I took this photo on the phone just now Sunday 18th December 2016. My friends will know this is taken from the balcony here in Potts Point looking across to the City. I am not a great fireworks person myself but these ones were lovely. And so we are bringing the year to a close. I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year and thank you for being such good company. xx MG
Just so you know I am keeping you in touch with popular consumer culture, I saw these thongs at the gym the other day in the shelves for people’s gear.
Google investigation reveals they are Keep on the Grass Thongs – designed to make every day a walk in the park.
Don’t ask me why but for some reason I think they must have been created by a New Zealander (in which case would they be called jandles?).
Oh I figured out the Kiwi connection and its obvious: the grass is green :-).
Well I already reported on the excellent Jacaranda season we seem to have had in Sydney this summer. So at the risk of turning into a complete _b_o_r_e_ about flowering trees I’d like to ask you to notice, if you come across it, another beautiful flowering tree that is just coming into full bloom now. It is not as noticeable or as well known as the Jacaranda – it’s the Cape Chestnut.
Here is a Cape Chestnut tree in Rushcutters Bay Park, down near the tennis courts – it’s overloaded with bunches of blossoms. This one may not be the best shaped tree of its kind, but it is still putting on a spectacular display.
This is an individual blossom fallen from the tree – delicate as an orchid.
So it’s over an out from me in the Potts Point botanical studio here this evening.
xx MG
Letters from America
Well this isn’t really a word from the sponsors but it is a post to mark a pause in proceedings. As some of you know I wasn’t too well during the last week or so. That means there wasn’t a lot in the way of action, adventure let alone one single post to the website. Even my regular lorikeet visitors found it a bit testing when their human just lay inert in bed instead of leaping up in the usual way to provide the usual feasts. Here is a series of pics of the lorikeets showing their concern. One enquiring soul seeming to think the feasts could be behind the mirror:
So it was a dull time for me being unwell, but there it is.
I did some modest excursions though, just locally, when I thought I was recovering. One for instance, involved going down to Rushcutters Bay through the laneways in Elizabeth Bay. On that excursion I came across an interesting local parking sign of the sort I would expect to see in St Peters rather than in Elizabeth Bay (where the demographic is 80% female over 70). I mean how would the senior women reach up to make those prescient pre-election additions to the sign?
I also made a short excursion down to Woolloomooloo using the Butler Stairs from Victoria Street down into Brougham Street.
Butler Stairs are very pretty sandstone stairs, less well known than the more magnificent stairs at the end of Victoria Street, the McElhone Stairs.
In the time I have lived in the neighbourhood the landing in the middle of the Butler Stairs has been a preferred place for French backpackers, who lounge around there smoking, playing music, and chatting in the afternoon and into the evening. Generations of French backpackers come and go and knowledge of the meeting place on the landing just gets passed on time and again. This enduring knowledge might perhaps be a modest local songline for Gallic wanderers.
MG xx
This is a good Jacaranda season – in contrast to last year which was very ordinary.
Here is a photo of a fine tree growing in the heart of the city at the top of Riley Street (where Riley meets Oxford Street). The street is closed off and runs one way.
It’s become a quiet and charming pocket of summer blossoms in overcrowded East Sydney.