My Bright Field

Spring has arrived and there is a lot blue-purple stuff going on in the garden at Rose Orchard Haus.








I am feeling sad for the people of Melbourne, their roadmap to COVID-normal announced today is nothing short of depressing.  They are in my prayers, especially family members living through this.

As the season transitions from winter into spring I have been thinking about change and how we have all been coping with unexpected changes this year. Here are some of the small changes I have experienced lately.
MaskingI wore a mask for the first time earlier in the month because we were travelling on public transport to Sydney.
But much more exciting was the masking for me to paint the back door at Rose Orchard Haus


Goodbye TreeRemember the story of the weed tree at Burnbrae garden. It was cut down last week and here it is now.  (Oh dear more work to move this pile to garden beds).
I think the removal of the tree was neither transformative, nor leaving a disastrous gap once those trampled plants recover.  It's just different like I have found most of 2020 to be.

As COVID-19 is continues to cause its havoc, we have been reaching out more to family.  This week I posted this 'care' package to my sister who is locked down in Victoria.
When I was looking about for some nice stationary to write my note on I was pleased to find a bunch of pressed flower cards I had done many years ago - perfect.The week earlier I received letter from my 99 year old Aunt and Uncle who live up in Queensland.  They are reaching out to family just to make sure we are all doing OK.  It was so lovely to receive a hand written letter in the mail, a rare thing these days.  I fondly remember the days when my Mum and Dad sent a letter every week, and I sent one to them too.  That was when phone calls were expensive and we only got to visit them for a week once a year.  It would be interesting history if I had kept them, but I didn't, other than a few from their later years.  They contain newsy stuff about the goings on in the town and the church and what other fami…

This week I am taking you back to one of the towns we visited during our recent sweet wayfaring trip,  Gulargumbone the town with the lovely water tower art.  Here they are making the most of their little town which like many country towns has a lot of shuttered shops, but few are painted in these cheery colours.  This is a town with artistic flair. Some years ago they decided to "brand" their town with galahs which are seen everywhere but these days that is not all there is to see.  This is about the best wire sculpture I have ever seen. And lots of buildings and walls have images with a quirky sense of fun.







I hope you have enjoyed the tour.

There has been a flurry of 'weeding' in the neighbourhood with the council due to reinspect our properties next week. The neighbour had to remove a couple of tall holly trees along our fence line, surprising me with a more open view from my kitchen window.Now I have a much clearer view of the birds which hang around to be fed there.  Here are the ones I spotted in a half hour or so this morning.




As for my own weeding efforts.  It was a terrible shock to see how much privet was down the back. We live on a double block with two street frontages.  At the back is steep so we don't go down there and don't even drive down that street. Also there is a solid fence obscuring what is going on down there.  I can tell you what has been going on ... privet growing and growing and growing. After several very hard days it is all cut down.  
The tree guys are coming tomorrow to cut down the Portuguese Laurel tree and I will see what sort of gap that leaves in the garden.

Many country towns in Australia have a 'big thing' as their tourist attraction - big pineapple, big banana, big merino, big lobster, big Ned Kelly etc etc.  In recent times towns have opted for silo art and water tower art - much better I think.

We went to Gulargambone especially to see this beautiful water tower painting by Jenny McCracken.
I was also thrilled to be passing through Dunedoo on our trip because I had heard there was a silo art  project currently being painted by equine artist Peter Mortimore. It is of champion mare Winx and jockey Hugh Bowman who grew up in Dunedoo.


And to top it off I saw this lovely mural in Dubbo which I instantly recognised as being by Adnate.

P.S.  We are back home now and I am exhausted from doing rose pruning all day. I will have to leave visiting your blogs until tomorrow or the next day.