Monday, October 25, 2021

Happy Birth Week!

This is my official birth week. I actually start it the weekend before so that I get two weekends of festivities and general merriment. As you can see.


I promise I didn't drink them *all* myself. That's what friends are for, right? Friends also arrange beautiful flowers to be delivered to your house. Thank you to the Dairy Queen for these beauties.


What goes seamlessly with champagne? Oysters! Calamity Sue and I shared a couple of dozen, while Him Outdoors arranged fish and chips, with mushy peas and gravy of course. It was a perfect dinner to be shared with great company in our garden.


The next day Design Diva and I did a reccy of stage three of The Bloody Long Walk and needed to fortify ourselves with bacon half way round. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must point out that the angle and focus of the camera has slightly distorted perspective. Contrary to appearances, the breakfast butty is not actually bigger than Design Diva's head.

Monday, October 18, 2021

Bloody Long Walk Part One

Restrictions are easing; pubs are opening; beer is being poured. It would be rude not to.

Beers with chums at To All My Friends

At the end of November I'm walking The Bloody Long Walk with friends. It's 35km and goes from the top of Red Hill, through the posh suburbs of Canberra where all the embassies are, skirts Parliament, and then round the lake. We have started doing some 'warm-up' walks so that we know the route and are aware of the distance. 

For Part One we walked from Red Hill to Lennox Gardens. One of the things I like about Canberra is that all the embassies are designed to reflect the architectural features of the country. Here are North Korea and India.


The route goes around Parliament, where people with guns patrol the grounds. I always feel anxious seeing people bearing guns, but they were all very pleasant. 


There are formal gardens on the eastern side of Parliament House (inspired by English and French formal garden designs). The gardens are guarded by a pair of lions, traditionally installed at the entrances or imperial and government buildings in China. They are usually found in pairs, the male resting a paw on a ball, and the female restraining a playful cub on its back. These guardian lions were a gift from the People's Republic of China in 1988. 

The traditional water feature in the centre creates gentle sound and movement and is surrounded by displays of annuals with approximately 3,500 plants, which are changed in spring and autumn.


We also walked past Old Parliament House, where the wisteria was still in bloom.


Across the choppy waters of the lake, the National Museum sits on Acton Peninsular. Design Diva told me that it was formerly the hospital for Canberra, which is not ideally situated as there was limited space for growth and only one way in and out. On 13 July 1997, the plans to demolish the old buildings went horribly wrong. Over 100,000 people attended the implosion from the other side of the lake; one of the largest crowds in the history of Canberra. Unfortunately, large pieces of debris reached across the lake injuring nine people and instantly killing Katie Bender, a twelve-year-old girl. The main building did not fully disintegrate and was manually demolished afterwards. There is now a memorial on the site to Katie Bender.


At Lennox Gardens we find the Canberra Nara Peace Park and the Beijing Garden. A distinctive feature of Canberra Nara Peace Park is its 'borrowed landscape', or the extension of the park's boundaries to encompass landmarks such as Lake Burley Griffin, Black Mountain, Mount Ainslie and Lotus Bay.

Toku was commissioned to celebrate the 1,300th anniversary of Japan's ancient capital, Nara. The sculpture has three main elements: a five-storied pagoda form which represents Canberra; a floating stone representing Nara; and the form of a small bird symbolising peace. The bird (on the left-hand corner of the second tier down) represents a Latham's snipe, a species which migrates annually between Japan and Canberra. The artist has created Toku to express the amicable relationship and mutual understanding shared by Canberra and Nara as sister cities. 

Toku (2010) by Shinki Kato

It seems the Chinese like to create statues of animals coming to harm. Bronze Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow is regarded as a national treasure; a famous representative sculpture from the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD). The original sculpture was unearthed in Wuwei County, Gansu Province. Apparently, 'this reproduction depicts the Heavenly Steed of Chinese legend, in dynamic flight with one hoof stepping on the back of a swallow, accentuating the speed and power of the horse'. 

Bronze Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow
At least these cranes look unharmed

I liked the four celestial symbols, which are creatures in Chinese mythology that represent the four cardinal points and the four seasons. They are the Black Tortoise (north/ winter), the Azure Dragon (east/ spring), the Scarlet Bird (south/summer) and the White Tiger (west/ autumn). Representations of the Four Celestial symbols date from the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods of China (475 - 221BC).


