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…

 

Saturday sunset over MtLawleyshire

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         

Studying in MtLawleyShire

Dear fellow photo bloggers, traveller, writers of warmth and poetry,

I am taking a break for a little while, to concentrate on my PhD – which needs to be done!

I will not stop taking photos, but it takes so long to prepare & post, and I will not have the time to respond to all of your posts either, much as this pains me.

So if you do not hear from me for a while, I am not gone & you are not forgotten – so please don’t forget me.  I will post every now & then 🙂

And this morning, I took more photos of the ugly succulent with the lovely pink flowers that heralds winter – & it has been cold!  It is warming up again, but not last night, the night before – we had the coldest May night in 98 years!

I love the cold nights.  Sadly, this week, the night temperatures are going back up above 10 again, but I am hoping for more cold….

 

 

 

 

Keira xx

Work and a sore foot

Due to work pressures and a sore foot, there was no walking today.  This will happen more and more.  My PhD is demanding work and  have some very serious deadlines coming.  I hope you don’t forget me if I don’t get to post as often.

Today I took some pics in the garden.  They’re not spectacular.  It’s Autumn, despite the warmth, so there aren’t many flowers and my little garden is looking distinctly untidy.

But there are some flowers.  A large begonia has some bells, pale pink and subtle, they are pretty,but difficult to photograph:

   

Some herbs are flowering – red basil and the rosemary, but not many flowers – only one spike on the basil and about 5 on the rosemary:

 

one tiny pot of everlastings are still flowering, and a self seeded flower is growing in an unemptied but otherwise untenanted pot (obviously, this flower has become the tenant!):

 

some jasmine is flowering both over the pergola and amongst the ivy flowering over the back fence (the ivy is very untidy so no photograph):

 

and then there’s the untidy, usually ugly hedge between my place and the unit next door.  This is the only time of year it looks OK, mostly it is rather ugly, full of dead growth and it’s very invasive, especially over areas where I hang my washing!  But its yellow flowers are surprisingly pretty and I have a suspicion that a pair of singing honeyeaters nest there:

 

This is one of the areas of massed green in my little courtyard – lavender and dogsbane:

and I love the shape of rue leaves:

 

And of course she was in the garden – the sweetest flower of all:

Then evening came, with the beauty of the evening star above the lingering sunset:

and that is all.  No trees 😦

maybe tomorrow…..if I do enough work today.

Keira

 

Mtlawleyshire, night and fairy tales

I walked down William Street today, on the way to meet a friend for coffee.  It had been strange day – all day it had been cloudy, as though the air itself was brooding.  No rain, just heavy air and a silence despite the sounds of traffic.  She wasn’t happy to see me go.

I was surprised to see the cloud blossom trees in flower – different trees this time

 

 

Some flowers, a little closer.  They are just a little too high for me to get a good shot without zooming (I am rather small)

 

This one had grown to envelope a telephone pole 🙂

 

The first of the next shots is the last of the wattle, and this brilliantly red tree caught my eye amongst all the green street trees. One day, I will go down that street. So much green!  All those trees!

 

And here is my old friend, the lemon-scented gum that is so massive you can’t fit it into a photo without standing almost a block away.  It is one of the largest trees in the area, and that includes the Moreton Bay figs of Hyde park!

 

 

I love how the great branches taper through the chaos of smaller branches into the delicate tangled tracery of thin long flexible twigs which is where most of the leaves are.

 

And now, Hyde Park.  I hadn’t realized how dark it was  when I got there, and my little camera doesn’t do well in low light.  So, many of the photos were blurred. As a result, I had some fun 🙂

These first 2 are from when I walked beneath the trees and too shots of the branches against the canopy.  There was enough light between the leaves to confuse the camera’s sensors.

 

Then the Moreton Bay figs.

 

This next one intrigued me with its almost fluted pillars:

here they are a little closer:

 

 

The next shots I took were all blurred.  I played when I got home – with the images:

 

   

I took a shot of the water, but I was still too far into the trees

This is what it actually looked like when I came out from under the trees: the water green with algae.  It has been very warm the last few days, and warm nights as well.  It is not good for the water quality, as there is now so little of it.

But I didn’t stay. I was running late for my coffee date, and the light was no good for taking photos, so I left, but not without taking some more.  And when I got home, none of them were any good.  So I played and discovered the secret fairy tale world within Hyde Park:

 

I will have to discover more of this world, I think 🙂

Over the road from the cafe is a florist, and I found these: Banksia flowers:

 

I will have to find trees somewhere for you.  They don’t grow in Mt Lawley Shire – I have to go further out, or maybe King’s Park.

