Good for the soul

I just love gardens so today was “right up my alley”! We visited the Hunter Valley Gardens. The gardens were opened in 2003 so are very new when compared to many of the large famous gardens to which tourists will flock. Our visit happened after all the rose trees had been pruned and all the deciduous trees – which actually is most of the trees – are still bare of leaves and buds are barely showing. In spite of that the gardens were beautiful. This photograph shows the formal garden and was taken from an elevated platform.

There are a number of different (very different) gardens within the 16 hectares of garden.

A little train is an excellent way to get the first taste of the garden and the train driver gives a running commentary as the train passes the different features. Anyone who is not so nimble will still be able to see most of what is in the gardens this way.

There are many topiary shapes that are really eye catching and even some that are shaped like animals! They are very clever!

The storybook garden is full of fascinating sculptures that would appeal to the child in anyone! This is more a garden of sculptures than a garden of flowers.

The time passed too quickly in the gardens but there was another interesting place to go and visit so we clambered aboard our mini bus and made our way to Singleton and to a convent where we were greeted by Sister Monika and given a fascinating look into the life of nuns in Australia. A little video was shown to us that gave the early history of the Order of the Sisters of Mercy and how the order started in Ireland before spreading across the world. Our guide had spent most of her life in this Convent and she was able to answer any questions we asked on any aspect of life as a nun.

Life has changed dramatically for nuns – they no longer wear the black habit and live in seclusion – but we were shown a Spartan room that showed how a nun’s bedroom (cell) used to be.

 

In the grand old buildings there were many beautiful stained glass windows. These have been repaired and strengthened without compromising their beauty. This is one of the glorious examples taken in the large dining room.

Just before we left the convent we were taken into the chapel – and this was definitely the “piece de resistance” The interior of the chapel is exquisite. The altar is Italian marble and breath-taking in its translucency and form. This is a very special place and I found out that I shouldn’t really have been taking photographs of it – but who could resist? I certainly couldn’t.

I felt so privileged to have been able to see this amazing convent, one that is still inhabited by nuns, albeit a small number of aging nuns, and to learn something of the contribution these ladies have given to Australia.

AJ

Colour after the rain

The soil is so wet that walking on the lawn covers shoes with liquid mud but Colin had told me that the little piece of frangipani that he brought home for me seven years ago had flowered and I just HAD to go and see for myself! Although I stepped slowly and very carefully I had to remove my shoes before I could get back indoors! But I saw it – the most startling deep red, almost a plum coloured bunch of florets.

 My photo actually does not show the true colour, it is darker than this. If I had made the flowers as dark as they truly are you would find the picture to be less striking. It is so beautiful. Now that it has flowered this first time it should now grow and have lots more flowers next year. I hope so!

Once outside in the garden with a camera in my hands I could not return indoors without finding a few more blooms to capture!

This little bush of blue daisies has been flowering non stop for weeks. I don't do anything to it but this rain has made it grow even taller!

For some strange reason the daylilies that come out in November have started flowering again.

I have several of these yellow and red daylilies out at the moment, rather than take the usual shot from above and looking down at the long pollen covered stamens I opted for an “under the lip” shot! The three corner palm stands in the middle of the garden and is providing the pattern of leaves in the background.

Since the rain the dahlias have taken off. It is not long since I cut them all back and had not had the time to lift the tubers, they are all very bushy and healthy and one has surprised me by producing a different coloured flower.

I thought that all of my dahlias were dark red – the same colour as the frangipani. But one is a pretty salmon colour. I know that I “rescued” a sick dahlia from Bunnings last year that didn't have a tag on it so maybe this is it! Its definitely not sick today.

Seeds that came from plants that grew here last year have produced marigold plants that actually need thinning – one of them is flowering already.

The splash of orange makes an almost luminous glow in the garden.

And finally one of my miniature roses – the rose bush refuses to be miniature but the exquisite flowers are not very large at all.

