Out of MtLawleyShire: Kings Park #3 – Trees

The real wonder of Kings Park is not the gorgeousness of the wildflowers – the beauty of Kings Park are its trees.  I took quite a few photos, because I cannot resist trees and these are some of the most beautiful in the whole city (she says, having not really been everywhere…)

But I know some of you (and Bulldog in particular) will enjoy this post.

They are everywhere, the trees – viewed through a Victorian era tea pavilion to the city beyond

 

Magnificent and ancient conifers:

 

 

 

  

Trees frame the city:

 

 

 

 

Flowering bottlebrush look beautiful against massed greens

 

 

The occasional oak in new bright green is startling against the more subtle blue-grey greens of native trees:

 

 

especially in contrast with the always ancient looking peppermint trees – & this one tossing in the bright warm wind that day:

 

 

but the real beauties are the wonderful eucalypts,growing in natural settings throughout this ordered part of the park, backdrops to large lawned areas and planted areas of the Botanical gardens before the wilderness starts:

 

 

 

Along the edges of the cliff, framing views of the river:

and these – grown in avenues along the road to commemorate fallen soldiers:

 

 

 

I love the trees, and wish I could’ve got better views of the avenues of tall trunks, white in the light.  But there was very heavy traffic, people everywhere.  Maybe when the school holidays are over…

I hope you enjoyed this last post from my visit to King’s Park 🙂

 

 

Out of MtLawleyshire – Trees at Murdoch University & Matilda Bay

I have had a busy week and while there have been no sunset photos for the end of the week, there have been lots of trees.

It is Festival season in Perth, and within the Perth festival is the Writer’s Festival – & I am a writer, of sorts.  This year, I actually attended an event at the University fo Western Australia, but before that, I was invited to attend a Q&A with China Mieville at Murdoch University in the southern suburbs.  It was an excellent talk.  He’s a very articulate engaging character, which is to be expected from his books (my favourite is The City & The City).  But, though he would probably raise his eyebrows at this, it was also a chance to look at trees.

Murdoch University has wonderful native grounds, filled with mostly natives.  But not just trees – flowers:

Grevillea:

 

This – so reminiscent of a flame tree flower, but it isn’t.  Glorious red 🙂

Eucalypt blossom:

 

& the nuts they leave behind:

Water lilies:

& this

Grows into this:

 

Now the trees. I don’t know what this is, but its brilliant green is striking, and the duller yet graceful shape of a sheoak:

 

Wonderful tree with almost furry bark:

 

Cape Lilac in the outside cafe:

 

These are just beautiful from various places around the campus:

 

& this is the trunk of a massive tree:

Finally, two towering trees soaring into the inconstant, uneven sky of a terribly hot day threatening rain and delivering none:

 

A plane tree in the city as I made my way home:

& this?  At the small park in West Perth just down from where I teach – a peppermint tree looking like a jungle unto itself:

Today, I attended a talk by China Mieville & the wonderful Margaret Atwood.  They played so well off each other, and Margaret Atwood is such a character – so sharp & funny & wonderfully subversive.  I love her writing, have heard her talk often and this was just as wonderful.  China Mieville was a wonderful partner for her.  Of course, with his genre writing, her novels Oyrx & Crake and After the Flood (as well as The Handmaid’s Tale)  were under discussion along with his novels  (& mention of  a book the talk reminded me of that I want to read for the PhD: Hoban’s Riddley Walker).

And although I had no time to wander along the river, everywhere you go around the University of Western Australia and Matilda Bay there are trees:

a Moreton Bay fig dappled in the inconstant sunlight today:

A scribbly gum and another:

 

just trees – a strip of manicured wilderness between roads and car parks, paperbarks and others:

 

in the university grounds as I hurried towards the lecture theatre – white trunk amidst intense green:

& this wonderful tree on the corner of a carpark:

 

& then it was time to go in, and after that?  Time to go to work.  No more trees till, maybe tomorrow.

