Sub-tropical Winter Colour

 Wednesday 9 August

August is usually a cold, windy month in SE Queensland. Over the past few days, we have had lows of 10C but the mercury has risen to 28C during the day. Just gorgeous except, one knows that if it is this hot now, summer is going to be a scorcher! Fingers crossed.

Let's not think about that now, but take delight in the colour and beauty of Brisbane's Mt Cootha Botanical Gardens.

I've still very little energy from my bout with the flu, so I planned a leisurely morning in the gardens when I had read that the cherry trees in the Japanese garden were in full blossom.

The meet-up time was 10am. Alas, we all had traffic issues. I had chosen a longer route, but one that didn't have any traffic snarls. The last section used a tunnel that exited just before the entrance to the gardens. Well, so I believed! Imagine our horror when we found that we had exited across the other side of town! Fortunately, both Jenny and Margot, in separate cars, and coming in the opposite direction to us, managed to miss the entrance and also had to travel several extra kilometres before being able to turn around. There was much laughter when we all finally met and sat with our coffee and cake, in a very tranquil setting, surrounded by lovely flowering native shrubs.

After the stress of the drive, we were happy to relax here for quite some time. Eventually, we set off to find the Japanese garden. Our pace was slow as we enjoyed the surprise of each new flowering plant, shrub, tree or cascading watercourse.

A joined pano of the Japanese Garden - It was a delight to wander through this garden, but there was very little evidence of the Cherry blossom. I could only spy one tree with a few stray flowers.

On a previous visit, we explored the back section of the gardens. On this day we meandered to the lake and pond area. A perfect choice!

A seed sculpture directed us towards the vegetable garden.

I was stunned by the prolific growth of, and variety of plants, for this time of year. 

Bush Stone Curlew - When first spotted, I could have sworn that they were wood carvings. There were 5 in this garden.  Can you see three? There were several further on. They stay completely stationary!

A meander around this lagoon took us into the Azalea, Camellia and Magnolia gardens.

Over the years of visiting the gardens, I have always been disappointed in this section. Not so today! It was magnificent. I have never seen such a bounteous, sensational display of magnolias before.

There were colourful blossoms everywhere.

The path around this lake took us back to Australian native plants and some delightful sculptures of our native animals - kangaroo, joey, platypus, echidna and wombat.

Not native, but quite spectacular - single and double Poinsettias.

Yellow Everlasting Daisies

Grass Tree

Wattle

Calliandra

Callistemon or Bottlebrush

Purple Pea bush or Hardenbergia violacae.

Grevillia

Juniper-leafed Grevillea

Banksia with Grevillia in the background.

Landscapes

Grevilleas and everlasting Daisies

Everlasting Daisies.

A Termite nest.

A very musical magpie

Good old Aussie bush

We all agreed, that stopping to 'smell the roses' on this day, was a wondrous, therapeutic and totally rewarding experience. We couldn't have planned the day better. It would have been lovely to have had Joc and Leanne with us, but they were spending the week slumming it in Bali!

I must add that it is most unusual to see as much massed colour as this, other than in the Botanical Gardens or at the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers in late September.

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