The third ball in this trio of spheres, the one at the front, is a new one. Once faded and grubby, it is now covered in mosaics and looks lovely with the others and balances the arrangement. I made the grey sphere on the left from concrete here. The one on the right is a trough float, one of several I collected over the years.
This is a retired lawn bowling ball. It was painted silver and looked lovely in the garden, but slowly the colour faded and washed off. Time for rejuvenation!
I am going to decorate it with mosaics. The colours will be stable and the texture created by the pieces of tile will add interest. It is a small piece and I will use small pieces of broken tiles and china to cover it.
It will be placed with these spheres when it is finished.
EQUIPMENT
ball
glue
broken tiles or china
safety glasses
a hammer
a plastic bag
grout
rubber/latex gloves
rags for cleaning
I started by washing the ball. When I’d chosen the pieces of china I wanted to use I put them into two containers. Some pieces were too big. I slid them in a plastic bag and hit them gently with a hammer and they cracked easily. I wore safety glasses.
Next I glued them onto the ball, leaving a small circle on the bottom so it sits securely on the ground. I chose two colours to mix well with the other two spheres already in position. One container has plain white tiles, broken into useful pieces and the other had a green and white broken plate.
I used a multipurpose household glue. There are specialist glues intended for use with ceramics but this was a small job so I used a glue I had and it worked well. Working on a sphere meant the pieces would slide down the sides if I put too many pieces on at a time. The glue needs time to cure.
When the glue was cured I mixed up the grout. Wearing rubber gloves, I pushed the grout into the gaps until they were all filled. I also sealed around the base. Using a rag, I wiped the excess grout off the tiles, then used a damp rag to finish cleaning them. I left the finished mosaic sphere for two days to dry properly before putting it outside.
So while we’re in the garden, lets think about honey. September is HONEY MONTH, which celebrates and promotes everything to do with honey. Beginning with honey bees, pollen and beekeepers an amazing, sticky sweet product emerges.
Think about suitable bee habits this month and enjoy eating honey.
Planning an interstate holiday, so we’ve begun preparations. The first thing is some books. We buy second hand paperbacks which we can both share and then hand on to other travelers. When we’re going to non-English speaking countries we take lots of books but this time we’re traveling within Australia, so magazines and books will be available everywhere. Lighter packing!
We will fly to Melbourne then apart from visiting art galleries, museums and some friends in the city, we’ll take train trips each day. Then we will take the train to Sydney and also go to galleries, see friends and take daily train trips, before taking the train to Brisbane. Here we will enjoy a few days with friends who live in Queensland and be driven both north and south of Brisbane. So packing for cold, wet, windy with sunny days down south and warm, humid days in Queensland.
The author of one of these books we’ve bought is Lisa Jewell and we’re both looking forward to reading that one! We have just finished reading three of her thrillers; The Girls In The Garden, I Found You and Watching You. Great reading!
We’ve booked lunch at a few restaurants, mostly for the reputation of the food or recommendations, but also in the Blue Mountains for the view. We are looking forward to train, tram and ferry trips, each moving slowly enough for us to enjoy the views.
Also needed a trip to the hairdresser, a fairly regular event now days. I consider going grey but haven’t made the decision. My hair seems to grow very fast, too.
I made two loaves of sourdough, one to eat until we go and one to freeze for when we get back. I like to leave something for dinner as we return late in the day and airline food doesn’t always appeal.
And finally, down the coast to have lunch with my Mother. A beautiful day and lovely to just sit and chat for a while.
So, write a calendar for our son who will be responsible for walking and feeding the dog and putting out the bins and making sure the plants are watered and we’re ready to go!
MUSSEL SEASON
Mussels are fresh and readily available, so off to the fish shop at The Boatshed for 1 kilo for lunch.
Mussels can be cooked in a tomato based sauce, in a creamy sauce, with chilli and many other ways, but at lunchtime I like them in a clear, clean broth.
MUSSELS IN WHITE WINE
Serves four as part of a lunch spread, or two served with bread or toast.
INGREDIENTS
1 kilo mussels
75 gm butter
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 sliced leek
good shake dried thyme
500 ml dry, white wine
Scrub the mussels under running water, shake to dry.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy based pot over low heat, add leeks, garlic and thyme. Cook until leeks are translucent, about 7 minutes.
