Autumn weekend in Canberra

I love Autumn, beautiful blue skies, crisp days and cool nights. Friday night I arrived home with extra children, M&D arrived from Sydney and chaos reined. Chicken and salad for tea and a long evening chatting (I did give the extra children back at some stage).

Saturday M and I went shopping while D went off to the galleries. Back from the shops and the girls M, MLR and Mondo went shopping again, this time to an education bookshop and FSW (shoe warehouse). At FSW we squeezed into a car park right in front of the shop and I was reminded of a time long ago when we got run into in this car park. MLR was about 2 and had fallen asleep in the car, so AJR and JSR got out and shopped while I watched MLR. A station wagon pulled in next to us and I felt a bump, I stared at the car as it backed away - then I realised it was coming into the space again and again I felt a second bump!!!! The car backed out and went off down the row. I got out of the car and started to look at the damage, which fortunately was limited. The people in the car came up to apologise and I realised that I knew the mother of the driver them from our local primary school!!!

JSR had the best afternoon, he scored 84 in golf (first time he broke 90, and he only broke 100 in January) maybe I am living with the next "shark".

Back home to clean and dust and wash. Then CJK and the kids came over and chatted, while I continued to clean. We had cheese and biscuits out in the patio, with M and the children ran all over the place. Towards 5pm we added a glass of wine and D came back from the galleries. About 6.30pm Bron and Andy, A-R and B-J came over for dinner. Not the most exciting dinner
party I have ever had, the company was fine, however the food was ordinary.


Sunday M&D went off to the opening of the Canberra Glassworks in Kingston (aparently about 4,000 people went through in two days) and then they went next door to the Bus Depot Markets. We headed off to Kingston for lunch, followed by a walk around Woden and back home at 5pm. D had chopped all the claret ash and it is now ready for the green waste, thanks D.
After tea M, D and I did the word quiz in the SMH, where you solve a nine letter word puzzle - we were excellent, finding 40 words out of PERISCOPE - I checked the answers today and was disappointed to see that the paper had used words like Prep and french language words to get their 40!!!

Autumn in the Garden

It is definitely autumn here in the nation's capital and while the sun is out it is warm enough, but stay out of the shaddows and don't go out early or late - won't be long before the first frost!

The calistemon's are adding a really bright spot of colour in the garden right now.

The Autumn Garden

The garden is full of autumn colours, I really love this time of year.

And it is raining again (I promise not to photograph it), who could ask for more.

The Cootamundra wattle plantation has gone (forever if they know what's good for them). Here are the before and after shots that I have been waiting so long to share.

This berry is on the same tree as the tree on the first photo on this page.

The lambs ears here in Monash are mad - it is autumn, it has not rained enough for months, and yet here are some self seeded lambs ears springing up in the front garden!!! I plan to replant them near the BBQ out the back to replace the citronella plants.