& today, it rained.  A little.  Enough for me to make my students laugh as I ran outside to dance about in it.  In the middle of the city.  Oh dear 🙂  But it was such a relief after a cooler, though intensely humid day, and tonight, I will have to have a light blanket.  Much better than the 40 degree celsius of the two days before!

I hope you enjoyed my trees.  I enjoyed looking at them, and the activities of the two days 🙂

Trees in MtLawleyshire’s Hyde Park

These are from a walk I did earlier in the week  & it was a strange place to be, Hyde Park, filled with works and diggings.  It’s impossible to take photos in some areas and they still have no idea what they are going to do with the island they have razed in the middle of the eastern pond.  It remains a terrible eyesore and must bewilder the birds that used to shelter there.

They are digging up near some of the paths – the intention is to install a bio-remediation area – a reedbed to you & me.  This will clean the water that comes down from the roads into the ponds and help remove the toxicity from the mud which poisons the birds.  A good thing.  But the park at the moment is very difficult to walk around – bobcat tractors and cars and mechanical diggers, piles of sand and dirt, workmen and utes and trucks and cars, neon orange plastic fencing.

It’s a mess.

Yet the trees rise above it all, mostly.  The plane trees have suffered, their lower limbs lopped off, surrounded by the piles of sand and the plastic fencing.  I did get some reasonable shots.  In the 1st two, this is obvious, but I still love the strength in their trunks:

 

& in these, replete with leaves, glorious in sunlight:

 

This guy is so massive he rises above everything:

Shapes of trees.  I don’t know what the first is, but I love the shape of the peppermint tree next to it, & I’ve posted photos of this tree before.  Possibly not from this angle:

 

The bush – paperbarks and tangle – on the western island:

& here are the willows they wanted to remove.  They have been saved, but are going to be ‘managed’ – I don’t really like the sound of that.

Finally, the Moreton Bay figs – nothing seems to bother them – though there were a few I couldn’t photograph because of blocked paths, etc:

 

 

& one of the few paths still untroubled by ‘works’:

I didn’t make it for a walk this morning – got up too late and then it was too hot.  Hopefully Wednesday.  Tomorrow, I think it might be Matilda Bay… in the heat.

The river will, at least, make a semblance of cool…

 

A walk in the heat in MtLawleyShire

It’s the 2nd day of a heatwave where not once day will dip below the old century, & today it will go well over.  I didn’t set off as early as I wanted to due to various hold-ups, so only walked around where I lived a few decades ago, and though the heat is too much for any flowers, I found a rose or 2 unspoiled by the fierce sun:

 

and trees 🙂

I was taken by the patterns in box tree bark (& thought of Wanderlust Gene as I did)

& here, the papery bark of a paperbark tree:

 

 

this particular paperbark tree is in a very unphotogenic spot – no matter the angle, the tree is diminished by cars or badly designed modern housing (in what used to be a heritage area).  So, this is all I could take.  I will keep trying.

I came across a lovely Grevillea with a few flowers:

& the gnarled, scrappy, scratchy, untidy peppermint trees.  Their girth, their relative lack of height in relation to their girth which increases as they get older somehow add to their attractiveness for me.  And the scent of them 🙂

Intricacies of age:

 

This little guy popped down onto grass in front of me.  Hopping all over the place.  I was lucky to get this one, almost unblurred shot!

A streetside Plane tree – all cropped on one side.  It looks so peculiar! Esp compared to the grace of the unpruned box tree:

 

A gardenscape:

White tree limbs against a sea of wind-tossed foliage and a tree dark against the day

 

Young lemon scented gums:

Against infinity and the blasting brilliance of midmorning sun.  That deep blue sky is not enhanced.  That’s the colour it is at the moment.  It means extreme UV ratings and a fierce light.  And heat.

A few blocks on is this tree – a survivor of car crashed and urban vandalism.

 

& finally – these two grace the Bowling club grounds:

  

I hope to go walking very early tomorrow morning before the heat so – hopefully, there will be more.