3. Add the mussels and wine ( I used Penfold’s Koonunga Hill Semillon Sauvignon Blanc) and cook until the mussels open ( about 5 minutes) Stir a few times during cooking.
4. Discard any unopened mussels, ladle into a serving bowl with the juice and sprinkle with parsley. Serve with fresh buttered bread. I prefer toasted sourdough fingers for dipping. Delicious and light for the middle of the day.
Father’s Day treats. I made Pumpkin Scones, one of my husband’s favourites. I use a recipe from the cooking book I had in Year 8 at school!
Today is FORTUNE COOKIE DAY. Sounds like a good excuse to eat Chinese for dinner, then crack open a fortune cookie to be assured of good luck, good health or good fortune!
Ann Cleeves, an English crime writer, has written more than 30 novels, including a series of thrillers set in the Shetland Islands. Several have been made into a television series filmed by BBC ONE featuring the main protagonist, Jimmy Perez. All are great viewing. Our most recent read, Wild Fire, was written in 2018 and is the last in the Shetland series. It would also make a great film. Cleeves has worked as a probation officer, cooked at a bird observatory and as as auxiliary coastguard and these interests are all apparent in her books.
This was a gripping murder thriller, with well developed characters and a clever plot. The descriptions of the surrounding landscape make me want to visit the Shetland Islands but only in summer!
Another murder thriller by Ann Cleeves, this time from the Vera series. Many of these stories have also been made into a television series by the English company, ITV. This story has more of Vera’s private and early life revealed in it as her father is involved in the plot. He was not particularly law abiding and not pleased when his daughter joined the police force. Again, a gripping, clever and entirely engaging story.
BLOOD ORANGE SORBET
This is a Blood Orange Sorbet, one of the many citrus treats we enjoy during the citrus season. It’s quite difficult to find blood oranges in Perth but the juice makes a very good sorbet.
Start by putting the bowl of an icecream maker in the freezer for 12 hours, or according to your machine.
To make the sorbet, make a sugar syrup by mixing 2 cups of sugar with 2 cups of water. Stir and dissolve the mixture in the microwave. Cook one minute, stir, mix another minute, stir then decide if the syrup needs more heating to completely dissolve the sugar.
Juice five blood oranges, plus a lemon and add to the syrup. Some recipes add zest, but we don’t, then chill the mixture.
With the paddle in place in the bowl, mix for about 12 minutes until the syrup is almost solid, tip into a container and put back in the freezer until you’re ready to eat it. Delicious.
( There is a range of Blood Orange Sorbet recipes online )
AND IN THE WINTER GARDEN
The first of the tulips. They’re gorgeous, but strangely they are blooming on very short stems.
I love arum lilies but they are considered a weed in Western Australia. I grow them in a contained bed where I can see the large, lush green leaves and lovely white flowers from our bedroom window.
The white irises have begun blooming. I have them in garden beds and in pots.
Monday, August 26th was INTERNATIONAL DOG DAY.
People and dogs have lived side by side for thousands of years and we celebrate this symbiotic relationship on 26th August.
Founded by author and dog behaviourist Colleen Paige, in 2004, not only to focus on our pet dogs but also consider abused and abandoned dogs and puppy mills.
The benefits of dog ownership are enormous. The use of dogs to assist blind, ill and anxious people is ever increasing. Dogs are popular visitors in hospitals and schools. They create social opportunities at the dog park, for themselves and their owners. And even when you’ve been together for years and years, they are still genuinely excited when you come home!
All dog shelters welcome volunteer helpers, money and donations of blankets, towels and sheets.
Last year I was nearly exhausted by the time Christmas arrived because I was making so many gifts right up until the Big Day! This year I am experimenting with a few things I can make long before the silly season starts so the week before Christmas is still fun.
I’ve been collecting and drying lavender and planned to make some lavender bags. I am experimenting with natural dyes, using 100% cotton ticking as the base fabric.
The first dye I tried was boiled avocado seeds and skins to make pink tones.
After the dye had cooled I soaked the cotton ticking in it for an hour then hung it out to dry. It is a pretty dusty pink colour.
Next I boiled rosemary twigs to make a yellow dye.
This dye is quite pale and not what I expected
T
This dye is made from onion skins and is a great orange colour. I used the skins from two brown onions and boiled then for fifteen minutes. This is a strong colour. The next day I boiled red onion skins to see if they resulted in a different colour. No, just the same!
I haven’t used fixers or mordants with any of these pieces I’ve dyed. They are only intended to be decorative.
