Busy, busy, busy

Somehow the days are vanishing faster than I know without my getting nearly enough stuff done!  We had a lovely morning tea at the library this morning to farewell a very long serving volunteer who has been volunteering there for over 33 years.  Unfortunately she has gone almost blind with macular degeneration so can no longer see to do anything,  The library staff presented her with a lovely cushion, heavily textured, and a very soft throw, also quite textured, so she can feel as much as look at them in her room in the aged care facility into which she has recently moved into.

The library has a wonderful service providing home deliveries of books to over 150 clients who are housebound and today was the last delivery for this year.  I deliver to about a dozen people in an aged care facility near my home and I have made some lovely friends over the years.  Sitting for a chat is as much a part of the  service as delivering the books I think!  Sadly I shall be away this year for their Christmas party to be held next Friday.  Helpers bring most of them into the one of the libraries for a bangup morning tea and lots of entertainment.

 I have managed to go for a couple of walks and saw this beautiful Tabebuia tree the other day.

 This is a closeup with the sun shining on the flowers.

 You know Christmas is close when the Poincianas are all in flower!  I couldn't get close enough with the traffic to take another photo but click on them all to enlarge.

I have done a little bit of sewing - finished this little bag and I have another couple under way, but not ready to show yet.  I have made one Christmas cake and cut up fruit to soak ready to make another one on Saturday.  I need to spend some time in the garden mulching everything at the weekend.  The weather is still very dry and quite hot and I am going away for four days next week, leaving Bill to do the watering!

I haven't quite vanished!

It seems an age since I have had anything worth posting about, but I have finally made a few items worth showing.  Most of my time these days seems to be taken up with health appointments of one sort or another - boring and time consuming but necessary.

 I have made some birthday cards and one Christmas card for my Fibre Fever group

 This will be the end for me with this group as I am retiring from it at the end of the year.  I have really enjoyed the interaction, but the pressure of producing something  at a given time about a given subject has got beyond me.  I am not nearly as talented as the wonderful artists in Europe!

 Today I received my Christmas card from Margreet, with beautiful hand sewing as always.

I have made a couple more glasses cases and bookmarks today, with some more in process.  I have finally had a whole day at home without having to poke my nose outside the gate - wonderful.

Jock was not happy though, we did not go for a walk this afternoon as I spent the time in the garden instead - he still had plenty of exercise chasing toys while I was there.  Tomorrow is our bin collection day and as we never have much rubbish to put into it we fill it up with garden rubbish, so Wednesday afternoon is pruning time - or weeding time.  It had to be watering time as well.  We have had very hot weather with strong northerly (very drying) winds and no rain.  Now I hear the forecasters saying we are likely to have a hotter and drier summer than usual in the northern part of Australia.  Looks like I shall be chasing hoses all summer.

High Tea and heritage

Last Saturday the Garden Friends had a special event exclusively for members - high tea in the cafe followed by a walk to the heritage Garden and a talk by a very knowledgeable local historian on the people and businesses which were in the area in the early days of settlement in Mackay.  Mackay has been settled for 150 years so there have been many celebrations throughout the year.

 This is a sample of the high tea.  The cafe specialises is local indigenous ingredients so there were some unusual flavours but all very yummy!  There was a selection of very unusual teas - Australian eucalyptus, macadamia, lemon myrtle etc - or if you were not game to try them you could have coffee!

 We were all supposed to come dressed for the occasion, but most of us didn't.  Kevin and Maya really got into the spirit and looked magnificent!

 While we were walking to the heritage garden I saw this fantastic skink in the pond.  It was about 9 - 10 inches long, and is the biggest skink I have ever seen.

 We were sitting next to the lagoon so I took a snap of all these birds while I was listening.  Click to enlarge and you will see them all, pelicans, ibis, a spoonbill, some black duck, a black swan and a moorhen - all busy feeding.  I hadn't realised the black swans were back till I took the photo.

