and lots of frog spawn

wow, things will really be hopping around here soon!

frogs

Travel: Bowral tulip festival

2005-10-07T12:03:00.000+10:00

I've been away for a week at a craft show in Bowral as part of the annual tulip festival, we were here:

right across the road from the tulip gardens, so I was able to escape for a short time to take these photos:

the banksia rose from hell

2005-09-27T14:27:00.000+10:00

I've been on a mission to get rid of the banksia rose from hell.

It's looking very picturesque here and is a beauty to behold when it's in flower, but in reality it sends out 10 foot canes that take over the path and need continual trimming and I'm sick of listening to DH complaining about the flowers and leaves dropping in the pool, poor dear doesn't complain about much - and I'm just getting to the stage of life where I want to sit and enjoy my garden, not slog it out with plants, so I've decided to get rid of the things that need high upkeep (DH has been warned he could be next)
Before:

After:
(looking really bare) - I put all of this through the mulcher, gawd blimey I ache!!

it must be true....

2005-09-24T18:23:00.000+10:00

......I read it in the newspaper

(thanks Chris Henning, Sydney Morning Herald)

easy peasy...

2005-09-23T14:26:00.000+10:00

there's a reason I avoid temperamental plants,

the petulant, the moody, the highly strung, the sensitive, the touchy,

the ones who like their compost just right, not too much sun, not too much shade, not too wet, not too dry..

it's because there ain't no room in this garden for both of us

that's why I get on so well with nasturtiums, daisies and calendulas - they don't try to compete with me

so imagine my surprise when I found a camellia thriving enough to actually flower

not a big flamoyant flower, it doesn't pay to be an exhibitionist

... just a sweet little flower to start with this year, then maybe next year.....if it behaves and keeps a low profile....

days like these.....

2005-09-22T11:43:00.000+10:00

There are days when something happens in the garden to lift the spirit and make it all worthwhile...

that's how I felt when I saw my little visitor.....

short term memory

2005-09-21T10:34:00.000+10:00

One of the features of ageing is that you start to forget things....

this can truly be an enriching experience as you discover things you put away and forgot about.....

like this,

I vaguely remember finding a little struggling bulb in the garden and sticking it in an empty pot and telling it to try harder next year....
and it did!!

have no idea what it is.

my avocado fixation

2005-09-20T13:20:00.000+10:00

I have a problem...
(well, probably more than one)
I can't bring myself to throw away an avocado seed....
they are just so big and fecund and full of promise

the first duck of spring...

2005-09-15T09:29:00.000+10:00

summer can't be far away when the first duck belly flops into our swimming pool.

bare trees

2005-09-14T13:58:00.000+10:00

I've been thinking of some fibre artwork based around trees - leaves, vines, jungley looking, but at the moment all my trees are bare and it's a time of year that I love, I like the cold and bare trees always give me a proper sense of the season.
As Australia doesn't really have native deciduous trees, we have to make do with imported exotics, this is one of my crepe myrtles that is in the far corner of my secret garden

also a japanese maple that I had bought to turn into a bonsai 35 years ago, it sort of got away from me,

and I just love the texture of the bark on the maple with the contrasting bromeliad colour

crab apple

2005-09-14T13:56:00.000+10:00

It always amazes me how this poor old decayed crab apple manages to continue to grow and do......

......this, each spring

first try

2005-09-14T12:36:00.000+10:00

I have bits of gardening journals on different sites going back over the past few years, so I hope to eventually move it all here and do my best to keep it updated.

At the moment I'm playing around with the html to alter the template - not sure if I like this background, it's interesting though, to work on the template, and try to figure out which bits go where.