Goodbye, Winter!

As I begin to type this final Winter Wednesday post for 2011, Winter has exactly 58 minutes left in South Australia. Woo! Winter Wednesdays were started by Hazel as a sort of support group for people to help them find something positive about Winter each week. Last week, Hazel confessed that she herself doesn't like Winter much, and so she's not posting anything for the last one, but I'll do one anyway to say thank you, Hazel! I still can't say that I enjoyed Winter, as such, but I tried to find something good every week and each Wednesday did seem to roll around each week awfully quickly and Winter flew past, in the end.

The other day, on a whim, SP and I went to the Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens. I had totally forgotten about the magnolias, but as we drove around the curves to the car park I saw something quite amazing out of the window. I totally forgot that I'd meant to show SP the ducks, and we went looking at the flowers instead.


SP launched in with that special kind of determination toddlers have, which is how we found that the entire area under those wonderful red bushes is basically a swamp. Not just muddy, but gooey, stinky, and with a scum layer of algae growing over the top. Perfect for SP, not so great for Mama when she sinks in up to her ankles trying to get the toddler out before she is covered from head to toe.


But the magnolias, oh my Gods, the magnolias! Never in my life have I seen a display such as this. Thousands up thousands upon thousands of the lovely things. Gobsmacked, really, mud and all.

From buds...



To blooms...



Is there any flower more beautiful? More luminous? And they come in Winter, as it gives it's dying gasp, flings its arms wide and surrenders to Spring.

If you're in Adelaide, or nearby, I highly recommend you come up to the Gardens and have a look, and soon! Before they're all gone. Otherwise you'll have to wait a whole other year before this comes again.

Happy Spring xx

Winter wednesday #9

Winter Wednesday #9 comes to you from the beach (last week).

Just because there's something a bit special about the beach during Winter. It's cold, blowy, you don't dare go in the water, and you have the place almost to yourself as you explore and collect shells, stones and seaweed beads.


[Forecast of 20 degrees Celsius tomorrow, WOOHOOOOO!]

A list of good things from yesterday and today (to keep my spirits up as the wind picks up outside and the rain moves towards us from the west)

• Pruning 7 out of the 24 roses (then I ran out of room in the green bin, so the rest will wait for another week or two until it's emptied)
• Finding The life and times of Michael K, by JM Coetzee, for sale in my local second-hand bookshop, AND Claudius as God, by Robert Graves. Not one, but two books off my hit list! I like giving unwanted books a second chance, funny smells and browned pages and all (fellow gardeners, I recommend you seek out Life and times of Michael K, it is a good book on many levels, but for me as a gardener it was particularly special and I couldn't get it out of my head for months after reading it).
• Mid-season clearance sales allowing me to buy jeans reduced from exorbitantly expensive, to reasonably priced (my first new jeans since before being pregnant with SP over two years ago! Now that's frugal...)
• Watching the ducks and eating fruit salad with SP.
• Camellias blooming bright and early
• 
• A zonked SP
• 
• And lastly, finding the camera battery charger, after it's been missing for weeks and I have used up all three spare batteries completely, so next post's photos may be of better quality than those from my phone!
  

Oh Bugger.

Today SP and I went by our house and checked out our new and dramatic earthworks.
Now you can see why the right hand side of my front yard makeover has to wait!


And look out the back: what a mess...


And then, on a whim, we drove down to Brighton Beach and played in the sand for a while, getting grains between our toes and in our hair.


We watched as the sun began to go down.


And then I dropped my little compact camera in the sand and grains got into the lens mechanism and now it won't shut and a horrible white screen with red writing comes up and says 'Lens Error.' Damn.
I will have to see if it can be fixed, but if not it seems somehow fitting that photos of sunsets were the last things my little camera took.

