Sunday 22 August 2010

Spectacular flowers and other things

Look at this spectacular creeper which is flowering in our botanic gardens - it is called Mucuna gigantea.  Do click on the photo to enlarge, the flower is the most intense deep red colour against the deep green foliage.  It is native to the castal region around here, but I confess I have never seen it in the wild.

I have quite a few photos of the bottlebrushes in the Gardens which are all flowering beautifully, but I want to try to put some of them together and I need to learn how to do that, so hopefully in another few days I can show you.

We have had our two young
 grandsons staying here over the weekend.  this was the first time Hamish (on the right) had ever stayed away from home without either of his parents, so he was quite excited.  We all had lots of fun, I wore them out at the local playground.  That was great, they went to bed early and off to sleep, but they were on the go at 5.20am this morning, I was not nearly so impressed about that!!  Alexander is a very keen gardener so we spent quite a lot of time weeding and then planting out some seedlings.

I am beginning to despair of ever getting back into my workroom to do anything creative - I had to dismantle the bed which was being used as a giant storage shelf to get to the spare mattress to take downstairs for Hamish to sleep on.  that made me have quite a bit of a tidy up (and I found a few lost items too).  I thought I would at least show a photo of the felt I made last week, the colours aren't quite right, but near enough.  I really do find the bubblewrap method quite kind to the joints.

Bill makes very rude remarks about my sun (or light) shade - he keeps asking when I will deal the next hand! I find overhead lighting very hard to cope with because of the macular degeneration so I have taken to wearing an eyeshade at night.  I had one for downstairs, but got sick and tired of forgetting to bring it up to the computer with me, then having to run downstairs again to fetch it - probably good exercise, but annoying! I used this piece of silk paper and fused it to a couple of layers of pelmet vilene, then with a black underside, it does the trick nicely.  Now I just need to know how I can make the computer screen a little less white............oh well, I suppose I can't have everything.

6 comments:

  1. Lovely felt and flowers Robin.
    Re the computer, if you have a Mac, their is a couple of pics of suns on the keyboard of mine, pressing one brightens the screen and the other dulls it down.

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  2. Those flowers are such a gorgeous intense red. How lovely to have your grandsons to stay. Obviously horticulture is in the blood! I love your piece of felt and the eyeshade looks great and a good idea. Would tinted specs help with the glare of the computer screen? Even a cheap pair of sunglasses might do the trick - I used to wear some over my reading glasses until I went all extravagant and bought a pair of prescription ones.

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  3. The red of the creeper is stunning. I love that you managed to wear the youngsters out. The felt piece is great as is your shade. Can you manage by simply turning the brightness down on your monitor by going into the Settings?

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  4. Love the shade, dont seem to need that but find some colours people use as print terribly hard to read.

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  5. Robin, those flowers are magnificent, thanks for sharing. I've never seen them before. Love the felt, the children, and especially your visor, what a hoot. I can see why hubby dubs you the gambler!!! Sorry I've been long winded commenting, computer very slow, annoying, just getting under my skin. Thanks for your kind comments on my blog. Stitching madly on August needlecase.

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  6. Love those pics as usual. The felt is lovely.

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