If you were to make a circle with your thumb and middle finger the rose would fit in there. The leaves are a bis of a mess but the plant is otherwise healthy and has lots of these little flowers – and a few baby grasshoppers too.

I do not use chemicals in my garden at all. We have lots of birds and lots of lizards and I have no desire to kill any of them so I do my best with companion planting and soapy water! Not as efficient as the chemical treatment but it keeps me happy!

AJ

Night flowering tree

After spending the entire day working in the kitchen, by evening I was feeling pretty warm so I took my cup of tea outside onto the veranda and sat down in the cool to enjoy it. The light was about gone from the sky but it wasn't completely dark and I was able to see that the tree the lorikeets fly into during the day was covered with white flowers. I was aware that the flowers only came out in the evening but I had not been outside to see it happening.

2 seconds      F/8     ISO 800

The tree was decorated with white flowers  from top to toe. There must be very little nectar in the flowers because they do not attract the fruit bats - fruit bats are night nectar and fruit eaters. And the honey eaters and lorikeets are not interested in flying around in the dark, so birds do not pollinate these flowers. So there must be insects that do that work.
It seems a shame that such attractive flowers should bloom only at night and fall to the ground before daylight.

                                                              3 seconds       F/8     ISO 800
I am surprised that these pictures came out as well as they did because it was too dark to focus - so focus was pure guesswork! AND there was a slight breeze blowing so the two and three seconds I took to take each photograph meant that the tree and flowers had to be completely still - or completely blurred!
My last image shows that some of the flowers have fallen off already - they really are short lived.

                                                                   3 seconds       F/8     ISO 800
I should look up and find out what this tree is. The birds brought it into my garden and I transplanted it in the grove of trees just across from the veranda. Until now I had no need to know its name!
Now that I have had my little break I had better get myself back into the kitchen and tidy up!
AJ

November display

This morning when I looked out of my kitchen window my breath was taken away with the beauty on show by one little garden tree. Yesterday there were one or two flowers on it but this morning it was smothered with them,

The remarkable thing about this particular Tibouchina is that the petals are different shades of pink. This was originally a cutting given to me by a friend. It was taken off a white tibouchina (as was the other cutting which has turned out to be purple). This TIbouchina is Tibouchina Mutabilis - a known hybrid of the genus so why it should have grown from a cutting from a completely different tree I have no idea!!
Here is a closer look (It is worth taking a closer look!)

If you were to click on the picture you will be rewarded with a larger image. So much easier to see.
The individual florets have distinctive angular stamens. The wild birds do not show any interest in the flowers nor have I noticed many insects of them either. Maybe the pollination is done by the wind.

I have two other Tibouchina varieties in my garden and neither is showing signs of being as covered with flowers as this one - of the other two, one is the dark purple variety and the other a rich pink.
I thought that Spring was an exciting time for colour in my garden but this month which is the end of spring, is proving to be just as exciting.
AJ

Playing with equipment

Some months ago I purchased a "macro/wide lens" from a seller on EBay. A true Macro lens costs hundreds of dollars but this combo set of lenses cost me a huge $45. I haven't used them much because I had a loan of a Canon D40 that was fitted with a true (expensive) macro lens. I have had to give that back to the owner so my cheapie set has been brought out of moth-balls!

This is what I am talking about. The macro/wide lens is in two parts and can be used together or individually. I used the wide lens last week on interior shots for a holiday resort. It did the trick! Of course there is a fair bit of lens correction to be done to remove the fish-eye effect of a wide angle lens. Today I was trying out the macro and I will show you later what I mean by "lens correction".
To begin with I tried the macro (the picture above left) on its own on text.

Then I removed it and moved the camera further away so that I could take the same text without the lens - I positioned the lens as close as I could focus, which was quite a long way further away from the page.

As you can see, I have indicated the coverage with the macro lens - and you can see from the two photos of the camera, the distances from the page. I used one of the children's rulers to show the relative distances.
From text I moved on to flowers. I selected some carnations out of the bunch.