A trip to Cleland

A while ago we noticed that our wee SP is fascinated by animals (but if you ask her, dogs, cats, birds, kangaroos all say 'oof oof oof'). Since then, we've been making noises about taking her to see some animals. Quite nearby is Cleland Wildlife Park. D had never been, and I haven't been since I was a child. This afternoon we went on a ten minute drive up the hill for a visit. It was a good day to go since it wasn't raining, but it was quite cold and only got colder as the afternoon wore on (Cleland is practically on Mount Lofty, our highest mountain at 727m [don't laugh! It's a petite mountain] and it's maximum today was only nine degrees Celcius.)Right inside the park we were greeted by some of it's littlest residents. Don't ask me if they are bettongs or bandicoots; I can never remember the difference. They ate the food pellets straight from our hands, leaving little damp dots from their wet noses.


The park is set inside some pretty reasonable open bushland. This is much what our area would have looked like before we built houses all over it and cleared the land for farming (although probably with a little less of the low grasses).


The park itself is very well maintained and planted with native plants, many of them indigenous. Many of my favourites were there (you might have noticed I have a lot of favourite plants!). I think today I took more photos of the plants than of the animals (they don't wriggle so much.) It was a bit inspiring for this junior gardener to see some of the ways that Australian native plants can be used.


As we walked around, I was reminded time and time again of why I love these plants. There's architectural and stately Banksia;


Luminous Dodonea;


My eternal favourites, the Correas;



Filamentous rusty Casuarina flowers (males);


Funky Grevilleas;


And how could anyone not appreciate the show put on by a new flush of Callistamon leaves?



But really, we were there for the animals (or, at least D and SP were).
SP had her first close encounter with a koala -called Becky. Her fur is dense like sheep's wool, but softer.



(And then SP tried to join her in her leafy snack. The photo, by the way, is black and white after our toddler insisted on holding the camera for a while and turned off the colour. I didn't realise for the first couple of shots.)


And near the end we made friends with some of the bigger residents, and chose a smaller one to feed.



And by that time we were freezing our bottoms off and our noses were going numb, and SP had a hold of the food pellet bag and was refusing to let go so it had to be wrestled away from her, and the sun was low in the sky so we went home for dinner. But I reckon we'll be back (in Spring, when it's warmer), it's only 10 minutes away after all!

Walking for inspiration

I'm a nosey sort of person. When SP and I go out walking, I am forever peering over people's fences, sticky-beaking in their yards (and occasionally pinching ripe figs when their tree overhangs the fence). I'm looking for inspiration. I'm seeing what works well in gardens, and what doesn't. I love seeing established gardens, and gardens that look a little abandoned or overrun. It will be a long time before my young garden looks anything like established. 
Recently we have seen:
A house I love, sunk into a nearby gully. Maybe it's not a house, perhaps it's just a shed, but I like it's rust-streaked roof and the scurrying blackberries alongside it. It looks forgotten;

An uplifting pop of bright orange berries against lime green leaves;

Some fascinating fungi;

And a mysterious pathway leading to a ramshackle gate. What secrets lie beyond?

Autumn walks

Have I mentioned that I love autumn? Have I waxed lyrical about it and bored you to tears talking about crisp and clear days, and coloured leaves, and soft rain? No? Well, I probably need not go on about it, but I do love autumn, love love love it. It's my favourite season of all, and it's such a shame winter must follow it every year.
Anyway, in my area every year there is the 'Stirling Autumn Garden Festival,' where all the European trees in the area put on a show, and there are some open gardens and a market down the main street where people sell foods, wines, cheese, plants and all manner of good things. This year it was on the weekend just past. I bundled SP into her pusher and we walked to one of the open gardens, the immaculate Beechwood, which is only 10 minutes from where we live. We could not have had more perfect walking weather: 24 degrees Celsius, sunny and still.
Along the way I had lots of opportunities to appreciate how lovely this area is in Autumn (though I do feel a bit of a traitor to Australian Native Plants to say that) as we walked past people's gardens and admired them.

