My Spring Garden & Duntroon Lookout.

G'Day
Guess what! It has finally sunk in to my thick skull. I can do it all by myself.
What Lindy? What are you waffling on about this time?
Woo hoo, I am a grown up blogger now because I can put pictures on my blog all by myself without pestering my dear son to do it for me! He he.
And Yes I have been! For my last 4 or 5 posts I have finally remembered all the steps to do it alone.
These first pictures are for my friend at "Pear Tree Cottage". She told me her Mum was born here in Canberra at Duntroon and she likes to see pictures of Canberra.Canberra would have been very different than it was when she was born here 88 years ago.
Duntroon is the training base here in Canberra for the Australian Army.It is pretty cool because it is a designated nature reserve as well and there are lots of birds everywhere.
Anyway yesterday I went into Duntroon and up to the Lookout there to take some pictures for her.
The first one above is from the lookout looking towards Fyshwick with the airport in the distance.
In the foreground at the bottom of the hill in the next photo you can see some of the lovely old original buildings with lots of chimneys and painted a mustardy colour. Next Wednesday Michael and I will be cleaning one of the original houses there that is being refurbished. It is the residence of the camp commandant. We have cleaned up 2 houses inside the camp before after the builders refurbished them before this one, it is not bad work and I get to have a look how the other half lives in the top ranks of the army, which is quite different to the housing that we grew up in as army brats when my Dad was in the army.

Below is the view from the lookout across the lake looking towards Kingston. Kingston is quite close to the city so it is a sought after residential area and business area and the foreshore is getting redeveloped with big expensive higher density housing.You can see it if you enlarge the pic.
This is looking back towards the city. You can see the Black Mountain Telstra tower in the background. I think it looks like a big giant syringe hovering over the city.You can go up inside it to viewing platforms and get a great 360 degree view all over the city.In the foreground is the suburb of Russell, which is mostly govt and defence office buildings.The big obelisk you can see is an eagle sitting on the top on a ball. It is a monument given to Canberra by the Americans. Something like that anyway.

Right. The rest of the pictures posted today are showing off my spring garden.
Since coming here I have gone through a lot of changes in my lifestyle. I am at last loving it here and resigned to the fact that I don't have my own house and garden like the one I had in Junee and have adjusted and learned to like what I do have and work with it. I do have a nice house and garden. I despaired at first at leaving my own patch of earth behind and wasn't impressed by this yard but now that it is spring everything has come to life and I appreciate the the soil here is good and the existing plants are too. I still have a lot of things that I loved and bought with me from Junee in pots and they have sprung back to life with the new season here. Though I have lost a couple of my special plants to the harsh frosts of winter. One in particular I was sad to loose because I have had it forever and it was a piece that came from a cane begonia that belonged to my maternal grandmother who died when I was just 5 yrs old. It really looks like it won't recover this time.

The picture above is of a pot of bulbs that sat on my front veranda in Junee. The flower is an Ixia, commonly sold by the name of candy chimes. I had to twine the heavy flower heads together into a bunch to support each other.
I never can remember the name of this one. It is good value plant because it drops it seeds and pops up around the yard. Very pretty but it does not smell nice.It smells a bit like cat pee.
This blurry picture is of a port wine magnolia in flower. I have had it for several years and it was originally purchased here and Canberra on a visit when we lived in Junee. So you could say it has come home. It isn't the most spectacular of plants but its perfume is absolutely heavenly.I sat it near the table out the back so we could all enjoy it's smell.
The picture above is of some lovely flowers that Mum bought for me when we went to the Fyshwick markets last week. They are pink paper daisies and Waratahs. Gorgeous Aussie natives. The pot they are in is one I made probably 5 years ago. The hand print is my daughters so I call the pot "Annie's hands" I think I hand built it then threw it on the wheel to smooth it off.

This is the wisteria that is growing at each end of the veranda at the back of my house. I didn't like it at first because I thought that the smell would be overpowering when it flowered and I could see that it was strangling and would eventually destroy its support posts. Well I was proven wrong, the perfume has not been overpowering and it really beautiful and will shade the back of the house beautifully in the heat of the coming summer, but yes it is damaging and will eventually destroy the support posts on the back of the house.
I did not like this plant either when I first moved here, because it is planted under a big prunus tree and was straggly and stunted. But just look at these flowers. It is covered in them at the moment. I think it is an apple tree. But it's fruit will probably do no good because it is in the wrong spot.
This is a pot full of Granny's Bonnets or Aquilega that came with me from Junee. They are grown from seeds given to me by a friend, June, so I can remember her by them.
This is a Banksia rose on the side fence.The last photo below this one is of the variegated wallflower I bought with me from Junee. It is in a pot with some ugly looking prickly cactus that I also bought from Junee. But when they flower they are so gorgeous that they take your breath away and you just look at them and say Ahhh! I call them the one day cactus because the flowers open for one day only each bloom. The cactus flowers are quite large and a soft translucent shell pink.