It's loquat time!

Do you remember this old-fashioned fruit? Best eaten standing under the tree, because the large stones and tough skins lead to a certain amount of spitting?
My tree is next to the letterbox, and I've been picking a handful every day.
The loquat, eriobotrya japonica, is a distant relation of the apple, and native to China. Evergreen, and apparently immune to frost and drought, the loquat makes a good shade tree, and flowers in early winter, perfuming the garden for a couple of weeks.
The fruits are delicious, sweet and juicy, but with an underlying tang. I've never found a practical use for them; I know you can make loquat jam or chutney, but it would be so tedious to prepare them...

More round things

You might have noticed that I am an admirer of round things, I thought I'd share some beauties that I stumbled across the other night.
These pictures are from an old website called Morphographic created by Michael Spall, which doesn't seem to have been updated for about five years.
None of these are real objects, they are computer graphics, but some of them are beautiful -

or unusual!
Most of the links are broken, so I can't tell you more about them, or their creators.

In the real world, it's honeysuckle time, and the honeysuckle vines which have gone feral down the side of the house are covered in blossom.
Apart from our sparse rainfall, these get no water at all, but they don't seem to care. I've been picking great bunches of the stuff, and the house smells divinely lemony.

I've been working on the charity quilt I started last week, so nothing much is happening in the Bauble department just now - although there have been mysterious experiments with acrylic paint on fabric, which may eventually lead to interesting Bauble developments - or not.

Golden days

We are having a spell of lovely warm 30C (85F) days, and the roses are flowering their heads off; the whole garden is perfumed with them at the moment. This is the eerily-named Crepuscule (Twilight) the most spectacular plant in the garden.
Beautiful coppery-apricot flowers, strong perfume, hardly a thorn - every garden should have this one!
This is the 'Melbourne Cup' rose - if you watch the race on the TV next Tuesday you'll see long hedges of Crepuscule growing beside the track. The bushes are pruned in late August (with hedge-clippers) and specially fertilised to ensure a glorious display on the Day.
Here's a close-up. Thanks to the rain we had last month, the flowers are the largest ever, though mine have been neither pruned or fertilized.
And across the path, another beauty, Just Joey, is coming into bloom.
Around by the carport, the crab-apple is covered in frilly pink and white - a display to rival cherry blossom, I think.
This is Malus ioensis 'Plena' - no fruit to speak of, but pretty autumn leaves.
This spring is the best we've had in years, everything is so green and fresh, I'm trying to store it all up before the hot winds of summer arrive to turn everything dry and dusty.

Gazanias galore

I've been admiring brilliant displays of these cheerful daisies all over town.
They mostly colonise nature strips, and are considered 'weeds', but the gardener at the Uniting Church obviously likes them; combined with pink succulents they make a happy picture.
Closer to home, these are growing outside my fence, some of them are lovely soft colours,
others a bit more strident.

Very little progress with the current Bauble, I just couldn't keep my hands off the Noro wool, and have begun a scarf. Pictures soon.

And I'm reading this
a most useful little book, which gives calorie/kilojoule values for absolutely everything you could imagine eating, including lots of brand name products + fat, carb & fibre contents.
I bought it here, and my copy arrived speedily. It's a useful site, with lots of helpful information and dieting tips - and all free.

Why? Because one of the results of my lovely weekend, was discovering just how unfit I really am!
I actually struggled to climb all those steps up from the beach, and was uncomfortably breathless at the top. Not good.

Unfortunately, when you like to sew, embroider, and crochet you don't move around much. So I've started walking, just short distances for a start. I took the dog with me yesterday, and found that, though pathetically grateful, she's nearly as unfit as I am! Clearly regular walks will do us both good.
I'm seriously considering getting a pedometer, to keep me motivated, because clearly this needs to be a permanent regime. 'Regime' sounds a bit off-putting, doesn't it? But I hate newspeak like 'lifestyle change'.
I'd also like to shed about 10 kilos, hence the calorie counting. Wish me luck, won't you?

It's hard to kill a rose

My garden was planted 10 years ago, when I built my current house. I planted nearly 50 of my favourite roses (it's a big garden, far too big as it turns out.) For the first few years they were watered every summer, using a dripper system. Then the drought really set in, and with it came severe water rationing.
For the past 5 years they have had to rely on rainfall alone, and by the end of summer, they look pretty sad. But amazingly nearly all have survived, and this winter and early spring we've had better rains, and the roses have responded with lots of new growth.
So I've been waiting for the first flowers.
The lovely old-fashioned Mme Alfred Carriere is always the first,
closely followed by the little climber Pinkie, bravely budding despite some dieback from last summer. I have 3 bushes of Mme Alfred, all grown from cuttings from a friend's garden.
It's so nice to have some roses to pick at last.
Quinces belong to the Rosa family too, and my tree is a joy - maybe I'll even get a crop this year.