Spring flowers

I thought I'd sneak in a quick post before I head off early tomorrow to Western Australia.  We have had two weeks of unseasonably warm spring weather and not much rain which I hope is not a sign of things to come.  Spring flowers are popping up and opening out everywhere and the first roses of the season should open while I'm away.  I went around this morning snapping these few blooms that caught my eye.

 

I love Lunaria and have always wanted to grow some in my garden.  I bought a packet of seeds years ago, lost them and then rediscovered them last year.  Although the packet was over 10 years old I thought I'd sow seeds into punnets to see if they would germinate which they did.  Now I have these pretty flowers in pink and white.

Foxgloves never cease to give me visual pleasure.  I love the spotted throat of the flowers and the way those bells flower up the stem.  The first time I heard of foxgloves was in the Poldark series of books which I read as a teen.  Demelza would gather bunches of foxgloves growing wild in Cornwall and when I discovered what they looked like, I couldn't quite believe something so beautiful would grow wild near the coast.  But of course I saw it with my own eyes in 2012 when we visited that very beautiful part of England.

 A few years ago when I was going for a winters walk, I came across a very tall shrub with bright and deep pink flowers.  Not much flowers in winter here so I was delighted to find a plant in a local garden flowering so beautifully in the depths of winter.  My great grandmother would often walk by gardens and take a little piece of a plant overhanging the fence and strike it for her own garden.  I figured I should follow her example and struck some pieces of the shrub which I believe to be Salvia wagneriana.  My little shubs are small yet but hope they will grow to be as tall and beautiful as those in my neighbours garden just a street away.

 This Azalea is blooming prolifically.  I've only a few Azaleas in the garden now as the others have sadly died.  Perhaps it's time to invest in a few new plants for next winter/spring.

 

 The apple tree is full of blossom this year, I hope that might mean a good crop of apples as long as we can keep the parrots away from them. 

  This next photo is not flower related but definitely worth talking about.  A recent grocery shopping trip resulted in an over abundance of Kent pumpkin and as I didn't want it to go to waste while I am away in Western Australia, I searched for pumpkin bread recipe on the Internet and found this one  and doubled the recipe.  The amount of mashed pumpkin I had only came to 1 1/2 cups whereas 2 cups was required for two loaves.  I also adjusted the sugar amount to 2/3 cup instead of 1 cup per loaf.  This pumpkin bread is light and fluffy and full of spicy flavour.  So the next time you have and excess of pumpkin on your hands, give this recipe a try.

 Anne  xx

On a mission

So I'm on a bit of a mission, a voyage of discovery and experimentation and it's all to do with gardening.   See that garden bed below, it has been cleared.  I've hacked, pruned, grubbed out shrub roots with a spade and mattock. 

This was a beast.

So what am I doing taking out quite a nice garden bed, well I want to make a big vegetable patch and grow food.  I've been reading up on permaculture, composting, making a difference in our own backyard and so I'm starting on a very small scale to see what happens.  We do have a vege patch in the back yard but it is not doing too well.  Tomatoes are not happening this year.  :(

We get rid of an amazing amount of foliage including leaves, branches and weeds from our property all year and I'd like to try and put as much of that back into the ground as I can.  So the contents of the wheelbarrow is the start of my compost heap.  The grapevine has started to drop it's leaves and I've also pruned to let more light into the family room.  I stripped the leaves off what I pruned, put them in a pile and ran the lawn mower over them.  I raked up some other leaves and they got the same treatment.  Together with some grass clippings, I've got a nice little pile of goodies ready to do its thing.  I'm throwing in my kitchen scraps too and to my absolute delight when I went and checked my pile this afternoon, it's all hot inside which is what it is supposed to be doing.  I'm collecting paper and cardboard to add as well and the coffee grounds can be added too.

 Now I don't know how this whole permaculture thing is going to work because we are surrounded by trees and very little light enters our property.  We are also on the south side of a hill, not so good if you live in the southern hemisphere.  Vegetables and fruit need sunshine to grow but I'm sure there must be a way to get things happening starting with getting the soil healthy.  So my newly cleared ground is going to be bombed with cow manure, compost and mulch.  We have heavy clay soil so there is a bit to do to make it a happier place for veges to grow.  I've been spending up to 3 hours in the garden nearly every day and loving it.  It rained today so I cleaned the house instead.

If anyone has any success stories, tips, knowledge about composting, permaculture, growing veges in shade etc, I'd love to hear them.  I'm thinking of getting some more chooks too.  All those eggs and fertiliser. 

Well I've a busy weekend ahead.  Charlotte will be home from her Queensland holiday, my sister-in-law and nephew are coming over for dinner Saturday night before he goes off to study in Italy and travel for a few months and then Sunday/Monday will be spent with my gorgeous niece who loves to craft.