On the left, no macro and as close as I could go to focus on the centre flower of the three. The picture on the right is with the macro and on wide angle - 17mm with the camera as close as I could focus. - very similar distances to those pictures of the text.
From that same distance I zoomed in to 55mm and here is the result.

Because aperture used has a huge effect on the depth of field I had selected f/14 and let the camera decide the Speed. for all the photographs Manual focus was used and the wireless remote was also used for every shot. I wanted to avoid any camera movement that may be cause by me pressing the button.
Then I put the "wide" part of the lens onto the macro lens and from a distance of35mm to the nearest flower, this is what I captured.

The picture on the left is as it was taken - the lens is so wide that the edges of the housing are included in the shot. In Photoshop Elements I used Lens Correction to remove the barrel distortion, then cropped the image which resulted in a very natural looking photograph of a bunch of carnations (actually they are "pinks" which is a cousin of the carnation!)
If you want to see the pictures larger, click on the first of the pictures and you will be able to view each of the pictures by either clicking on the pictures at the bottom of the screen or by using your arrow keys.
My goodness! I do ramble!
AJ

More colour from my patch of garden

I must be doing something right this year! My garden is really rewarding me with colour. I suspect it is my industrious husband's doing - he is out every single day with the hose, watering my seedlings and providing me with trailer loads of new soil. Tomorrow we are off to see if we can purchase some sugar cane mulch direct from the farm! My garden is really "spoilt"! I think it gets more attention than we do!

Number one picture is another look at my pretty multicoloured Tibouchina mutabilis. With these blooms all close together you can see how they change from white to a stronger pink colour. I prune this bush back once it has finished flowering and that keeps it from getting too big but better than that it develops more flower branches for the next year. Last year this bush was quite open but this year is more dense. Next year it should be even better.

The Agapanthus are out! They really are a majestic plant with their strappy green leaves and tall stems with big heads of blue on the top - they are such a contrast to most things in my garden which seem to be various shades of pink! I suppose I will have to dig some of them out after their flowering is over - they have multiplied so that they take up quite a bit of room. I wont be throwing them away though, when I lift them I shall plant them down the side of the driveway that goes down to the shed in the back. They wont mind being in the shade of trees and come November we shall be rewarded with a fantastic display of blue!

I have only one white Agapanthus and it is a little slower to open than the blue, It also looks a bit lonely but it will have "pups" so that I will have two or three plants next year.

The best bit of all is kept til last - the daylilies start showing off in November! I have about eight different daylilies and, like the agapanthus, they have pups that give me new plants every year so I have clumps of daylilies all through the garden ranging from single buttercup yellow to deep red that is almost brown. I love daylilies and have visited daylily farms - this is where some of my plants were purchased. I have a gorgeous one that a friend brought for me from a holiday and another that I bought from a gardener who had a stall on the side of the road! I will share some more of their beauty with you another time.
Dont forget that to see the pictures larger, click on them!
AJ

Yellow flower

Thanks to Jenny in Western Australia I now have a name for my bright and cheerful yellow flowers!

So for those of you who are curious, this yellow daisy is Coreopsis, It multiplies quite well and can be pulled apart easily and spread around. I started with only a punnet of seedlings so all these plants in one garden plus the plants in the next picture, in an adjacent garden are from those original six. I have not found it to be weed-like. It does not spread wildly appearing all through the garden unexpectedly - plus it is fairly shallow rooted and really easy to pull out should the plants become too numerous.