From left to right, the basic cotton ticking, then the avocado dye (pink), the onion skin dye (orange) and the one on the right is the rosemary dye (pale yellow)
I cut a template of a heart shape then used this to cut shapes from all three pieces of dyed fabric.
Machine stitched around the heart shapes leaving a small gap to poke in the wadding and shake in the dried lavender. Clipped the edges. Turned it to the right side, using a scissor blade to poke the heart point out and ironed the heart shape. Clipped the pointy end off the heart so it sat better when turned right side out.
Stuffed the point of the heart and the top with wadding, then poured in dried lavender. I made a little funnel out of scrap paper to direct the lavender in to the middle of the heart. Later I discovered a kitchen funnel worked well, too. I sat the heart in a cup to pour in the dried lavender.
Cut the ribbon and then stitched a button where they crossed. When my parents left the farm my Mother gave me her many jars of buttons. When clothing was finally exhausted, she’d cut off all the buttons and keep them. She kept buckles and other sewing notions, too. I played with the buttons as a child and now I’ve re-used some of them on these lavender sachets.
Sweet smelling, pretty gifts ready for storing until needed.
INVENTORS MONTH
Consider the printing press, antibiotics, the internal combustion engine, the internet, electricity, sliced bread, safety pins and contact lenses: they were all invented by great thinkers and tinkerers and we benefit from them everyday.
August is INVENTORS MONTH. Time to consider and feel gratitude for the amazing range of inventions making our lives easier every day. So, pop the CORK from a BOTTLE of CHAMPAGNE, sit out in the sun on your CHAIR and take a few PHOTOS on your PHONE to celebrate.
How do you dispose of things when you declutter? When I recently did a big, well overdue wardrobe declutter, almost everything went into the Church Charity Bin. This was because the clothes, shoes and handbags I was removing were all in good condition. They were work clothes and I’ve finally accepted I wasn’t going to wear them again. My clothes are far more casual now.
When we came back from living overseas for a few years, an entire household of sheets, blankets, quits, towels, pillows and tablecloths came back with us. Unsure what we’d need, I kept most things thinking I would sort and discard when our container of household goods from our previous house arrived. When that happened there was no time for a proper sort so the linen press bulged with a jumble of stuff!
This week, my husband and I emptied, sorted, refolded and restacked the linen press. We ended up with two huge bags of blankets, single bed sheets, pillows and towels to throw out. They looked faded and unloved after not being used for years. These bags were taken to the Dogs Refuge. I couldn’t go because I’d want to bring all the dogs home with me.
They rejected the pillows. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise! My mother really feels the cold and was complaining about the draughts coming in under three external doors.
I made her draught excluders and stuffed them with recycled polyester wadding from two of the pillows! There’s one thin one to put in the gutter of a sliding door and two sausage ones for two normal doors.
The first excluder is small and thin to push into the gutter of a sliding door.
I discovered the easiest way to poke the wadding into the excluders was using a old copper stick, or dolly, from the laundry. I don’t have a copper for washing but find this smooth, old stick so useful for so many jobs.
( A copper is a deep copper bowl built over a fire box. It is filled with water and a fire is lit under it to heat the water. When it is hot the clothes to be washed are immersed and agitated by the stick, before being rinsed, put through a mangle to remove water and hung out to dry. Coppers were used before we had washing machines.)
To make the two bigger ones, I traced around a mug to create four end pieces, then measured and cut two strips for the bodies.
Used the template lines to guide the stitches joining the ends to the body of the sausage, the clipped the edges before turning them right side out.
The linen press is tidy and logically stacked, the excess things have gone to the Dog Refuge and I’ve made my Mother three draught excluders. Now I just need to find out what to do with thousands of books. Text books, travel books, poetry, histories, biographies, fiction and non-fiction, collected over four generations.
GOING DOWN SOUTH
Last week we went to Australind to stay with my mother. The second day we were there, we all went to Busselton to visit her friend. After morning tea we left them to have a good chat and we went further south to Dunsborough, a well known holiday destination. It was a beautiful clear, sunny day and after a lovely wander around the shops we bought lunch and went down to the beach. Gorgeous.
This is Afternoon Tea Week. Afternoon Tea is a British tradition dating from the 1840s. Traditionally, fine china accompanies delicate sandwiches, scones with jam and cream and little cakes and pastries. Sounds wonderful. Start boiling the kettle now!
