One of the simple pleasures is breakfast at our local coffee shop with good book in tow. This morning these beautiful spring flowers welcomed me at the table.
I am reading Kate Llewellyn’s A Fig at the Gate (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2014). Her reflections on gardening and life are wise and considered.
Now I ready for a day in the garden. How have you started your Saturday?
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crabandfish_garden for short reflections too. Happy weekend.
Actually it’s a peony farm with an old weatherboard chapel on site – divine. 
I absolutely love this time of year and these herbaceous peonies are stunning!
However, tree peonies are quite different – still beautiful though.
See my previous posts entitled The Peony Farm and Peony time to see the rows and rows of pink flowering blooms.
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Flowering here in the garden only once a year. 
These stunning camellias never fail to impress, year in year out. Enjoying the start of Spring.
After months of sunless days, today we captured the sun.
These tiny seasonal delights appeared and were caught – tangible sunshine.
Though the light fades and returns, the start of Spring is near.
White cat captures the moment.
And these cold-flowering rhododendrons are awash with crimson flowers and afternoon sun.
The mountain light subdues another remarkable day. We are captured by its
beauty and tranquility.
Capture each day – for it is wondrous. Enjoy your own special season – have a good weekend.
It’s a beautiful day on the Mount. The season is turning and we are approaching the delight which is autumn up here. However, I have this potted plant which I haven’t been able to identify. I have scoured the Plant Encyclopaedia, maybe just looking in the wrong place. It seems like a spring plant not an autumnal one.
It can’t be a crocus as it doesn’t die back. I thought it was an orchid when I bought it pot-bound at a garage sale in early summer. I repotted it and forgot about it. Now it has this lovely creamy white flower.
Maybe my little white cat knows what it is!
Any suggestions welcome.
Like a perfect summer’s day,
the peony lasts momentarily.
Its splendour remains
as one of nature’s treasures.
As any one with a large (or even not so large) garden knows, there are always jobs to do: extensive seasonal tasks like pruning and planting as well as weekend jobs such as raking and weeding. With so many tasks we are often left with little time and energy to simply sit and contemplate our efforts let alone the stillness and solace a garden can bring. So today, after we finished the mowing (well, Colin actually did that), the raking and the wheelbarrowing I have decided to spend some time at the back of the block, simply sitting and contemplating.
Though quite rugged and unruly, the back of our block extends to the next street via a series of steps. Flanked by rhododendrons, emerging, acanthus it winds its way down and up the hillside.
It can be a wild old place, this bush land but the newly mowed pathways help.
These little moments of quiet in our frantic world seem few and far between. The habits of keeping busy, keeping time and keeping track suffuse those little moments when we allow ourselves to stop, sit and listen to the rustling of the leaves in the breeze, chirping of the birds and the buzz of the insects. That’s what I’m doing now sitting on these old chairs. Join me for the outlook.
Here on the Mount it can be up to seven degrees cooler than in the city. The cool weather and the altitude can also impede our time outside. In my first few years here I used to garden in mid July wearing two pairs of gloves and two pairs of socks – on my feet, that is! By the time Spring came along I could sit back and enjoy my hard work. Some of those rewards are still evident in this cold climate garden.
The first iris of the season
The clematis searching for sun
Sitting here in the sun, I am reminded that the garden offers us such peace if we allow it to show us how to slow down and discover what it wants to tell us. How does the garden speak to you?
Share your gardening comments with me, I’d like to read your thoughts and suggestions for utilising both tasks and down time in the garden.
No, not the popular female singer but the crimson colours of the camelias! On this unusually sunny morning and the walkways strewn with pink petals, it never ceases to amaze me how these trees push forth their abundance.
In our decade here on the Mount, we have experienced drought conditions, heat waves, strong, hot northern winds and torrential rains. As a consequence, we have lost our fair share of important trees – a weeping cherry, the year we went to Italy; an established magnolia, the year of the drought and along with it, a magnificent pale pink rhododendron, odorata. With these significant losses we have tried to keep our mainstay trees alive during summer. Perhaps our lovely neighbours’ example of abundant watering makes sense! Our rewards are many.
If you look carefully you can make out our rooster’s tail feathers in the background!
My gratitude really must go to the previous own of this property. She was a remarkable woman. Raising her four children alone and working as a nurse by night, she had a grand vision of the colours in a garden. Painstakingly planting camelias, rhododendrons, azaleas, lilacs and magnolias she created an English garden beneath a canopy of gum trees. In this season, however, it is the camelia which takes pride of place.
Some of them only briefly make their appearance.
Others linger to create carpets of petals.
At least one of our weeping cherries survived!
With this vision of abundance we marvel at nature itself: its glory, its veritable magnificence which reaffirms our own existence.
Are you “pinked” out yet?
The English poets knew their landscapes. William Wordsworth wrote of paths and country meanderings. John Milton wrote about “those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world”. For me these are all found in a garden.
One last flourish before I go (pardon the pun) – happy gardening, contemplating and appreciating!
crabandfish garden 