Upclose in the Garden

Although I appreciate our lovely, large front garden I don't often walk around and look at the various plants. Between the spring showers today I wandered down from our street frontage to the house with my phone in hand. As I did I took a few Upclose photos.

The camellias, gardenias and magnolia have lost their blooms but the azaleas and wisteria are bursting into bloom.

Looking down from the letterbox

The first row of azaleas

 A corner of cliveas

These azaleas match my hot pink glasses

Dainty groundcover is taking over

An orchis lives on a tree

An old slow coach has a sunny spot

The last of the camellias

Another clump of azaleas

Dainty and white ??

Yellow cliveas

These pretty blue things are coming up all over

The lavender is scraggly but the perfume perfect

No need to buy lettuce this week

Silver beet is doing well

The very first lemon on our tree ever

I think we'll be getting more lemons

Waiting to be planted out

I think this is a pest

Another old duck

Hedge in desperate need of a trim

Looking back up the drive to the letterbox

A-Z Blogging Challenge 2024: F is for Fonts and Flowers

 Looking back through my travel photos I see that in many places we visited there was, on our agendas, an Abbey, Cathedral, Chapel, Church, Convent, Monastery, Mosque, Pagoda, Synagogue, Temple or other place of worship. As we travel along the road I often take snaps of God's houses we pass by. These buildings range from ordinary to ostentatious. 

For the Blogging from A to Z April 2024 Blogging Challenge my theme is Gods' Houses. During April I invite you to join me for an online tour of Gods' Houses from my digital albums. 

Flowers can be found inside and outside Gods' Houses. Baptismal Fonts are found in many Christian Churches although some religions baptise adherents in pools or outside in rivers.

Spotland, Rochdale, England

Church ready for a Wedding - Jersey, Channel Islands

St Suzanne, France

St Barnabas Chapel - Norfolk Island, Australia

A very large font? - Yardenit Baptism Site, River Jordan, Israel.

Qaqortoq, Greenland

Church Garden - Trondheim, Norway

Orchids - Chang Mai, Thailand

Old St Pauls - Wellington, New Zealand

Broome, Western Australia

Kuranda, Australia

Font and Flowers, Christ Church - Port Sunlight, England

Kirkwall, Orkney Islands

Kirkwall, Orkney Islands

Tokyo, Japan

Eguisheim, France

Mumbai, India

A small church - Jersey, Channel Islands

Winchester Cathedral - Winchester, England

Phuket, Thailand

Phuket, Thailand

Pink Carpets

 As our camellias come to the end of their season they lay pretty pink carpets over our lawn. 

In Anno Itinerantur - G is for Gardens

In the past year since  travel opened up for Australians Robert and I have taken several journeys at home and overseas. While I posted many photos of these adventures on Facebook I want to leave a more permanent record of some of our adventures. This challenge provides me with opportunities to share my photos and stories while recording some personal history. 

I plan to share photos and stories from our travels between April 2022 and March 2023.  My theme this year is In Anno Itinerantur.

Poet Saadi of Shiraz said 

“A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul.”

I couldn't have said it better. Although I haven't been blessed with a green thumb I'm rather partial to a good garden. Fortunately we planned some visits to gardens this year and had some serendipitous finds. I'll list a few of those notable sites here. 

The Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens in Dorset was included on our tour of the nearby Swannery. No wonder this serene and well maintained garden is on the list of Great British Gardens. A big surprise was finding beautiful statues of characters from children's literature placed thoughtfully throughout the site on the Wonderland Sculpture Trail. 

In Queensland we stopped off at the Cairns Botanical Gardens on our way to Palm Cove. I felt cheated as we only had an hour to enjoy the displays. I blogged about my visit and shared several photos in a post titled Lush and Lovely. 

In our many visits to Dublin we had never visited Phoenix Park. I am so pleased that our organised tour took us there to the Victorian Kitchen Garden, a delightful small garden. 

Plan of the Victorian Garden

Victorian Kitchen Garden, Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland

At Cawdor Castle in Scotland I skipped some of the Castle tour so that I could linger longer in the garden. I wrote and shared photos in a blog post, Blooming Highlight.

On my bucket list since I watched the first series of Downton Abbey was Highclere Castle, the setting for the program. While we ticked that item off our list we were rewarded with a bonus. A little way down the hill on the Highclere Estate was a stunning garden. Finding this garden was the icing on the cake of our visit.

On our tour of Northern Italy we visited several magnificent gardens including The English Garden at Isola Madre in Lake Maggiore. 

Garden at Isola Madre, Italy

Many Italians live in apartments and cannot have huge gardens. I was impressed by this gardener in Lucca, Italy who made the most of the available space.

Garden in Lucca, Italy