I think I want to try growing a couple of roses for their hips rather than the flowers. I rather like the idea of making my own rose hip tea.

We walked into Beechwood, along the hydrangea path to the conservatory, where just past past it I spotted my first 'favourite plant' of the day: a lovely apricot coloured, climbing fluffy rose (a David Austin?). Sigh.

Just over a lawned area from there, another 'wow' moment, a stone wall just like I'd like to have, and slate pavers in the grass much like I have planned for our garden. Gosh, it was lovely!And it gives me a small bit of confidence that my garden design is not totally off track (though we have not got the space for sweeping lawns and lots of trees).

I loved this too, though I'll not be able to do anything like it myself. The contrast between the pale rendered wall and the bronze and green magnolia leaves is fabulous.

Quite often I'll fall in love with a plant based solely on the shape and structure of it's leaves. How wonderful is this?! Like fans or many-fingered hands. I think it might be a rhododendron but to be honest I'm only about 60% sure of that.

And then a garden seat under tree ferns and flanked by Japanese windflowers. Beautiful, beautiful.

I have a post all about Japanese windflowers in the works. They are my plant of the moment.

Once SP had had enough of the garden we walked up into Stirling for the market. It was the end of the day by now, after 4pm and people were beginning to pack up, but there was still plenty to see and lots of plant stalls to peruse for my 'thinking' list.

Of course, this little gardener cannot go to a market without coming away with something a bit cute. I have been admiring a leucodendron in a neighbour's garden, it's about waist height and rounded and has bright red growth at the end of every branch, a bit like candles. I'm not sure which species is in that garden, but I found a stall with half a dozen smaller red varieties (yellow too, but it was red that I wanted) and I chose this baby: a Red Devil (Leucodendron salignum), to go under the roses I think. Or should I put it out the back? Decisions decisions!

High Tea

Update: Card-Reader located!

It was SIL's birthday on April Fool's Day, and her party was yesterday. She had a Sunday High Tea, here at MIL's, and asked certain people to make various signature dishes: D his lemon tarts, me my stained-glass cookies.
Preparations began the day before with the purchase of local butter, local eggs, and whilst not local sweets they were bought from a local sweet store (support your locals!)

 

The butter was chopped, then sugar and vanilla added, then I left it to sit to soften.

But it was quite cold on Saturday, and it was very reluctant to cream. What better place to very gently warm and soften it than on top of the coffee machine?

Then I had to leave my preparations there, in the fridge, while I went to work and D came home. Unfortunately, SP turned into a Leech-Baby at this point, and he only got to half make his pastry cases and then MIL finished them and made the lemon filling the next day.

I finished off the cookies the next day too.

And then we set up for tea:
We put out the teacups;

The plates, napkins and cutlery;

Flowers on the side table;

Hydrangeas and magnolia leaves from the garden in the darkened hallway;

 Food plated up and ready to go;

MIL made the most beautiful, luscious, special birthday cake (recipe at end);

Which we ate...

And as the afternoon progressed, and the sunlight filtered through the trees into the garden, we became aware of the sugar-overload invading our systems and resolved to eat bread and water for tea.

Happy Birthday SIL! :)

***

Recipe
MIL's Special Birthday Cake: I insist you try it; it is divine.

Raspberry and White Chocolate Cake
(also known as 'Mary Phillipou's Wonder Cake', from Trick or Treat by Kerry Greenwood, 2001, Allen and Unwin)

2 eggs
1 cup caster sugar
300ml cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 3/4 cups self-raising flour
1 cup frozen berries (or dried fruit)
1 cup white chocolate bits

Grease a 20cm baking tin and line with baking paper.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick.
Add cream and essence and mix well.
Add the sifted flour and fold until until smooth.
Fold in berries and chocolate bits.
Pour into the prepared tin and bake for approximately 50 minutes. It's cooked when a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Allow cake to cool in the tin and turn out.
Dust with icing sugar and top with berries.