One particularly odd thing was the Stone of Appreciation from Tai Lake. The plaque informs us that limestone from Tai Lake has been prized as garden ornamentation since the Tang Dynsaty (618-907 AD). Also known as Chinese scholars' stones, rock specimens are admired for their convoluted forms and the balance of strength and delicacy.

The Stone of Appreciation displays the four recognised qualities of fineness (shou), openness (tou), perforations (lou) and wrinkling (zhou). I'm pretty sure I display some of those qualities too. Design Diva pointed out that the reciprocal colonisation process continues as the stone appears to be a breeding ground for local spiders. 

The Stone of Appreciation

There's also a small section of the gardens planted with colourful azaleas and rhododendrons, bordered by dainty little pathways.

More red and white azaleas

We finished our walk by returning to the start point (where we had left a vehicle - the organisation of parking cars at each end was a bit befuddling that early in the morning) and having a hearty breakfast at the Redhill Café & Bar.


And we finished the weekend with bubbles and soup at the home of Dr Kay and Patience Itself, where we celebrated their beautiful spring blooms for Azaleiade.

Monday, October 11, 2021

Suburban walks

Labour Day seems like the perfect day to do no work but to mentally and physically refresh with a walk around the local hill where tempting pathways lead off across green fields and past fragrant blooms.
 

After posting photos of these beautiful wisteria, people asked to see pictures of mine - so, ever happy to oblige...


I've been on walks recommended by walkcanberra.com, which lead me around areas familiar and previously unknown. I picked the walk around Hawker, which I know well and, while I enjoy the views, the added bonus of street libraries and free lemons were a highlight. 


I also stumbled (almost literally) across this neighbourhood herb garden, where the community share their love of  herbs with everyone. Each herb has a guide to help tell us how to cook with that particular herb and the associated health benefits. 

To ensure the success and longevity of the garden it is requested that folk use the scissors provided to pick the leaves, and to refrain from touching the covered plants as they are resting and regenerating. I love this initiative, particularly the recommendation to "Take what you need and leave what you don't". That is surely an apt lesson for life.


Another walk around the Weetangara suburb revealed more street libraries, sculptures, and beautiful flowers in gardens.

This ingenious method of training a wisteria appears to use an old rotary clothes line

This is a beautiful memorial to a person called Vanessa Louise Sutton. The inscription reads 'fly high beautiful butterfly'.


Ellen Clark Park is named in tribute to a long-serving teacher at Weetangera's first school from July 1894 to January 1920. In the 1870s the area was a thriving farming community , and the first school had 27 students when it opened on that that site in 1875: many of the surrounding streets are named after the families who attended it. 

The school building was made from blue gum and stringy-bark timber with slab walls and a shingled roof. Parents provided desks and benches. Later, a teacher's residence was built nearby. Children from the school planted a number of pine trees in the park over the years. The first pine trees were planted to commemorate 11 former students who had enlisted for the First World War. 


At the weekend we had beer and played our vinyl, while Melantho instantly jumped into the box we had used to carry the goods home. She does love a box, that girl.


And the weekend walk with friends was to Weston Park to admire the English Garden, planted with azaleas, rhododendrons and various other colourful flowering shrubs. 


I see Liverpool FC colours everywhere. I make my friends pose with them. Oh, come on; they were in matching outfits!


Our walk took us past the moving and emotional SIEV X memorial, which I have previously written about


I'm including these last two photos because Purple Lady says I always take pictures of her stuffing her face at the end of our walk - she wasn't able to accompany us this week, so I made sure I photographed Design Diva and The Luminosity complete with takeaway food instead!


Back home it was the perfect afternoon for a spot of gardening - everything is green and verdant... and growing! It was mainly mowing and weeding and pruning, but I captured some of the colour to take indoors with me.


A bonus weekend gift was being invited round to The Lovely Bonkers' house to meet their new puppy who is as yet so new that she hasn't got a name. But she is very cute

Calamity Sue with puppy
General Philosopher with puppy
Him Outdoors with puppy