Using the abundance of citrus fruit to make chunky, delicious, quick marmalade. Try it!
Winter means citrus fruit and citrus fruit means marmalade. The specific microwave instructions are here.
Gathered a collection of citrus fruit and cut into chunks before processing until the skins were finely chopped. Added some finely diced preserved ginger.
Saved all the pips and some skins, rich in pectin, into this little muslin bag which was cooked with the fruit pulp. The marmalade set beautifully and the skins from the pectin bag were deliciously glazed and crystallized. They would be perfect chopped into cooking or used as cake decorations.
Grapefruit, lemon and kumquat marmalade with a tiny bit of ginger. The tulips are in a vase behind the bonsai, not growing out of it!
MAKING SHORTBREAD
Visiting my brother and S-I-L in Beverley, a country town two hours from Perth, taking the shortbread and marmalade I’d made. A lovely day in the country.
MENDING A MOHAIR BLANKET
This loosely woven mohair blanket is quite old and was showing signs of constant use, particularly evident from the number of pulled threads. It’s very warm and light. Greatly inspired by The Repair Shop, a BBCtv program running on local television, I spread the blanket out on the table and spent most of a day weaving the threads back, under, over, under, over using a blunt darning needle. Occasionally there was a tear or very thin, worn thread so I mended it with matched cotton thread. It looks new again!
READING
This fabulous book written by Marcus Binney features interiors designed by antipodean Anouska Hempel, who arrived in London in 1962. Her interiors are Oriental in style, which I really like, too. We brought back furniture and decorative pieces when we came back to Australia after we’d lived in China and I enjoy seeing how she incorporates pieces into her settings.
We’ve visited two hotels she decorated in London and one in Amsterdam. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing her own house, Cole Park and gardens and other interiors she has done, including their apartment in Mayfair, in this book. She has just decorated the Six Senses Duxton Hotel in Singapore, too, so that’s on my travel list now.
An inspiring book. I bought mine from Book Depository.
The last of the roses before they’re pruned and some camellias.
Dawn from the back door. A cold and crisp start turned into a wonderful, sunny day. Again.
Wonderful! Today is Book Lovers Day. Put down your screens and settle somewhere comfortable and enjoy a long read.
We first met these fat little puffs of deliciousness in Bali in May and knew we wanted to make them at home. One cold Sunday recently, my son began the process of making them for our dinner. We were very glad he did as they were wonderful, filled with spicy meat and vegetables.
Cut little squares of parchment paper to slip in the fold of the buns so they don’t stick while they steam. Meanwhile, bring the water to boiling point in the steamer.
Insert paper and fold in half over a chopstick, put in steamer insert.
Steam the buns for eight minutes or until they become light and fluffy. Carefully remove and add fillings, serve.
Steamed Bao Buns recipe from Jeremy Pang www.bbcgoodfood.com
Delicious!
APPLE CRUMBLE
Apples are in season so I made apple crumble. Stewed the apples in water with a little sugar and cinnamon, plus some sultanas. Made the crumble from oatmeal, flour, sugar and butter. Serve with cream or icecream. Good winter food, good any other time, too.
ROASTING VEGETABLES
The Australian Women’s Weekly VEGETARIAN BASICS cookbook.
We’re meat eaters but when I flicked through this book, I drooled and then I cooked! It’s full of recipes using winter seasonal vegetables. I’ve roasted cauliflowers, potatoes, pumpkin, made zucchini frittatas and roasted mushrooms. Each recipe, focusing on one vegetable, has three or four variations.
I roasted large mushrooms with garlic, thyme, EVO oil and red wine vinegar.
I made the Roasted Pumpkin and Rosemary Crumble, using a jap pumpkin and the crumble made from panko breadcrumbs, wholegrain mustard, chopped up rosemary, pine nuts and butter. The second time I made it I substituted plain sourdough breadcrumbs and chopped walnuts as I ran out of panko crumbs and pine nuts. Other crumbles in the book are Miso Chilli Pumpkin, Lebanese Spiced Pumpkin and Pumpkin and Gremolata. Crunch and contrast against the creamy flavour of the pumpkin.
I baked a Whole Cauliflower in vegetable stock, coated with a mix of smoked paprika, garlic, parmesan and butter, and before serving cut into wedges, sprinkled with parsley. Very, very popular!
Roasted a tray of potatoes following their recipe and they were very good, too.