Finally, the cafe – and here is a corner.  I like all the lines and wooden boxes and cups (for me to have my coffee in!)

Here are some shots of the city from the cafe.  It is a different perspective from the post I did above the city – those 3 buildings I last saw from above!

And here is Beaufort Street looking north – the way I went home.

I hope you enjoyed my little walk.  Next time – my magnolia flower.

Keira 🙂

mtlawleyshire’s peppermint trees

The Peppermint tree is a native of South Western Australia and in the older suburbs, it is often seen as a street tree.

When we first moved to Mt Lawley, there was a huge one in the backyard.  I loved to climb it and sit in its huge spreading branches.  From a distance, it can look like a willow because of its leaves and they way they droop, but up close and personal – they are nothing alike.

They are one of my favourite trees (though I have a feeling that all trees are my favourites.

So, today, I take you around the other way, into Mt Lawley itself rather than towards Highgate or North Perth.  And I will concentrate only on Peppermint trees.  The others will have to wait for another post 🙂  This is where I used to walk and run with my dog when I was a kid, around this area.  It’s familiar territory, and the trees are like old friends.  I mourn the tree in out backyard because it was chopped down and the huge garden is gone now, filled with a huge house that has no garden at all.  It’s very sad and short-sighted.

First – street trees to give you an idea of the entire tree.  Like many Australian trees, they are not the tidiest looking people 🙂

 

and I caught a wattled honeyeater on top of this tree – sadly with his back to me & before I could take another photo, he had flown off.

 

Leaves and branches.  They are wonderful shapes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

details of the bark and trunks:

 

 

 

And the reason I walked this way today was to visit the Mt Lawley Cenotaph – the war memorial.  For Australians and New Zealanders, today is a sadly special day: Anzac Day which remembers the thousands of young lives lost (when Australia had a population of 5 million) during the 1915 Gallipoli campaign .  It was also the time when Turkey became the modern nation it is today – & Ataturk paid Australians a gracious acknowledgment of his success and the terrible loss Australians had suffered: Mothers,  do not weep for your sons.  They sleep with us and we honour them.  He said something like that.  There is a statue to him in Albany, Western Australia, which is the last part of Australia the soldiers saw.

This day also commemorates the Australians lost in all wars, as well as those lives lost on the Western Front in Europe in the first of the ‘wars to end all wars’.

The peppermint trees to me, with their gnarled old limbs at least as old as that war, because this is one of the oldest parts of Perth.

So – Lest we Forget.  ‘At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.’

Flowering rosemary from my garden is amongst all these flowers.

and a final photo of a peppermint tree. the shape just cried out for black and white.

 

 

flowers around mtlawleyshire

These are photos that have been sitting, waiting to be posted for a while.  So, as I haven’t walked anywhere interesting (supermarkets – you don’t really want a post of  supermarket, do you?) today, I thought I would post them.

They aren’t all flowers 🙂

First: roses – all from other people’s gardens or street verges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It seems there are always roses somewhere.

The next are a gorgeous creeper/climber: mexican rose:

 

a whole wall of it:

and a rare shot of actual Bougainvillea flowers: the tiny white flowers in the centre of the brilliantly coloured leaves – because that is what they are: leaves giving the huge creepers all that brilliant colour:

these are two hibiscus:

 

I should one day take a photo of my own – a pale yellow.  Next time…

The next are azalea

Now the next ones are the flowers on the umbrella tree.  There are many of these in Perth and they are pests – they suck up far too much water, grow huge and their roots damage everything.  And they grow so fast they crowd out most other things, including native plants.

I don’t know what this is – it’s not the most attractive plant, tall grass-like clumps with wide blade leaves, but when flowering, they can look magnificent in clumps of towering scarlet – but this has a surprise in it – can you see?

yes – the little singing honeyeater.  I sometimes get them in my own little garden.

Pink jasmine trailing picturesquely over a white garden fence.

A bird of paradise flower.  Sadly, the great clump of this plant was neglected and most of the flowers bedraggled.  This was the best shot I could get of a flower & it really deserved better.

The next are pretty flowers that I don’t know the names of:

 

 

and this one has interesting leaves in the shot.

then there are oak leaves – I can never resist those.

 

And here is the galah, guarding its nesting hole in the lemon-scented gum.  I’m so happy it’s still there.

