BOXING DAY GREETINGS

 

Summer seems to have arrived on the south coast of Victoria. We had cool weather up to only one week before Christmas. However, yesterday was a classic summer beach day in this part of the world with a top temperature of 32 Centigrade.

It was also warm when I took this photo on the Torquay front beach last Thursday. We love the brilliant red of the well-named New Zealand Christmas trees Metrosideros excelsa.

Laurie was also providing human interest and a sense of scale in front of this gloriously flowering Grevillea robusta in the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne.

Here is most of the rest of this specimen... 

...and a close-up some of the lower flowering branches. In the garden at Torquay our G. robusta has responded well to this year's wet spring with lots of leaf growth and a rather small cluster of flowers about six metres above our heads. 

This year after celebrating Christmas with some of Laurie's siblings at our flat in Melbourne, we had a leisurely walk around the lake at the bottom of the Botanic Gardens.

Lovely to see the Lotus plants beginning to flower.

A family photo taken by a kind stranger.

Earlier, down at Torquay, I had made a Christmas ikebana "to be seen from all angles". The only Pinus radiata branch from our neighbour's garden that I could reach had some small side branches which tended to hang down. The nature of the branches is what dictated the form of the ikebana.

I chose a wide shallow ceramic bowl and arranged the materials asymmetrically. This means that a different material and appearance is presented depending on the angle of the viewer.

 

Here is my Christmas ikebana in the living room niche. The other materials are: three small buds of Rosa "Mr Lincoln" and some flowering branches of Bursaria spinosa, from the garden.

The vessel is by the Victorian ceramic artist Phil Elson.

Wishing you a Happy Boxing Day.

Christopher

26th December 2022