I used a leftover wedge of cauliflower in a little puddle of stock and some roasted pumpkin to make soup. I boiled the veg with some extra vegetable stock and when everything was soft, I Barmixed it. Thick luscious soup served with some leftover crumble from the baking dish.
This large softcover book is full of recipes for readily available vegetables. I’ll be dipping into this for some time to come!
Pages marked for entertaining and this weekends cooking.
OTHER THINGS
Made and froze two trays of pasties for lunches during our wet and cold season.
The 29th of July will be International Tiger Day, founded after an international summit in 2010 revealed that 92% of wild tigers disappeared last century with only about 3000 left alive. Factors being highlighted included the impact of habitat loss, hunting and poaching.
Plastic Free July is run by the Plastic Free foundation, which aims for a world without plastic waste. Plastic Free July is a time to consider alternatives to single use plastics in your life.
What is the problem with plastics?
Plastic isn’t biodegradable, it is photodegradable, which means it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, but never goes away. These smaller pieces easily enter the food chain. Micro-plastic particles have even been found in drinking water, both bottled and tap water.
Can’t I just recycle plastics?
Recycling is not really the solution, either. Until recently, recyclable products were compressed into bales and sent to China, but since 2018 China has not been accepting the huge amounts of rubbish traditionally shipped to, and in a small way, recycled in China. Plastic is now sent to landfill.
The problem with recycling plastic is that it loses quality when it is broken down and this degraded material is then used in carpets or some fleece clothing textiles. One load of washing of textiles made from recycled plastics have been seen to shed up to 700,000 micro-plastic particles into our waterways. We don’t know what this is doing to our health, but we know it weakens sealife and they stop reproducing and are easy prey for other fish, so the contamination continues.
Plastic is a useful and cheap product, but there are so many ways to move away from single use plastics. Pick some changes which are easy to make and start with them. Later you can make other substitutions. Change can be gradual as your find alternatives which suit you.
Nine easy, everyday ways to use less plastics are
1. Reusable shopping bags instead of single use plastic bags. Just put them at the door or back into your car when you unpack your shopping and you wont forget to take them.
The large fabric bags have handles stitched right around them so can carry heavy goods without too much strain on the bag. I can also wash them.
These lightweight little pouches store big bags. Handy when you forget your shopping bags or make unplanned purchases. Keep one or two in your handbag, car or pocket.
2. Avoid cling film and instead cover bowls with silicone lids which are reusable. You can also use beeswax covers which are reusable for about 12 months then go in the compost. There’s so many tutorials online for making beeswax covers or buy them. You can put a saucer or plate over bowls in the fridge or, my new favourite, especially on bowls of bread dough I’ve left out to rise, a clear hotel style shower cap! They wipe clean, dry quickly and fit perfectly.
Re-using a hotel shower cap as a bowl cover, secure fit and strong enough to last for a long time.
These silicone covers stretch over so many containers.
3. Take you own cup in your bag for takeaway coffee. If you forget, consider drinking your coffee on site from the cafe’s ceramic mug.
4. If you’re buying taking away food, replace plastic cutlery with a bamboo set or even spare cutlery from home. These can be carried in a Cutlery Roll, a pencil case or even wrapped in a tea towel, secured with a rubber band.
Many shops will pack your order into your own containers, but ask first and not when they’re really, really busy. Luckily, you can compost a pizza box and the wrapping from fish and chips!
5. Use a metal drinking bottle instead of buying bottled water. Buy an aluminum straw. If you forget, look around and see if there’s a drinking fountain. If you need to buy a drink, buy something in a glass bottle you can wash and re-use. Glass is just sand, a mineral and infinitely recyclable without loss of quality.
6. Buy fruit and vegetables loose. Gather fabric bags of various sizes and keep them in your shopping bags. You can make the bags from old netting curtains, thin cotton or take pillowcases. Try asking for paper bags if you forget your bags. Buying loose fruit and veg also means you get select the pieces you prefer.
7. Look for online recipes for making yoghurt if this is something you frequently buy. I don’t think the bought tubs are easy to re-use and you can make your own yoghurt cheaply at home in a glass jar.
8. Buy what you can in glass, paper or cardboard. Jars are useful for storage, paper and cardboard can be recycled, put in the compost or in your worm farm. I re-use jars with a wide openings most often.
