Outstanding

Awesome nearly 100-year-old Japanese Maple

I had my performance review today at work. I'm "outstanding". Yay. Hopefully outstanding enough to get a pay rise, because my rent is going up soon. (Boo.)

Luke made creamy chive mashed potatoes the other night, just like you get in nice restaurants, with lashings of butter and cream. Delicious. Will eat again.  

I had a lumbar puncture on Friday (not a gleeful event, although it was much less painful than anticipated). I asked the doctor what spinal fluid looks like and she showed me a vial of my own spinal fluid, which is kinda cool. Surprisingly, it looks exactly like water: clear and...watery. I thought it would be more viscous. 

Misty, but still colourful 

Luke and I visited Cloudehill Gardens in the Dandenongs on the weekend and it was lovely, despite the rain that started not long after we arrived. It was awkward trying to juggle an umbrella and keep the rain off my camera lens, but mostly it was quite delightful being in a garden in the rain, listening to the sound of drops pattering onto leaves and seeing the clouds close in around us. 

The lyrebirds seemed to like the rain too - we saw four of them! I'd only seen four in total in my whole life until then. They look funny when they run and I never noticed before they have big feet.

Lyrebird not hanging around for photos

A hot, but beautiful, day out

Luke and I visited the Blue Lotus Water Garden at Yarra Junction on the weekend. I didn't even know it existed until a few weeks ago when I saw a post about in on Facebook, which seems bizarre to me. I've lived in Melbourne a long time and it's been open for around for 10 years (although I think it's only open to the public during lotus season, which starts late December).

I love visiting the Yarra Valley/Yarra Ranges. It's just so pretty with the blue mountains lining the horizon and the (still) green fields dotted with hay rolls or lined with vineyards. I feel my yearning for a tree change rising every time we're there. (Have I mentioned before that Luke and I have been thinking of moving to the country - or back to the country, in my case - at some stage? No particular place in mind as yet.)

Anyway, the garden is beautiful. The many ponds are brimming with flowers. It was stinking hot, especially in the greenhouses, but that did not deter us. Here are some of my many photos: 

 Our lunch view 

 Giant lily pads

The lilies above are the world's largest water lily, Victoria Amazonica. The lily pads regularly grow to more than 1.2 metres across, with one said to have measured 3 metres in diameter! These ones were big, but probably a bit less than a metre wide.  

 A selection of the many water lilies on show 

 The centre of a lotus 

 Lotus flower again 

 Heart-shaped tree trunk 

 The flower of the silk tree 

 Another lotus flower centre

 A dragonfly that sat still long enough for me to zoom
in for a (relatively) clear photo

 Stripey skies 

Lotus fountain with actual lotus

After the lotus garden we decided to visit the William Ricketts Sanctuary in the Dandenongs. Despite visiting the Dandenongs many times, I've never bothered to visit the sanctuary before. The shady, ferny pathways dotted with sculptures were a welcome respite from the searing heat of earlier in the day.

  

 My favourite of the statues 

Close up 

Friday wanderings

Luke and I had a pleasant day out in the Dandenongs on Friday. We visited two gardens and two waterfalls and had lunch at a (former) piggery. 

I'd often seen pictures of the Alfred Nicholas Memorial Gardens on Instagram and thought we should go for a look, so we did. Then we spotted the George Tindale Memorial Garden just a few hundred metres down the road, so we had a look at that too. 

The Piggery Cafe is just next door to the Alfred Nicholas gardens and we had a quick lunch there. We said hello to the two pigs who live in the grounds (until they end up as lunch, I guess. I think they might have an (o)inkling of their fate because they were not as happy as pigs in mud are supposed to be. They seemed pretty glum.) 

Anyway, here are my photos (out of order but *shrug*):

 On the walk to Sherbrooke Falls

 Mossy log on  Sherbrooke Falls walk

 Even the fungus had moss on it

 Moss

 Sherbrooke Falls (or, more accurately, Sherbrooke Rapids)

 Conifer at George Tindale Memorial Gardens

 Succulent at George Tindale Memorial Gardens

 One of several lovely old lamps at George Tindale Memorial Gardens

 The pigs at The Piggery (yes, he's peeing; no, that's not why I took the photo)

 Bee watering hole in the trunk of a tree fern

 There were a lot of hellebore at both gardens 

 Bugs

 Both gardens also have a lot of azaleas which are a riot of colour right now

 Another hellebore

 Very big insect (the leaf  is bigger than my hand)

 More fungus

 The lake at Alfred Nicholas Memorial Gardens

 The lake again

 I took A LOT of photos of the hellebore

 Curly leaf thing

Another leaf

Saturday in the Dandenongs

Luke and I went for a drive into the Dandenongs on Saturday afternoon.  We didn't have a particular destination, we just drove. 

The trestle bridge near Belgrave, which is traversed by the 

famous Puffing Billy steam train  

 Monbulk Creek flowing under the bridge 

Mossy log 

We loitered for a while, but Puffing Billy didn't pass by, so we hit the road for Emerald.  It's been  a while since I've visited this part of the Dandenongs. The hills and valleys are steep and lush; they were very picturesque in the afternoon sun. I saw some suffolk sheep grazing the hillside (not a common sheep breed around these parts). I couldn't remember then what they were called and my brain thought, 'Oh, look! There's some of those sheep with the black faces!", but my mouth said, "Look! Shauns!"

Puffing Billy arrived in Emerald not long after we did, but he wasn't going full steam ahead as he passed the level crossing.  Not quite as photogenic... We gave the kids a wave as the train passed, then we headed to Emerald Lake where we went for a walk in the crisp winter air. There were ankle-deep drifts of damp leaves, which gave off that pleasing earthy smell. There was A LOT of fungus. 

And tree ferns. The Dandenongs are a temperate rainforest, with tall mountain ash and ferny undergrowth. 

Roots 'n leaves

 Seed pods of some kind

Full steam ahead

Puffing Billy terminates at Emerald Lake. Here he is on his last trip back to Belgrave for the day. We were never in the right spot for a good photo. He was letting off a lot of steam here, and it was almost golden in the late afternoon sun.  

As we headed back to the car in the fading light, Luke spotted a crimson rosella in a fern, having a snack.  

 Little stream

 Fantastic gnarled tree

Oh, yeah; the lake. It was deserted by the time we were leaving

Although it was getting dark, we kept driving instead of heading home. We saw a small group of kangaroos grazing in a paddock and stopped to take a photo. They stopped grazing to watch me taking a photo (which is  too poor to post due to distance/lack of light).

We ended up in Healesville with a plan to have a meal at one of the pubs, but there was no room at the inns, so we went to an Australian restaurant instead (i.e. native ingredients like wattle seed and bush plums, not chiko rolls and meat pies). We had a nice meal then hit the road for home.