Sunday 11 November 2012

A sun burnt country...not sure I love it.

When I was traveling I actually didn't miss home, Sure I missed my kids and friends but my home town not so much. Recently I enrolled in an online art course called Ode to Nature to try and find inspiration and search out a new direction. I also thought that the idea of walking about drawing inspiration from nature would also give me a chance to exercise without really realising I was doing it as I have got fatter and fatter and am finding that I have less and less motivation to try to lose weight, it has been a battle i have had for my entire life and I'm tired of it!
Anyway back to the nature thing. I'm doing a hypnosis tape (for weight loss actually so I'm back there again!) and in it is asks you to go to a place, a garden where you feel relaxed, my mind can't seem to find one that is real I flit from one image to another of typical meditational babbling brooks grassy knolls. But I can't find a place that is familiar to me that I can draw on. So I decided that I have to create a place that I love in my front yard, not one for the kids to 'entertain' in or anything else just for me the way I like it. Now I am not really a gardener. I don't particularly enjoy it as such, I like planting new things and picking flowers but not the digging weeding and sweeping, although I have decided to think of it as "exercise time" thus killing two birds with one stone,
A few weeks I caught a bit on gardening australia about a park land in Whitegum Valley (near where I live) that has created  garden using plant species indigenous to the local area. Ah I thought to myself, I'll go and have a look and see what the experts can do with local native plants. Then I will take photos of the plants and jot down their names and try and produce a lovely but waterwise garden in my front yard that will fare ok with the intermittent watering it gets from me.
So tim and i went there today armed with sketch books and cameras.
This is what we found.

This lake was quite pretty with a family of ducklings paddling about. There were a few trees nearby and the grass was greenish

The shady part was quite nice as was this comfortable chair. I might add some sleepers to my limestone garden edging to make more comfortable seating.

We followed the path along with anticipation of learning somethng about the right type of plants to use in our sandy limestony coastal soils.
Hmmm....this is not what I expected.

So much dead,dry areas amongst those plants clinging to survival



 I often hear people complain about the few rainy days we get in winter and how they wish it would stop raining. We have only just come out of winter and one would imagine that this garden would be mostly greenish. But I was disappointed to discover much of it was dry and half dead or in some cases all dead!
This one has a sign telling you what not to plant!

This section looked a little more optomistic. Until I got close enough to realise that it was actually an olive grove! and a little further along some connifers and some chineese Tallow trees which I i already have in my garden. Perhaps the "Mediterranean Style" might suit me more.

 These poor old trees are growing sideways because of the "fremantle doctor" our strong sea breeze!
This sea breeze has had me running down the street after a market umbrella that I had in my front yard (twice in fact until I yielded and saw the wisdom of going without the brolly!) Maybe this year now that I have a couple of big trees grown up there now I may have a bit of a wind break.

 Here's the parkland looking back down on it from the high point near the road. Oh well I suppose I learnt what I didn't want in my garden and I had a lovely 40 minute walk with tim that seemd to go very quickly



Even now I am trying to keep an open mind and we are planning to go to kings park next week to see what's on display up there.


At least on our travels today we discovered my new favourite cafe! I love the crochet they have here and there and the tea cups I felt right at home!

3 comments:

2paw said...

Yes, ours is a harsh continent. Those trees really do grow sidey-waysie. I am glad you found a nice cup of tea to soothe you!!
Ah, the never ending battle, I hope your tapes go well.

Anki and Sassa said...

Ha! I thought that was your home, not a cafe!
I'm there with you (you know that though). I'm not built for our climate - mind you the season has been kind to be so far.
I want storms breaking the dark, dark grey ocean over rough granite outcrops and that smell of an ice-cold morning in your nostrils. To walk with your cheeks stinging and then come home, take off your wet woolies and light all the candles and the open fire and curl up with a big glass of red, my knitting, my lovely historian and some soothing music...ah, AND there would be birch trees surviving outside, we'd see a REAL autumn and we could grow some serious raspberries and cherries.

Want to move to Albany with me? We could keep Angora rabbits, grow silk-worms) and the by-product mulberries (hmmm mulberry pie), make luxury yarns and beautiful objects. I'd buy a weaving loom and you could have a kiln and paint the storms and the layers and layers of GREEN everywhere. The historian could write books and go on the occasional 'dig' for artifacts, Tim can tinker on things and the kids can run wild and come home with twigs from the forest in their hair and amazing adventures in their heads.

Red Hen (dette) said...

Oh yes! Lets! Funny you should say Albany. Tim and I were just talking about where we might go for our new "mini break" and tim suggested Albany.