9. Look for bars of soap and toilet paper wrapped in paper or similar products. The wrappers can be shredded for compost, dug into the garden or recycled. Sometimes the wrappers smell pretty enough to put in your sock drawer.
I’d love to know if you have a clever idea for re-using the length of plastic the newspaper comes in. I like a dry newspaper, but the wrapper goes in the bin. Not good.
To get more ideas, channel your grandmother, especially if she is pre-plastic!
Yesterday was World Population Day, intended to focus on the ever growing world population and the adverse effect of this on the environment. The belief is that the world cannot sustain the social and logistical pressures that increasing population will create. There is also an emphasis on reproductive health, particularly in developing countries and how this impacts on population growth.
In the Southern Hemisphere we have just experienced the Winter Solistice with the shortest day and the longest night. It has also been very wet and wintery so perfect for roasted, baked warming foods.
The lush, colourful spinach was a gift which I turned into Impossible Spinach Pie and we enjoyed it over two days.
One day we ate it hot with roasted vegetables and the second day we ate it cold with a salad. It was tasty and delicious. Normally I add fetta cheese but I didn’t have any and it was still very good.
Roasted vegetables including Jap pumpkin, potatoes and blistered truss cherry tomatoes all served with roasted turkey breast and cranberry sauce.
Just what we needed on a very wet evening following a day of constant rain. The rain is so welcome and has reached inland to the farming regions.
Rummaging through the freezer, sorting and repacking for better access, I found two ham bones leftover from summer. My son hacksawed each in half and I put them in a big pot to boil with yellow split peas.
This lovely Pea and Ham soup was ready by lunchtime. We had it with toast and thoroughly enjoyed it. It is after all, the Year of the Pig, so we’re doing our bit.
I’d like to say I made cake because it was so wet, but really we like cake when it’s wet, when it’s dry, when it’s any sort of weather!
Look at these beautiful homemade chocolates, a gift from a neighbour. There’s chocolate bark, peanut butter cupcake and assorted dark chocolates with ganache and caramel. Luscious!
The David Austin “Abraham Darby” rose continues to bloom despite the heavy downfalls. These roses are very pretty with a light scent and I really like the way the bush sprawls with long stems of flowers.
We have had this clock on the wall in our family room for years. When it started slowing down and then stopped, we put a new battery in it and re-hung it. Time stood still! The clock was dead.
Went to several shopping centres looking for a replacement but Roman Numerals aren’t fashionable and this clock has a 40cm diameter and modern clocks are either much bigger or more commonly, 30cm, with Arabic numerals.
Came home and searched online. I looked at several hundred clocks over a few days and only one was suitable and it was very, very expensive. After looking at it online a few times the vendor sent a 10% off offer, but with postage and handling, it was still very expensive!
Scrolling through an online auction site I saw lots of replacement movements for less than $5.00 delivered. Could I just take out the old movement and put in a new one? Turns out I could, so the clock is back on the wall and keeping good time. A big win; less landfill and saved nearly $100.00.
June is Audiobook Month. A few people I talk to still listen to audiobooks, especially on long distance road trips, but most people said they listen to podcasts. Which do you prefer?
There are more than 12 000 species of wild flowers identified in Western Australia and 60 % of these are endemic to WA. From about June onwards we are surrounded by beautiful wild flowers in parks, home gardens and bushland.
These amazing botanical works are created by Philippa Nikulinsky AM, an internationally recognized botanical and wildlife artist. She is currently exhibiting works from the 1970s until now in the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at the University of Western Australia.
Philippa Nikulinsky has traveled throughout Western Australia for more than 50 years recording, drawing and painting its natural history.
Nikulinsky also designed artworks for the Australian Fine China Company for their crockery.
For many years. Nikulinsky illustrated the cover of the Landscope Magazine, which focuses on conservation, wildlife and parks. There were copies of many of these illustrations as part of the exhibition and they were fabulous!
In 2016, she was awarded an AM in the general order of Australian awards for “significant service to the visual arts as a botanical painter and illustrator, to professional organizations and as a painter.”
At the bottom of the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery gallery stairs, just before the Sunken Garden, are these wildflowers, all blooming. This bottlebrush is one of many forms of this plant.
These pretty blooms are Hakea laurina.
One of hundreds of types of Grevillea.
Today is the 21st of June, the Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, so it will be the shortest day and the longest night of the year. Of course, it is the reverse in the Northern Hemisphere, the Summer Solstice.
