Photo a Day 151 - Clematis

One of the very pretty flowers in my garden at the moment is this pale lilac clematis.  I have never had much luck with clematis, so when I received this one as a gift, I planted it with not much hope tht it would flourish.  To my surprise it has been beautiful for the last three years. This year it has produced not only its usual large single flowers, but double and even a few triple ones as well.

The vine is now a little past its best, but very pretty all the same.

We have had a  mild winter this year with some very warm spring days and the garden has come on very quickly  -  especially the weeds and the lawns. A lot of work to catch up on after my holiday in Sydney.

Unfortunately we have had the lowest spring rainfall for a number of years and I am worried about how well we will survive the expected very hot summer.


Liz Needle  -  linking with "Floral Friday Fotos"  and "Today's Flowers".

Photo a Day 150 - Friday Greens

On my recent trip to Sydney I had the chance to explore a little, though I would have liked time to walk around the streets a little more - next time maybe.

I love Sydney - not to live. I don't think I could stand the pace, the traffic, the hustle and bustle - I like a quiet lefe. But I find Sydney dynamic, exciting and invigorating for a holiday. But above all I love Sydney for its beauty - the fascinating old buildings, the history,  the parks and greenery, the stunning coastline and beautiful harbour.

Here are a few photos of some of the pretty houses and green streets.

I liked the contrast of the bright green of the Gleditsia against the grey walls.

This quiet tree lined street is where my daughter lives in Alexandria. Each terrace house has a very small front garden, full of greenery.

One of the pretty houses in the street.

And even the access lane behind the houses has trees as well as all the practical aspects of city living. These lanes were built originally for the night carts to have access to collect the sewerage from the outhouses (outside toilets). Now the lane gives access to garages and back gardens.


Liz Needle  -  linking with "Friday Greens". Visit the other "green" blogs.

Photo A Day 149 - Good Fences

I have been away in Sydney visiting my family for the last week, so have not had a chance to post on my blog. Back now and ready to go.

Today is Thursday so I have a couple of fences I found in Sydney. The one for this week is this lovely old fence at the front of my grand daughter's school  -  St Scholastica's in Grebe.

Behind the fence is the lovely colonial building that forms the nunnery that later became a girls' school as well . The school buildings are behind the old house.

And this pretty tree lined street borders one side of the school. This street is typical of the more affluent parts of Sydney.

One thing I love about Sydney is the wealth of green in all the streets. Even the tiniest terrace house seems to have something planted somewhere and most of the streets are tree lined.

Liz Needle   -   linking with "Good Fences".

Photo a Day 148 - More Spring Beauty

Every day more flowers are blooming in the warm Spring sunshine. This pretty lavender is a favourite.

The clematis always makes a pretty show.

Daisies are always popular

I love this grevillea - one of our best loved natives

And of course the bottlebrush

And finally this clump of irises.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Our World Tuesday".

Photo a day 147 - Yellow Osteospermum

Nothing much yellow flowering in my garden at the moment except the irises which I posted on Saturday  and this rather pretty yellow osteospermum.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Monday Mellow Yellows"  and "Macro Monday"..

Photo a Day 146 - Reflections

My photography spent a morning practising 'motion blur'. Unfortnately I was unable to master the 'blur' part of it all, but I rather liked the reflections of the water on the new footbridge.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Weekend Reflections".

Photo a day 145 - Irises

One thing I love about Spring in the garden is the arrival of the irises. There are so many species and varieties that I get totally confused, but I do know that we have a large number of Bearded iris varieties and these are the ones that are currently flowering in the garden.

We also have several varieties of Japanese iris and Dutch iris, but I have no idea what the botanical name is of either of these. The hardiest of the iris we have is one I call clumping iris as they grow in clumps and increase rapidly. The flowers are short stemmed and prolific, coming in late winter.

These are some of our beautiful Bearded irises. I did post a few earlier this week.

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Liz Needle  -  linking with "Today's Flowers".

Photo a day 144 - Spring Blossom

Spring is all over the garden. All the gorgeous flowering shrubs and perennials ar coming out and the garden is a colourful, joyous place.

One of my favourite species is the crab apple or flowering apple and this one Malus ioensis 'Plena' or Betchel's crab apple is probably my favourite.  The blossoms are exquisite and the autumn colour is stunning.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Floral Friday Fotos".

Photo a Day 143 - Very Good Fences

Browsing through my photo collection for some fences,  I kept coming across one particular type of fence over and over.  In fact every house we have ever lived in seemed to have had one of these fences.

Nothing special - just a good old reliable (and probably fairly cheap) cyclone fence. I know they were very common in Australia years ago and still are around tennis courts etc. The fact that there are so many still in use is testimony to their durability.




The first one that was part of my life was the front fence on our suburban house. Here I am in about 1949 with my brother and my dad.

We also had a similar fence at our next home in the 50s but I can't find any photos.

This fence was at our first house as a married couple in Darwin. Don very proudly mowing our lawn. This was in the early 60s.

This next one was our fence in Darwin in the late 60s. It survived Cyclone Tracy in 1974  -  probably because it was held up by the lush tropical growth.



We moved to Lenswood in 1971 and lo and behold a cyclone fence around the veranda of our old house.

This fence is still there and along the way it has served many purposes - like posing for photos with friends:

 Hanging quilts to photograph

As a backdrop for the garden shots

As a wildbird perch

 And of course for Don's operatic practice.

And finally a cyclone fence for two old buddies to hang onto at a primary school re-union

A good old fence, always part of our lives.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Good Fences"

Photo a Day 142 - A Hot Day

Sitting on the veranda enjoying the hot weather when I spied these little fellows vsiting the frog pond for a welcome drink..  Crept inside to grab the new camera and here are the results. No time for a tripod, so the images aren't as clear as I'd like.

Red-browed Finch  -  sometimes called Firetail Finch

And nearby in the birdbath.  A Little wattle bird. Not my favourite garden visitor as they are quite vicious and give the smaller birds hell.

And the ever present common blackbird  -   a friendly, cheerful inhabitant, but they do make a mess of the garden mulch.

Liz Needle  -  linking with "Wild Bird Wednesday" and "Outdoor Wednesday".

Photo a Day 141 - Twirling

Here are some more of my Twirls from Photoshop. I started off with an ordinary photo from my files and after playing with a few photoshop steps, this is what I got. These photos began as flowers, scenes, market stalls, paintings etc - anythings that had colours that I thought might be interesting.

This has been part of my world for a good few hours, so I thought it would be OK for "Our World Tuesday"  and the colours also suit "Ruby Tuesday".  Follow the links below to see more great images  from these memes.

Fun to do and you never know just what they will look like after the various effects have been added.  Mine are very basic and there is a lot more you can do with them, but for now I am happy playing with what I can do.
If you are interested in learning more about "Twirls", then follow this link.


Liz Needle  -  Linking with "Our World Tuesday" and "Ruby Tuesday".