Springtime in the garden...

In my last post I wrote about my 'battles' with the bush turkey...but all is not lost, gardenwise...

The daylilies are flowering, despite being neglected...

This plant is flowering for the first time since I got it as a Christmas present...

The year before last, I got a cutting of this cactus from a friend. Last year it had one bud. This year there were lots of these buds, but this year these buds opened up before they fell off.
So, buds...

 Turned into these flowers...

A few months ago, I bought a galliardia plant. My mum had these flowers in her garden...I loved the colours. This one is a bit different to mum's...a bit frilly. But it's been flowering really well this month...

Most of my hippeastrums are in pots. Despite having twigs and even a piece of ceiling insulation from the building site next door on top of the potting mix, these hardy plants had buds developing...

 Nearly opened here...I dug up the bulbs of these red ones from the garden of the house where I lived with my first husband, and brought them with me :-)

 Here are some of the pots of hippeastrums gathered together in one spot...

I was given this one as a housewarming gift when I moved to a little rental house in 2000

I potted up this petunia seedlings in early September and most of them are flowering now; here is my favourite one...purple!

And lastly, some of my tomato crop...

The first photo is a bag of the larger tomatoes that we gave to Tim, along with a bottle of red, as a thank you for Faux Turkey...

And this is a bowl of cherry tomatoes including some yellow ones...all self sown.

I decided to not take photos of the prolific weeds that are also in my garden lol! I weed a little bit each day but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Looking out my kitchen window again and seeing off friends...

I thought I might share some more of the photos that I took for the feature' View from my kitchen window' which I posted on Monday just gone....

Across the road, the house on the left has immaculately trimmed hedges

When I planted this bamboo in 2006 it was tiny. It is not an invasive variety, just clumping  in a small area

 For the photo below, I used the telescopic setting, but still aimed the camera in the same direction. In the background is part of a nearby range of hills (DH refuses to call them mountains! lol) . There are some brownish patches on that hill and these are where a fire burned through recently. Then, through those treetops below the hill, there is a white building peeping through. This is a block of units on the old McCauley College campus of the Australian Catholic University. (the uni relocated to Banyo) To the right of those unit, peeping through the treetops is a brown brick building. This is now part of Mt Maria Senior College, but it used to be a convent (Convent of the Good Shepherd). And in that convent grounds was a laundry. Also in those grounds was a 'home for unmarried mothers'. Those girls/women would spend the latter part of their pregnancy living in this home and they would work in the laundry to pay for their upkeep and medical care.  I bet the young people of today would think I'd made that all up :-) But there were a number of these 'homes' scattered throughout Brisbane, usually run by some church or other.

Double click to find that former convent! :-)

Now something a bit different...
Today DH's cousin and her husband headed off on a 3 week camping trip to try out their new caravan. Pamela retired in February and they had planned to be on the road doing 'the grey nomad' thing, pretty well straight away. But that wasn't to be. They decided to replace their former caravan and bought this van. Then she and her husband have spent ages fitting it out to the standard they want. Then Pamela, a marriage celebrant, was booked by one of DH's nephew for his wedding in early October.;..so that's why this trip is only for 3 weeks. This is just an observation I've made, but so many people tend to book celebrants with not much more time allowed than the Notice of Marriage which is 1month and 1 day.

Garry supervising the packing of the freezer and fridge

The vehicle and the van

Van is named after Garry's hometown in Victoria

DH after chatting to his cousin while she packed the fridge...

Pamela...fridge all packed now

The boys checking out the fancy towing mirror

DH and I went over to 'get my instructions' for looking after the indoor, the balcony and the back patio plants. They were running a bit behind so we wished them a safe trip and left them to all those last minute jobs. Their trip will include, the Bunya Mountains, then a drive on the inland route to Hervey Bay. Then from there, a drive down the coast doing all the 'touristy things'.
And finally, Garry grows pansies each year as they are Pamela's favourite flower. Garry picked some for me today and told me to pick some every time I come over to water the plants.

Flowers; some real, some not!