Hope you enjoyed 🙂

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Green

What a Weekly Photo Challenge: Green.  For me, green is the colour of relaxation, of growth, of renewal as in last week’s post. Green happens after rain, verdant in winter, rich and prolific in spring, dies down to rustly yellow from mid summer to when we get rain – sometimes not till the following late winter.

Green fills spaces against the sky, softens edges in cities, broadens the restricted spaces in gardens by concealing boundaries, conflating their corners and walls with that sense of upwardness and foreverness that growth has.

And yes, for me, green is the world outside my door (though I am wearing green nail polish at this moment & no – you can’t have a photo), the lining of streets and the pools of green, dappled shadows in parks and people’s gardens.

So come with me up the green dappled path into a small sample of my world of Green

It’s a background to everything, green – even a willy wagtail staking his territorial rights on my garden gate

The bed of the beautiful rose

background for the simple & simply lovely daisy and a background for this tiny native violet

 

& the grey green makes a mysterious backing for the equally mysterious (& slightly sinister) borage flower

Green is the background and reason for lilies and all flowers, pretty (as these are) and otherwise

 

The grey green of Australian native trees becomes emboldened and something wholly other when their flowers come: bottlebrush (a spiky looking untidy tree) and the untidy, chaotic peppermint tree

 

Green is the beginning of flowers: their support & backing: their promise

 

& reflected green endows water with a sense of something else – a magical intimation of otherness: Hyde Park’s island photographed in August when the ponds were still clear enough for reflections, and a duck on a small lake that reflected native greenery on the other side:

 

City green?  Sometimes it looks quite striking, although the real ‘real’ green puts the ‘manufactured’ greens in a pallid light – to me, at least.

At other times, it brings a sense of the natural world into the built environment: the end of Pier Street in Perth’s CBD. These are the beginnings of the gardens surround the Governor’s Residence and the Supreme Court.

Then above Perth’s CBD, we have King’s Park – looking down onto the freeways leading out of the city is a verdant oasis:

and wildflowers carpet spaces of intermittent green:

 

the green of the south-west Kangaroo Paw

A Grevillea nestled amidst odd green foliage and a Geraldton wax – purple amidst its green needles

 

contrasting the northern hemisphere greens: an oak – with native Australian trees:

 

Then there is green when the sunlight is at just the right angle to turn it golden green – Hyde Park:

 

and the luxurious green of lawn striped with shadow

 

the alien green of palm against other foliage

and the unreal green of the beautiful (if feral) new leaves on a weeping willow

 

and the greens around a path in Hyde Park

but best of all: the green of massed foliage made brilliant by Spring’s new growth

 

or new leaves on old plane trees in sunlight – Hyde Park

 

I enjoyed searching through my files of greenery & I hope you enjoyed my selection 🙂

& for some reason I’m limited to 10 related articles.  Sorry

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Trees in MtLawley Shire’s Hyde Park

I love Hyde Park, and the plane trees and the ponds, but this time, I’m looking at another area.  There’s only a hint of plane trees in this post.

From the start of my walk, along the path leading from the corner of William Street – I think this is the Moreton Bay fig I photograph the most: in situ and picked out, just in front of its massive neighbour:

 

wandering in the area above the ponds:

 

A massive Moreton Bay:

I just love the spread of these branches:

 

Banks of foliage – looking towards the city (there’s a city? Where?)

A path:

Looking around a Moreton Bay fig’s massive trunk:

A distinctive trunk & a tree almost wonderfully bare:

 

And then, the native section:

Western Australia’s iconic jarrah tree:

 

and bark:

Must find out what these are – they look almost candy striped 🙂

An amazingly coiled peppermint tree:

a view of the native garden with the sun adding mystery:

 

Oh – course, she’s not amused I was gone so long (it’s actually after I went sunsetty photo-ing).  She wants DINNAH!

I hope you enjoyed these trees.

