Flowering Canberra

We walked on Guru Bung Dhaura land today, and the site of the old Westlake Workers camp (1924-1965) in present day Yarralumla. We've walked this area before with our friends Judy and Jurgen, but today's walk was guided by the National Trust Heritage Walks people so we learnt so much more about the settlement history of this area, the woodland vegetation, and the Aboriginal heritage of the Guru Bung Dhaura. Springtime is the perfect time to see this remnant area of open woodland with its native plants and wildflowers all in bloom.

 Beautiful, delicate Indigophera Australis .........

and Box Gum open woodland... (listed as an endangered ecological community in NSW - and here it is only a 5 minutes drive from the city) .....

and a marker tree for the Ngunnawal people, at the top of the ridge, in an area of significance for "womens business".

This was looking SW out to the Brindabellas from the top of the ridge. There were lots of tiny wildflowers in amongst the grasses here.

Like my favourite Leuchocrysum Albicans (we planted these in our St Germain garden beds) ......

.. and these tiny yellow buttons .....I think these might be Button Wrinklewort which are another endangered wildflower.

There are quite a few old scar trees in this woodland too - probably over 200 years old, at least .......

and so many beautiful colours and textures in the Australian bush.......

Back at home, I am lucky to have been lent some orchids in flower for the next month or so. Our Winter Garden has been transformed into a conservatory, a constant reminder of this beautiful season. Aren't we lucky?

 

Warm Spring

 We had a few days of beautiful warm Spring weather a while back. For the first time in months we were able to go outside with the girls as the sun went down, without jackets, in bare feet, and able to sit on the grass without feeling frozen. The girls have kept active over Winter, and it shows..... Ella with her Gymnastics .......

And both girls spend hours in the back yard (and at school) skipping (no matter what the weather). Rob has helped them make a beautiful new plaited rope and Abi glued on the handles this warm afternoon, to finish off the job............

But Abi's true passion is her horse riding (of course). On a lovely sunny warm weekend, a week ago, Abi had a wonderful riding session on Tinker the riding school pony. Like a lot of ponies Tinker can be a bit tricky to handle at times, but on this day Abi was in complete control and got the very best out of this prettiest of little ponies ........

But the promise of warm weather was short lived. We've just had a week of rain, storms, freezing winds and lots of snow on the nearby ranges. But we've also had this spectacular double rainbow........ I took these pictures from our winter garden windows.......

 

A batch of birthdays

The end of Winter and the start of Spring heralds a batch of birthdays in our extended family. It starts with Ollie and Angus in August - and then there's Jody's on the 25th. We'd enjoyed our first family lunch at Pialligo Estate so much back in July that we decided to repeat the experience and celebrate Jody's birthday there too.

The goal in this pic was to encourage Abi to look at the camera - and she nailed it!!

No doubt she was feeling pretty stoked about her main course: SCOTCH FILLET, SMOKEHOUSE PANCETTA, ESTATE BEANS, ROASTED TOMATO, JUS. 

Abi is a confirmed carnivore and astonishes us all with the amount of red meat she can consume in one sitting. This is her idea of a perfect lunch dish.

Abi also gets sick of me taking photos - much preferring to be behind the camera herself. She took the rest of this Pialligo Estate photo collection for the blog!

And she prefers taking candid unexpected shots of us - watch out everyone!

The wait staff recognised Abi from our previous visit because of her pink patent Doc Martens. They are very distinctive.

Desserts went over well too!

The pic below, of Abi riding "Speedy", was taken a week after our lunch. This is Abi in her happy space, at Forest Park, with horses all around her, and riding one of her favourite ponies. She's been learning for about a year now and still LOVES it. We're so grateful that horseriding is relatively Covid safe, so it's had few disruptions this year.

And as for us, full of end of winter joy, Rob and I have bought a new car!! just like this one - although ours is still on the ship to Australia - due to arrive early in October?? At the start of the year we wouldn't have considered replacing our Subaru with an SUV type vehicle - but road trips around our region, state, and the rest of the country (eventually) might be the new normal for us for few years?