Some honeysuckle:

And here are two Grevillea – these are cultivars, developed by nurseries so their growing habit is more tree like instead of the untidy, eccentric sprawl it often has naturally – which I like, but these cultivars have lovely flowers:

 

Grass seed heads looking rather lovely:

and two street verge gardens, one colourful with flowers (including some white roses that you’ve seen above) and one green

 

and at the end of all walks – there she is 🙂

 

The eastern border of mtlawleyshire

On Friday, my camera and I took a little drive to the eastern borders of MtLawleyshire – a park on the banks of the Swan River.  It’s a ‘people’ park – it has an oval for sports, a children’s playpark, basketball practice area and through it runs the cycling track that goes throughout Perth.  It is still in Mt Lawley itself, whereas Hyde Park is actually just in Highgate, even though it is only 10 minutes walk from where I live, and this park would take at least 20 minutes to walk – maybe longer.

Despite being a park with all sorts of areas for activities, it still has its quiet areas, its tree areas, and, of course, the river, as well as small wetlands.  Unlike Hyde Park, it still has that sense of the wilderness that must have been, not so long ago.  Now it is a wealthy area, in fact, I parked on the richest street in Perth, and to live in such an area, yes I can see why you would want to.  Quiet and very beautiful.

The first things I saw were the plane trees.  Not as many as in Hyde Park, and closer to the road.

   

 

and there were the beautiful Moreton Bay figs:

 

 

 

And this one: the most astonishing Moreton Bay I have ever seen:

Then there were very many native gum trees – all beautiful.

This is the bark from one:

Then there are these:

 

The sheoaks and bottlebush make wonderful delicate patterns with their branches and foliage:

 

 

and here are sheoaks at the river’s edge:

These trees are like great shaggy border guards on the river’s edge: the edge of MtLawleyShire 🙂

Here are more pictures from the edge, the border:

 

 

 

And yes, we come to the water’s edge which is also part of a small wetlands.  It’s filled with grasses and strange trees and something that looks like flowering heather, but it can’t be:

 

 

 

On the other side, there are trees too 🙂

and when I came home?

Yes, she was in my chair!

Tomorrow, there will be a post of me out of – and above MtLawleyshire!

I hope you have enjoyed my little excursion to the eastern borders of my little ‘shire’.  Keira 🙂

Autumn kitty in mtlawleyshire

Slothed on a chair in the (overly) warm sunshine in my courtyard.  And she stayed still – even when she saw the camera.  How could I resist?

 

Hope you enjoyed.  Keira

MtLawleyShire’s smallest park?

Brigatti Gardens.  I can’t find why it’s there, or the reason for the name, but it’s obviously been there for a long time, this pocket-sized park with huge trees.   It holds a small children’s play set, but that’s all.  It’s well kept and neat, & while I’m not saying Hyde Park is a tangle, it has the islands in the middle of the ponds which give it an unmanicured heart.  These tiny gardens are really that: a calm and tended garden.  It’s maybe the size of an old house block (they are much smaller these days), in quiet streets down from the trendy section of Beaufort Street – we could call it ‘upper Beaufort” as opposed to ‘lower Beaufort’ where the supermarket, post office and theatre are.  Ha ha… No.  I like both ends of MtLawleyShire’s Beaufort Street.  ‘Upper’ is in Highgate which is where this pocket park, Brigatti Gardens, is.

Not all the trees in these Gardens are plane trees or Morten Bay figs, but most of them are.

This is a detail of bark from a tree I don’t know: 

And this one remind me of a tuning fork:

But mostly, it’s plane trees, Morten Bay figs and small garden areas planted with the distinctly non-native Agapanthus.  Of course, the trees aren’t native either – plane trees aren’t native to Australia & Morten Bay figs are originally from the east coast: Queensland & NSW, but they do well here too.

So, this post is all trees with smidgens of sky and hints of road, cars & surrounding buildings.  But it’s the trees I am concentrating on.  Rather nice houses line the surrounding streets & as I walked around, I thought how lovely it must be to live with the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves and tall branches.  And the birds that must live there!  Honey eaters and magpies, magpie larks and willy wagtails.  I saw not a one while I was there.  It was strangely quiet, empty, with only the rustling trees whispering their ancient sweet nothings to me.

First, the Morten Bay Figs.  There weren’t many.  They are huge trees and this is not a huge park, but there were enough 🙂

Branches:

 

 

Leaves:

 

 

the massive trunks:

 

 

Plane trees:

 

 

Branches:

 

 

 

Mingled leaves and branches of both plane trees & Morten Bay figs:

 

 

and finally, a b&w of a looping branch:

For such a little park, there were many angles and many details that delighted my little camera.  I hope the results delight you 🙂

Keira.