A day in the garden

is always a nice way to spend a few hours & recharge the batteries. Of course that is only if you are not responsible for 'doing' the gardening. That is just what we did a couple of weekends ago. Well rested again after our visit from Gareth & Taegan, it was time for us to get out & about once more to see what was happening in our part of the world. The weather was still very warm and with bushfires still burning in some of the areas we decided that we would keep it local on Saturday. A quiet wander through the gardens came to mind and so we went off in search of somewhere to do just that.

The gardens at the University of Melbourne had been recommended to us as a place worth seeing so it was on the tram and away we went. Now that is one huge complex and after having lunch in a great little cafe in the grounds we had a wander and eventually found what we were looking for. The 'old' part of the Uni is lovely and the gardens, whilst suffering from the lack of rain are still a place of beauty & tranquility.

Staying with the garden theme the following day we headed off to the Mornington Peninsula to join the hundreds of people who had gathered at the Fraser's place at Merricks for a plant fair and the showing of Tammy's Rose garden in the Open Garden Scheme.
The roses were worth the trip and the whole garden was lovely. No issues with water down there (own supply) so very green & lush. We could not believe the number of people there and I'm sure not everyone was there for the gardening. Probably just like us because we could. We did see the lady herself chatting to people in the garden but no sign of our former PM. We had a sandwich on the lawn under the trees before taking ourselves off to visit some Wetlands we had seen on the way in.

The Coolart Homestead & Wetlands at Somers were somewhere that I never knew existed, and I grew up roaming the Peninsula as a teenager. The history is as follows, In 1895, Frederick Sheppard Grimwade bought the estate and built the homestead as the family's country retreat. Between 1907 and 1937 Coolart was owned at different times by Thomas Armstrong, James Balmain and John Sylvester Feehan. The late Tom Luxton purchased the property in 1937 and immediately had the property declared a sanctuary for native wildlife and embarked upon a program of habitat development. The 87 hectare nucleus of the Coolart area was purchased by the Victorian State Government in 1977 and it was proclaimed as a reserve for "Conservation and Education Purposes". With the lack of rain the wetlands aren't quite as wet as they should be but we still spent a couple of hours wandering through the many walking tracks and found an wide variety of birds and plants in a very different 'garden' than the others we had spent time in that weekend. A drive round Somers before we hit the road for home finished our weekend wanderings and very soon we were back home looking at our 'jungle' out the windows.

Since then we have turned to sport for the last two weeks and and have watched Essendon win one and we just won't mention the other one last Friday night, as the NAB Cup is in full swing. From Football on Friday to Basketball on Saturday as we watched the South Dragons beat Cairns to go into the Final with the Melbourne Tigers. We went and watched game one but will not be at the others but fingers, toes and everything else are crossed. And it all worked obviously as the South Dragons took the championship on Sunday night.

Tammy arrived on Wednesday for a quick visit, coming to see Chris Isaak in concert on Thrusday at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda. It was a great show and the old theatre pretty good too. It was good to see her again even though we had to say farewell again on Saturday night.

So there are our latest adventures . A bit more excitement planned for next week as the Airshow is back in town.

Until next time............