Keira 🙂

Around MtLawleyshire

I am coming to the time when I am not going to be able to post as often – or even reply to posts!  But over the last few days, I have done little walks here and there, and of course, while I don’t have a dog (and I would so love a dog), I do have a camera that just loves going for walks with me.

I walked a different way to Beaufort Street and came home through Hyde Park.  I haven’t included all the photos, I have saved some for later posts.  I have taken many photos, you see 🙂  And tomorrow, there won’t be much of a chance for photographs.  I have a very busy day.

So, on my walk which was the way I used to walk, long ago, when we first moved to Perth.  The streets have changed and some of the trees have gone.  But most remain.

This is an exceptionally tall tree, I’m not sure what type it is, but it is so graceful.

Peppermint trees.  There is nothing more to say, except I love the massive trunk, and am surprised by the almost symmetrical arrangement of the branches in the next photo – it is of a different tree 🙂

 

These are poinsettia.  Rad and pink.  I love the shape of the flowers, but like many trees and flowers along this street, they grew behind a wall, and were too tall for me to see the flowers properly.  They usually flower around Christmas time, so it is strange to see them in flower now.  They’re often given as Christmas presents.  I used to have one in my garden, but it didn’t get enough light.

 

A gum tree in flower with the most beautiful pink blossom.  It was too tall, and behind a wall, so I couldn’t get real close-up, but hopefully they give you an idea.

 

The sheoaks outside the post office on Beaufort Street.  I love their delicacy and the way they catch the light (& the rain when it rains).

 

This tree is just so massive!

The leaves are wonderful now.  We have had the coldest nights since last year – going down to 7 degrees.  It is welcome and fills me with hope that we might have a winter.

 

The beauty of this tree struck me, as did the colours of all the autumn foliage from the islands to the rank of plane trees behind.

 

The ponds were so still that this swamp hen barely disturbed the surface, and the same tree and other foliage was reflected as perfectly as in a mirror.

 

This tree was fascinating for its bark.

Then the walk home:

Mexican rose on an ivy-covered fence, and pomegranate in someone’s garden:

 

And yes – impatient puss-cat 🙂

 

Then the end of the evening.  If you look carefully, you will see a star amidst the darkening blue.

I hope you enjoyed these few photos 🙂

Keira.

A long way from MtLawleyShire #3: Trees

Trees.  Yes I love trees, and this post is full of them, but they are different trees – all West Australian natives, but I can’t name them all.

These first shorts were taken at the Edith Cowan University campus at Joondalup.  It had rained in the morning, and reasonably heavy showers.  The drops were still clinging to some of the needles of the sheoaks growing outside the library (& otherwise, the trees were very difficult to photograph):

 

This is one large tree growing by the access road – there aren’t many large trees on this part of the campus – it was only built a few years ago and I think many of the trees would’ve been cleared.

These trees were in the park area by the lake where we had out picnic.  We sat on rocks, or walked around actually, and most of the trees were paperbarks, but there were a few others: a young peppermint tree and a pale gum:

 

larger and older:

 

One had a family of skinks – there were more than these 2 but the others were camera-shy 🙂

 

Just the beauty and grace of this – against a sky turning blue as the clouds disappear.

 

This one had flowers out of reach:

Now, the untended bush.  It was mostly paperbarks and Banksia, but due to a fire a few years ago, the Banksia forest was thin, most of the trees (shrubs?) obviously young.

First – paperbarks, though obviously, this is a manicured grove 🙂

 

a clutch of wilderness displaying some of the inherent characteristics of the paperbark – chaos and untidiness being the first two I can think of.  Wonderful shapes and shadows, though.