 I took this photo because of the two shelducks which are in the picture.  We don't have them visit very often so it was lovely to see them.

Recovery

We have seen the specialist and had a very satisfactory report.  Bill has some badly squished vertabrae in his lower back which have of course pinched the nerves, but he is recovering well with physio and hopefully will not have a recurrence.  I was hoping the doctor would say he was not to climb ladders and get onto the roof etc, but he only told Bill to be careful - one man to another!!!

We went for a slow walk today in the Botanic Gardens and I took my camera.

Lovely shade along the lower path now the trees have grown.

 Steps leading to another level

 Livistona palms line the path on one side and she oaks the other.

 The whistling ducks were having a ball.

 A very pretty bottlebrush from Eungella National Park in the hinterland

 with a closeup -

 and I have taken the vine arbor from both ends.  All the photos should enlarge if you double click.

I need to start collecting before and now images to show at events next year, our tenth anniversary. Everything has grown so much.

Phone photos

 I forgot to put some text on top of this photo and with the new version of blogger I can't move it !  I have only just learned how to transfer photos from my phone to the computer and now I have to learn how to take proper photos with the phone as well - just for the times when I don't have my camera with me!
Jock and I were walking in  the Gardens.  If you double click on this photo you may be able to see the two waterbirds resting on the pump.  In the far distance is an old pumping station and in years gone by the flood waters came up to the bottom of the windows several times each wet season.  This hasn't happened since the Gardens have been opened, but I am sure it will again.

 This is the sign you see driving into the city along the Bruce Highway.

 And another closer view of the grass trees, which we used to call blackboys when I was a child.  The parrots absolutely love the flower spikes when they are in bloom, but they are past that now.

This teak tree was absolutely full of parrots, but of course they are all hiding! The noise was incredible.
Hot and dry here, with the faint possibility of a storm tonight, but I am not waiting, I am off to do some watering, then another walk later when it is a bit cooler.

I've left the best till last

Heaps more photos today and then I will probably be quiet for quite a while!

 I met up with my friend Doreen in Canberra.  We see each other whenever I go to Canberra.  This time the Embroiderer's guild was holding its annual exhibition, which had some beautiful exhibits.  Unfortunately photography was not allowed, but check out Doreen's blog, she has photos of lots of the exhibits taken before the show opened.  Doreen had some beautiful pieces she had made for the exhibition.
We had a hire car and drove from Newcastle to Canberra, via Orange, and we took the scenic route, much nicer than major highways.  The country looked lush and so pretty with rolling hills and green pastures for most of the way - very different country from the tropics.

 This statue of the rotary hoe in Crookwell and the description underneath interested me.

 I was in the back seat for the drive - Bill Drove and my sister could read the satnav much better than I could (better eyesight)  I spent my time trying to take photos through the window while we were travelling at 100 km per hour - not always very successful.  Nearly all the cattle down there are black angus, looking very healthy.

 The country between Orange and Canberra is top rated Merino sheep country, growing fine wool.  If you click the images should enlarge to give a better view.

 While in Canberra we drove out to the Cotter Dam which Bill and I had visited on our honeymoon - a long time ago.  The river and park looks lovely now, but when we visited on our honeymoon, it was very hot, full of flies and so droughty there was hardly anything to see!  I was not impressed that day.

 These photos are out of order.  Barb and I went to visit the Syd Long Spirit of the Land exhibition at the National Art Gallery.  He was an Australian painter with wonderful Art Nouveau paintings from the 1890s and 1900s - no photography allowed of course.  There were some lovely paintings of brolgas dancing and also flamingo paintings.  I really hope the photo above enlarges so you can see the fascinating orb apparently floating in mid air!  The gallery building is very impressive, then we walked across to the nearby National Portrait Gallery, also a magnificent building.  The biggest drawcard there is the latest portrait of the Queen, a Diamond Jubilee portrait by Australian artist Ralph Heimans.  It is very large and very luminous.  He only had a twenty minute sitting with the Queen and did the rest from photos!  I am sure if you google you will see it.  There were many other interesting portraits there as well, some only interesting because of who they were, and some lovely paintings in their own right.