When I wrote about the Art Show in my previous post, I commented on a painting that I really liked...the nasturtiums. When I was helping with the Devonshire Teas yesterday, I took a photo with my phone. I still love it but I don't need it :-)

This large painting of poppies was done by Gwen Kelso whom I taught with a number of years ago. Since she retired , Gwen has entered her paintings in our art show most years. 

The painting above was won by DH a few years ago. He bought a ticket in a raffle run by St Vincent de Paul at a fete. He didn't really like it that much but hung it on the wall in the dining room any way. 

This is a tapestry version of a Van Gogh painting. DH's former mother in law came to our wedding and gave us this as her wedding gift. We treasure it because she stitched it herself. It normally hangs on the wall but the glass makes it difficult to get a photo without 'flashback'.

This hibiscus plant was a gift from a friend 2 Christmases ago. It has a delicate coloured flower.

Another one of my day lillies

The bunch of roses in the photo above were reduced from $9 to $3.60 in Woolworths and I reckoned that it wouldn't hurt the budget to buy a bunch at that price. The colour is really pretty and the buds have opened slowly. But they have absolutely no fragrance! But I expected that. The flowers in the photo below were grown in a friend's garden and they are all old varieties...and yes! they have the loveliest fragrance.

Last but not least...my new eggplant has lots of flowers so here's hoping for a great crop.

odds and sods...

Last Thursday my friends David and Majella came over for breakfast. They brought me some roses from their garden. David is very proud of his roses and with good reason. His daughter clones roses from old varieties and as a result David's roses all have the most glorious fragrance unlike the more modern varieties of roses. My dining room has been filled with the lovely scent of roses since Thursday and even though the blossoms have opened right out, the petals haven't fallen yet...too beautiful.

On Saturday night DH and I joined other family members and family friends at a dinner to celebrate my nephew Ion's 18th birthday. As I've  written previously, I was reunited with my long lost brother in 1999. I met my 2 younger nephews a few days later; Rowan who was 18months old and Ion who was 6. I pretty much fell in love with them straight away and I'm so proud of them. Ion is now an adult, quite a bit taller than me...and has stubble lol. He started university this year but deferred after one semester. He's working while he works out exactly what he wants to do.

Today DH's DD1 came over for a while and then suggested we all go to the movies; which we did. We saw George Clooney's 'Ides of March'; a very apt name if you remember Julius Caesar, except these were metaphorical knives not real ones. For the life of me, try as I might, even after reading for information etc...I still can't understand the US electoral system...these 'primary whatsits' etc.  Being involved in running federal elections for over 25 years DH adored the movie...I just ogled George  Clooney even if his character was a bit flawed. :-)



I learn a lot from blogging...

I've learned a lot recently from reading other people's blogs. I've got new recipes to try, heaps of sewing and knitting ideas, discovered just how cold it can get in the US, got ideas for gardening, found about Charley Harper and have discovered that the plants we call  'hippeastrums' here in Australia are also known as Amaryllis in the US! (And those are just a few of the things I've learned)





These 2 photos show some hippeastrums which were on display and for sale in Holland at some gardens known as Keukenhof. They were all magnificent specimums but I resisted temptation to buy any as I would have had no chance of bringing them back into Australia.


This is a view of a small part of the gardens at Keukenhof which is outside Amsterdam. The gardens are only open for 6 weeks in the year; obviously when the tulips and other flowers are in bloom.

Closer to home than the Netherlands here are some other gardens we have visited.

This photo shows some of the garden beds at Floriade 2009 in Canberra. This amazing festival is held annually (Sept/Oct ) and I had always dreamed of seeing it first hand and last year DH made the dream come true. I wasn't disappointed! The gardens cover acres/hectares of Centennial Park and none of the photos we took do it justice.

Even closer to home, the photo above is of part of the gardens in Toowoomba's annual Carnival of Flowers, held every September.

One day I plan to sort through all the photos we've taken and make a calendar of the gardens we have visited. We took photos of a number of other gardens when we went to the UK and Europe in 2008, as well as some in NZ and Norfolk Island.