Beautiful sunset last night

I never tire of watching nature showing off her beauty and yesterday evening was such an occasion. We sit in our living room, which doesn't have any window coverings and when the sun begins to set the glorious light fills the room and it almost feels like it has you wrapped up in her arms.

 This is an early shot, actually it is a reflection of the sunset as the sun is setting over my shoulder

and here, having turned a quarter circle, you can see that the sun is going down to the right hand side of the picture

Family reunion at Mallala

Last Sunday, the 13th. of October, we attended the annual reunion of the Veitch family at the Mallala Football oval and club rooms. It was a very pleasant day but a little short on numbers as (sadly) quite a lot of the older members of the family are finding it just too tiring to make the trip.

I wont bore you with the details of the family but I couldn't help myself, being a lover of old  buildings, I took time out to take a couple of pictures of the GRAND STAND which would seat approximately 100 people, but only if they were all skinny (lol)  It is built with stones collected from the fields and a few red bricks for the quoins and decorative features, as were many of the old farm houses in the 1800's.

I love to dream about who built these buildings, maybe some of my ancestors were involved, after all the two brothers that migrated from Scotland about 155 years ago (yes, that's right, no convicts in my family tree!) were stone masons, one of whom built the wall around the Adelaide Botanical Gardens, the old wall around the Adelaide Prison and the (now demolished) broken glass topped wall that surrounded the old building at Glenside that housed  the "insane" .......(glad things have changed since then)

But putting that all aside, don't you think this is a GRAND old building? I don't know who owns the old gas guzzler standing at the back, but it adds something to the picture. The door at the side I think would be the entrance to the players change rooms.

They certainly knew how to build something to stand the test of time in the "old days".

Here are a few of my favourite things

A  quick walk around my garden and I realise that the plants are flowering a little earlier this year. I expect the experts would say that its a sign of global warming. However, these are a few of  my favourite things ...... why do I hear Julie Andrews singing? lol.
The first picture (above) is Stellatta Magnolia. There is a beautiful example of this shrub in a garden in the next street to us. Sadly mine only ever bears a few flowers and I would be grateful if any of my readers could tell me what to do to encourage it to perform better....without showing it the axe !! Ha-ha

  

This one is a Leucadendron "Harvest" a new comer  (just bought it last Wednesday) I couldn't leave it in the garden centre, don't you love it

The pic below is a close-up.

Its great that colour can be introduced to the garden display without there being flowers

Now this Pacific blue doesn't usually flower here until late October/early November. I'm surprised to see it so early. I know it is in bloom in other parts of the hills but our place is quite high and 2 or 3 degrees colder.

Last, but not least this bright blue ground cover (name long forgotten) has more flowers on it than I've ever seen.

Cherry Blossom time

   



As pretty as a picture this weeping cherry tree is in full bloom.
 It's a pity though that the fruit it sets is inedible even to the scavenging birds. The cherries are dark and VERY bitter, not suitable for anything.
      
         It wont be long before the wind comes and blows all the petals to the ground, it happens each and every year, then we have to wait until autumn for the leaves to colour up and put on another beautiful show.

Very aptly named it is called Snowfall

          I've never been sorry that I planted this little beauty just outside our dining room window.

A glorious day of warm sunshine

 The first two days of spring have been lovely and warm, and although I have been working in my vegetable patch I couldn't help myself....the flowers are looking good and now they are established, almost take care of themselves, all I have to do is pull a few weeds that always seem to find their way to my garden.

The Jonquils are still happily bobbing their heads in the breeze,
they are the first to bloom, letting us know that spring will soon be here.

Although I'm not a lover of yellow flowers, these daffodils are so bright and cheerful, they brighten up the whole garden.
The reason I don't like yellow flowers is....the colour  is a WEED  colour!! I can think of only one  common weed that is not yellow and that is Salvation Jane, better known in the eastern states as Patterson's Curse.(and what a curse it is)

The Rannunculi  have gone a tad feral, not a bad thing, I think. They come up from seed drop and form a
flowering corm in their second year. The good thing about that is they work as a weed suppresant.
I will have to move my Iris  from the raised bed, they don't appreciate too much water. They are rather badly affected by all of the rain that has made this bed too soggy, it collects the rainfall that runs down from the rock-face on the far side.

A sure sign

 Its a sure sign that spring is just around the corner when the young pullets begin to lay their first eggs.  This tinsy-winsey egg could be from a starling sized bird but NO its from one of our chooks. We try to time our laying seasons so that we can keep up our supply for our "farm gate" customers and this time we seem to have got it right. No shortage of eggs this summer.

Just for comparison I took a shot of the small egg along side of a small to medium sized egg, one that has been sorted out for our personal use, we keep all of the large eggs for our regular buyers (they love the huge eggs) The small one weighs 6 grams and the larger one 42 grams'

Besties

Best friends forever......so cute when they are young.