 We drove out to the Deep Space Tracking Station at Tidbinbilla, hoping Bill may be able to walk far enough to see it, but that was definitely not on.  He would have had to walk further than you do at any airport, so I took these  photos of two of the giant telescopes (or radioscopes or whatever their technical name is).  At least we had a very pleasant drive in the countryside.

All in all, we are very glad we went, even though Bill could not join in much.

Home again - for a while

We came home a couple of days early from our holiday as Bill is still not a whole lot better and needed to see the doctor again.  The upshot of that is that we will fly back to Brisbane to see a spinal surgeon on Melbourne cup day - there goes the prawn and wine lunch, darn!  We don't think he will need surgery but probably some fancy injection into the lower back.

We did manage to have lots of fun, despite Bill spending lots of time on his back.  My sister was there so went of on our own to various places.  If you don't want to see lots of photos stop right here.

 We stayed with Bill's cousin at Marks Point, Lake Macquarie, just south of Newcastle and struck wonderful weather - the day before we arrived the maximum had been about 9 and they had sleet, we came in sunshine and max 24 - crazy weather.  This is the view we woke to.  They have a very beautiful property right on the lake with the most horrendous stairs imagineable!  The blocks are extremely narrow and go from the water's edge up a very steep slope to the street.  Only one building is allowed on each property, except for Pat's where there have always been two inhabited dwellings. 

 This used to be a boatshed on the water, built about 1920, now renovated into a B&B cottage.  It is lovely, but there are nearly 80 steps down to get to it, and they are very uneven,

 This heron was poking about in the water feeding only a few feet from us.

 This is a view of the boatsheds along the waterfront, some restored, some very decrepit.  I think the owners are working out if they want their home at the  top or the bottom of the property!

 Bill insisted on struggling down to the bottom, then considerably later, back to the top.  He was on very strong pain killers so could not even celebrate with a wine!

 This is a view of the Blue Mountains on our way to Orange.  The mountains really do have a blue haze from all the eucalyptus oil in the air, and it is easy to see how dangerous the fires in the summer months can be.  Fortunately none to see that day, but a different story when we were flying back to Sydney from Canberra, smoke haze everywhere.

 Orange is a beautiful city, we probably made a mistake in visiting mid-week as most wineries and galleries and country restaurants are only open from Friday to Sunday.  This winery above was open for sales but not the cafe and we were starving!  I think we ended up with Subway rolls instead, a bit of a come down,

 My sister and I walked around some of the very extensive Orange Botanic Gardens.  There is a lovely apple orchard which was in full flower.

This photo of the billabong was taken from the rose garden which had only a few buds, still too cold there for the flowers to open.

 This was another lovely park in Orange, mush older than the Botanic Gardens -  many of the trees are over 100 years old.  Elm trees everywhere, thank heavens they haven't been affected by the disease which wiped out the European trees.

 We couldn't find out a lot about this fascinating sculpture and the cultural centre behind it, library, gallery, visitors centre and theatre all in one complex.  The exhibition in the gallery left much to be desired as far as we were concerned.  Bill would have been horrified - almost blank canvases with a long winded artist's statement!

 I had to take a photo from Mt. Canobolas - just so I could write the wonderful sounding name, if for no other reason.  The mountain is not far out of town and you get a 360 degree view, which also includes strong winds, hence the bent and twisted trees.
 

This photo is out of order, but at least it is there.  This is the sensory garden in the Orange botanic Gardens.  I think most of the work must be done by volunteers, and at the weekend.  There was no sign of any worker there while we were around.  I hope they have lots of volunteers as the garden area is massive,
Time is marching on, I will post some more photos tomorrow (I hope), there is lots more to tell.  All the photos should enlarge if you click on them.