Last day of Floriade, Geosience open day.

G'Day,
Today is my father's birthday. He would have been 88 if he was still alive today. I think about him every day.
Today was the last day of Floriade. It closed at 5.30 today. I went to visit it on the very first day, half way through and on the very last day. Today I tried to take pictures of different things other than just close up shots of the Tulips. The picture above is a closer look at a flower head from a Gymea lily in an arrangement with other native flowers.The flower head was close to 2ft across.
Black pansies in one of the flower beds.
Looking across one of the beds. I was really pleased to find that the horticulturalists were able to design the beds so that they would continue fully flowered for the whole month that Floriade has run for. The first week I went there were very few Tulips in flower and it was mostly the understory of flowers that were out.
This was part of a great Bonsai exhibition there. The trees are Bonsai specimens of a grove of Paper bark trees, which are Australian Natives.
This is one of the sponsored design displays of a natural rock pool and garden, showing water wise plants and landscaping. This would have fitted perfectly in a spot in my Junee garden and looked wonderful . It was my favorite of the display gardens. The stuff floating on the water surface is seeds and the fluff that makes the seeds airborne from the birch trees, it was floating on the air everywhere. It was just as annoying as the willow trees droping their airborne seeds in spring time in the centre of Wagga.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is a dogwood tree in flower.Pretty.
Another look from further back of the big wildflower arrangement which the Gymea Lily , pictured earlier came from. The pic above is of the flower head at the bottom of this display.
This afternoon I also went along to the National Geoscience open day. It is an annual event and well worth a sticky beak. I enjoyed looking around at the rock samples and activities they had going. The kids visiting there especially enjoyed partaking in the fossil cast making, the gold and saphire panning and the pet rock making. They also had a siesmograph there with a pad that the kids could jump onto and watch the needle jump in response. The little boys really made good use of that one. :) Mum and I sat down in the theatre and listened to a presentation on "What is under the Ocean?". It was really interesting. Some facts and figures I remember are;
30% of the earth's surface is land, 70% is under the sea.
We only have recorded around 2 million species of the flora and fauna on this planet. There are estimated that there are between 5 and 22 million of them . The biggest percentage of these are in the oceans.
There were 3D topographical maps there of the Australian territories which were really interesting.
The ocean area that is classed as being owned by Australia is over twice the size in area that our land mass is.
Australias area takes up 4% of the earths surface.
School holidays is finished and the kids go back to school tomorrow. So, we will be back to our usual cleaning routine.
I visited the Dr about 4 months ago to ask about getting my sun related skin damage seen to and he sent me to a specialist dermatologist. The appointment is this Tuesday, I don't know what to expect but I think there are a few spots that might need cutting out.I have had 4 cut out before and dozens of pre cancerous lesions frozen off with liquid nitrogen. Ouchy. The Dr said that now they put a cream on the spots instead of freezing them so that is a big improvement, though he said something about it making your skin go red for a while. Dunno. I guess I will find out what happens on Tuesday.