And back on birthdays - our friend Jennie F celebrates hers on the 11th September. This year we wanted to prepare a memorable celebratory lunch for her - especially considering all the times she cooks for us at the Murrumbateman property. Judy and Jurgen organised the lobsters and prawns from the South Coast and also prepared a delicious entree of scallops with sweet corn puree, proscuitto and lemon butter. We enjoyed our fave Majella with starters and beautiful Hunter Valley wines with each course and I made bread, salads and an orange cake for dessert.

Apart from the odd moment of turmoil in the kitchen it was a lovely relaxed and mellow afternoon, and the food was delicious - we really wanted Jennie to enjoy it!

Darling Ollie was a great lunch companion too for us oldies and very kindly offered to play his guitar for us. He is so talented; it was a very special highlight of the afternoon. Lucky us!

We were enthralled!

Our annual lobster lunches at Rosedale were very special occasions for all of us - another thing that has changed forever in 2020. There are sad moments for all of us when we get together because of this, and all the other losses we've endured in the past year, but the gift of friendship and our willingness to support each other through all this makes us feel very grateful, and brings joy and hope, especially at birthdays.
 

Spring is here

Even with our inner city apartment lifestyle - we're still very aware that Spring is upon us. Our St Germain garden club established a low growing 60 X 2 wide metre planted border along the north side of our block in May 2019 (I did the planting design). It has grown beautifully and brings a lot of joy to the residents and the public passing by - to say nothing of the bird and insect life feasting on its constant show of native flowers and seeds.

Our garden group has a few working bees throughout the year - and come the start of September we knew we needed to give everything a good trim to encourage Spring growth and keep flowers flourishing....

Many hands make light work especially when all the Anzac Whites need deadheading..

Meanwhile Rob and other members of the team took on the more overwhelming job of removing the vetch weed infestation from the native grass beds in our parkland (a never ending job).

With one very successful garden plot underway we're now embarking on another project at the side of our building, closer to the playground areas of our Hassett Park. For this job we've got help from other residents of C5 and the ACT Govt. under its Urban Parks and Places Volunteers program (UPP). First goal is to clear the existing bed of its poorly performing ivy and prepare it for its first load of soil and mulch (prior to planting out as a "woody meadow").

All us oldies were out doing the digging - all the younger residents of C5 were at the gym or drinking coffee!

Many hands make light work ........ It took an hour to dig out the ivy yesterday and another hour to turn over all the soil today!

We really do have some lovely neighbours at St Germain. Last Friday lovely Andrew and Di (and our friend David) took us on an outing to an area of Canberra we've never been to before - and which looks its best at this time of the year. The site of the old Sherwood Homestead, near Uriarra Creek (off Uriarra Road) is not all that easy to find and involves a bit of dirt track wrangling (thank you Andrew). Eliza and Henry Phillips settled in the area in the 1860s. Eliza came from Nottinghamshire in England and it is said that she and Henry planted acorns from Sherwood Forest in England when they settled here all those years ago. Those trees, and other exotics planted by the Phillips still stand today along with extensive fields of tulips and jonquils which have continued to bloom every spring for the past 160 years or so. There's no homestead now - all that was demolished in the 1970s when the property became part of the ACT Forest Park, but the daffodils and jonquils were blooming well this week when we visited, shaded by the still healthy forest of oaks, elms and cedar trees planted by the Phillips - an unlikely piece of England in the Australian bush.

Eliza and Henry and other family members are buried on the property, on a hill overlooking the site of the old homestead. It's marked with a plaque, but the fence around it and other grave markers have been lost over the years in bushfires.

There was about a kilometre of easy walking to "Sherwood Homestead" once we'd found our way in to an area we could park the car.

The daffodils looked quite different to contemporary varieties - very frilly!

A beautiful, but quite incongruous sight in the Australian bush.

A nice spot for a picnic with the neighbours!