Melbourne Botanical gardens and Phillip Island

The Melbourne Botanical gardens are lovely and those who have visited will know that at certain points within the garden you can't see the CBD or city surrounds although you can hear traffic noise.  This was something I wanted to show Jane while she was staying with us.  Before heading to the gardens we had some lunch at Southbank.  Here are some photos of our lovely day out.  (Warning:  long post, photo heavy.)

On the train heading into the city.

A huge beautiful old tree.

This mother duck was leading her ducklings down to the water, very cute.

One of the things Jane wanted to do while she was in Victoria was to see the Penguin Parade at Phillip Island.  We set off Tuesday and decided to make a day of it visiting the Koala Conservation Centre first which is also on Phillip Island.  Jane hadn't had her fill of viewing koalas and to be honest neither had I so we were very happy to see more.

Koalas have a hard bottom covered with their thick fur so they can sit quite comfortably like this for hours.  This link has excellent information about koalas.

We were able to view the koalas from this raised boardwalk. 

Can you see this one hugging the tree?

At the conservation centre there are some very nice walking tracks where we saw a number of Swamp wallabies feeding.

After enjoying our time at the conservation centre we drove to the Nobbies, home to a large colony of fur seals.  Unfortunately we didn't see any seals but we did see spectacular scenery and one lone penguin.

 

One lone penguin under the Nobbies boardwalk.

 
  We were fortunate to see this one as taking photographs of the Penguin Parade is not allowed.  The reason for this is to make sure the penguins are not frightened by flash photography when coming up from the sea at dusk to their nesting/resting sites.  In the past non flash photograph has been allowed but there always is that one person who misunderstands because of the language barrier, so no photography at all is allowed.   These penguins are tiny little birds and have a long way to walk up from the sea.  After they arrive in groups called a raft of penguins, they cautiously make their way up from the sea, sometimes hiding behind rocks until they feel it is safe to continue to their nesting sites.  Sometimes they get the jitters, turn around and go back into the sea only to repeat the process a few minutes later.  The viewing of the penguins is excellent with arena lights showing the penguins more clearly as they approach the dunes.  Once the penguins are on their way up into the dunes, observers are able to walk on the boardwalk which takes you directly past where they are nesting or resting for the night.  There is lighting along the boardwalk so viewing is fantastic.  These gorgeous little birds don't seem to mind being on show and they don't disappoint cuteness wise.  

As we were driving around the island we saw quite a few of these Cape Barren geese which seemed totally unperturbed by the traffic driving by and were happily grazing on the edge of the road.

So there ends Jane's visit to Australia.  We did a number of other things while she was staying like having a family BBQ so other members of my family could meet her, lunch with my sister at a lovely nursery cafe and Jane dragged me (ahem) into a local lounge bar for a sangria.  I've never had the courage to go in their by myself, it was fabulous.  The things two cousins will get up to.

I'm off on Friday to spend three days with my sister-in-law in Adelaide followed by a week and a half with Mum in Western Australia.  The next post will be from either Adelaide or country Western Australia.

Anne  xx

Catching up

Hi everyone, I'm long overdue for a big catch up on all that we have been doing since my gorgeous cousin Jane came to stay.  She left us on Thursday to travel home to a rather wet and soggy Shropshire.  I would have to say that we (our family) have had the best time while she was staying with us as not only is Jane the best company, we enjoyed being tourists in our own state of Victoria and appreciated seeing the things we love through fresh eyes.

We've seen other interesting things too.  Jane wanted to make us a lemon drizzle cake with fresh lemons from our tree, something of a novelty for her see fresh lemons on a tree apparently.  I was assured that this is a cake recipe that never fails.  Ooops.  Of course being down under meant the cake sunk in the middle, according to Jane that is.  Whatever it looked like it tasted delicious.  Thank you Jane.

You can't come to Australia without trying Vegemite and I think Jane's face tells the story.

She took a a tube home so her kids could try it.  :)  Should be interesting.

On one of the days when we weren't doing anything too far from home, we decided to have a picnic in the Alfred Nicholas Memorial Gardens on Sherbrooke Road not too far from where we live.  Here are some photos from the afternoon.

At the time these photos were taken it was extremely dry and we had been suffering extreme heat so the gardens are perhaps not at their best.   This cheeky duck below quite fancied joining our picnic.  I did hold my breath while his/her rear end was over Jane's mobile phone case.  It could have ended very badly.

Helping him/herself to cashew nut dregs.

This was a lovely peaceful spot to picnic,

the little island on the lake.

Our next adventure was to Healesville Sanctuary which I will share with you next post.

Anne   xx