A friend gave me the pretty flowering shrub (lots of the plants in my garden have a story!). I was told it would be a white Tobouchina but, as you can see it is not completely white. The new flowers are white with pink on the back of the petals and as the days pass that colour appears on the white front of the petals. Because the colours mutate the plant has been called "Tibouchina mutabilis" Which, for me, makes remembering the name so much easier! This same friend gave me four different cuttings from his white Tibouchina but not one of them turned out to be white. The other three are deep purple. The purple variety is known as "Tibouchina austenville" and is the most common of the varieties seen around this area. it will be a few months before the third variety in my garden comes into bloom again. It is a pretty pink colour that does not mutate. The flowers are rather tatty when seen closely but the show created by the masses of flowers makes up for that.
(Click on a picture and you will see it larger, then click on the "back" button to return to the blog)
AJ

showing off again

Yesterday I took my tiny high definition video camera around the garden to make a record of the flowers that I have in bloom at the moment. Today I put the shots together with some music.
I suggest you click on the title at the top left of the video embedded in this blog so that you can watch the video in Youtube.
The sides are trimmed off , which I find irritating!
Here it is


AJ

Showing off in style

There were dozens of amazing floats in the Grand Parade on the final Saturday of the Toowoomba Flower Festival however I will not even attempt to share them all with you! However I will give you a little glimpse.

Do you remember the Smurfs? I had two little plastic smurfs as mascots when I was a teenager (before the Ark sank) so it was with great amusement that I shot this picture and the following one.

They look the same - but so much larger and cuddlier! But who is the girl with them? Is she part of the team or is she there to rescue them if they fall?

The characters from Star Trek were also marching in the parade - Storm troopers! Good fun! I don't remember a little black one though. I shall have to watch the movie again!

Here is a vehicle that proves that learning to drive can be fun! I like the "L" plates on the wheels!
The parade was great - there were so many marchers and different floats that the parade took over an hour to pass. The audience were almost passing out from being in the sun all that time so the marchers dressed in all enveloping costumes must have been cooking! I am glad I had lighter clothing on!
AJ

Spring on the Range

I have just uploaded a little video I have made from the photos and bloggie video that I took on Friday of the beautiful gardens that won prizes in the Toowoomba Flower Festival. I hope you enjoy it.
Click on the title at the top left of the video if you would like to see the video in Youtube - in this blog the sides are trimmed off!
AJ

The colours of Toowoomba

It is Spring and every year Toowoomba celebrates Spring in a big way. Toowoomba is a good two hours drive west from where I live on Queensland's Gold Coast and it has a completely different climate to here. Being on the top of the Great Dividing Range at an altitude of 700m it has a more temperate climate with cold winters and low humidity during summer. The soil is an amazing orange red colour and is the envy of every gardener working the heavy clay soils of Mudgeeraba (my home!) Things grow in it!
A Spring Festival is held at Toowoomba for a full week during September and it culminates in a Grand Parade on the last Saturday of that week. I joined a two day tour to Toowoomba that included a tour of the gardens on one day and the parade on the second. Today I will share a mere handful of photographs that I took in the gardens. More photos will be shown in a separate link to a web album later.

Wisteria is one of the plants that would grow here - I have tried but with limited success, the flowers were not as impressive as on this vine - so I dug it out! The cooler climate seems to suit the Wisteria much better and many of the parks and gardens in Toowoomba have either a purple or a white wisteria.

The brilliant mauve and sheer mass of blooms really is a treat for the camera!

Not all the gardens in Toowoomba are filled with colour like this. The majority of residents do not have the time nor inclination to create a flower garden. But the few people who do have a passion for plants must spend a good part of every day at work in their gardens to have them look so fabulous. This is one of the smaller gardens but the grand champion garden was over an acre in size.

Flowering trees give colour above the head as you walk through the prize gardens. How everyone managed to get all their plants blooming at the same time amazes me! I wonder if these prunus will grow here - I guess there is only one way to find out!

Here is one more garden - I was lucky to be able to take a picture without people in it! These gardens are "crawling" with people wandering through them. One gardener said that last year he had 23,000 people through his garden!

Finally, a little indulgence! I tried not to take too many close up shots of "flowers" - I was supposed to be admiring the gardens rather than individual specimens! However this one just begged to have its picture taken!

Click on any of the pictures to see them larger, then click on the "back" arrow to get back to this blog.
I will share my album of photos tomorrow.
AJ