 

 

They look so old:

 

Then we started walking around, hoping to get down to another part of the lake.  On either side we were surrounded by bush – on one side paperbark tangles:

 

 

 

On the other side of the path was a narrow band of Banksia forest & some had flowers high up against the sky.  It was a jungle of thin spindly trunks and striped shadows.  They all looked like the Banksia prionotes, the same as those at the university campus.  They don’t have the same sculptural appearance of the paperbark, but I could imagine, many thousands of years ago, having to be wary of the striped mainland variety of the Tasmanian tiger.  It would’ve moved like a ghost through these:

 

 

  

 

Occasionally, there were other trees amongst the Banksia, some regenerating after fire:

Two groups of ibis flew over us as we walked:

 

and the path walking back to the car gave a different perspective of the trees:

 

There were quite a few dead trees, from previous bushfires.  This one is marked for removal, but there were many of them.  Many fallen as well.  I suppose they are leaving a lot there as quite a few birds use hollows in old trees for nesting, so the more that can remain, the better.  Although it seems full and lush, the bush fringe around the lake is only a 100 meters deep at most, and the birds are dying out because of habitat loss.

We drove around to the other side of the lake.  The reed beds here were very deep so we couldn’t get near the lake and otherwise, the grounds were manicured into football ovals.  But there were trees:

huge paperbarks:

 

 

and there were other trees as well, massive great things:

 

 

and this – probably one of my favourite photos of the day:

Next post – what kitty had to say when I got home 🙂

Between the river and the university

Today I went to visit my old professor at the university of Western Australia.  It is Western Australia’s oldest university & has the most beautiful grounds, filled with huge trees of all sorts – my favourites and others.  So you can imagine – yes.  Photos.  And oh dear.  I took over 200 – in 2 hours!

I can’t post them all, & many aren’t suitable anyway (rain is not good for little cameras – or Keiras!), but even so – there are too many for one post. so I am going to attempt to group them.

As it was raining, some of the photos were hurried & blurred.  But many were OK, though I fear there’s not too many that are brilliant.  However, even in this first post, there are different trees.

First – along the river.  The university is on the banks (sort of) of the Swan River, and I parked in the Matilda Bay carpark.  The city was barely visible through the mist of rain:

trees against the river:

 

Peppermint trees and a tall gum:

 

Moreton bay figs in the rain:

 

 

 

 

Then the area between the road and the university, filled with all sorts of trees – almost wilderness:

 

These two are trees I haven’t come across in mtlawleyshire, but of course, the university is a long way from my little shire 🙂  I love the colour of these and I really will, soon – I promise – get hold of a reference book so I can figure out what trees these are

 

 

 

 

The first of the next two photos is, I think, a stringy bark, as the bark hangs off in strips like strings.  They can be very untidy!

and look – more rain coming:

I will do the next post tomorrow – in the grounds of the university.  And this is despite the rain.  And no – no kitty for this part of the post.  How can there be?  And the end of this post, as far as the pictures tell the story, I am still at the university 🙂

Bellissimo – an urban sunset over mtlawleyshire

I didn’t walk further than the corner to catch the sunset.

The houses there have wild, secretive gardens and in one, flowering wattle spilled over the fence.  It was after sunset when I took these, and I’m afraid they’re not too clear at all.  My little camera doesn’t handle low light at all well, and the flash would flare everything out.  Sigh.

 

so I played a little – though not sure the results are all that fantastic.

 

There are peppermint street trees on this particular corner.  Not anciently thick, craggy ones like those in the heart of mtlawleyshire.  These are younger, slimmer and haven’t achieved their full form yet.  When they do, they will be amazing – they have incredibly divided trunks – which might mean they were chopped down at some stage and have grown from the stump, though I couldn’t see any sign of that.  And they were taken against the sunset:

 

But beautiful against the sky:

and this is in a garden – a mix of trees, their foliage against evening:

And here is the sunset:

 

 

I actually spent most of the time I usually take photos talking to an old lady who lives on the corner where I was taking photos.  She hardly spoke any English, yet she came here from Italy 44 years ago.  She never went to school, never worked, but spent most of the time looking after her elderly parents.  Her children?  One is in Italy, the other visits every now and then.  Yet she didn’t seem at all worried.  I’m glad I made her laugh.  She agreed that the sunset was ‘bellissimo’  🙂