autumn in his garden

I used to garden; I think I quite enjoyed it. But gradually, WM took over and now the gardens are his domain. The backyard is anything but child friendly, containing no lawn and a lovely fishpond. The rest is garden or paths or paving or swimming pool or shed.

Lest that sound awful, his garden is quite pretty. And as the first month of autumn draws to a close, there are signs that the season is changing.

We have a temperate climate, so autumn leaf colour is not spectacular. The weeping cherry tree merely turns brown and sheds its leaves covering the struggling black mondo grass.

The Senkaku maple is just beginning to turn.

This photo was taken a couple of hours after these poor camelias took a battering in Wednesday afternoon's thunderstorm...

....as did the miniature roses. I think this one is called "Blizzard".

The Japanese anenomes are taking over the area outside my study window - there are dozens of flowers and hundreds of buds.

There are drifts of these crocuses all over the yard. I love the sunlight shining through this patch near the fishpond.

This poor azalea is confused - it thinks it's spring already! (WM better look carefully at those leaves - they don't look well.)

Out the front, the garden is planted in Australian natives. The fan flower is about the size of my thumbnail.

This is the flower of a smallish shrub called melaleuca thymifolia. It may be called that because it has very small leaves like the herb; it certainly doesn't smell like thyme.
And finally, a newly emerged kangaroo paw with the afternoon sun shining through it.

Garden by him; photos by me.

the first of autumn

In Australia, our seasons change on the first of the month (not on the equinox as in some other countries). Today is the first day of autumn - not that it felt any different to yesterday with the temperature forecast about 32*C (92*F) with high humidity. Yet there is a promise of cooler weather ahead.

The organisation I collect knitted items for, Australian Inland Ministries, is the charity of the month in April on knit4charities, as is another event I support: Sydney's Homeless Connect Day. I'm knitting as fast as I can but, as you all know, it's never fast enough! I have revisited some long neglected projects and have knitted new ones. I only cast on a new project when I have completed a UFO so that means relatively monogamous knitting is happening here.

I am currently knitting from patterns. That is unusual for me as I either use my "go to" patterns (especially for beanies and socks) or design my own patterns. Out of curiosity, I typed "charity" into the search box on Ravelry's pattern page and was stunned to get a very large number of patterns in response! I also trawled my friends' projects/faves to add to my Ravelry queue which is now so long (for me) that I'll never knit everything that's on there!

So here are a couple of my recently finished projects:

The Campus Scarf (Ravelry Link) knitted in Moda Vera Cynthia on 4mm (US 6) needles. I modified this pattern to use only 30 stitches because 42 was too wide. My scarf is a little narrow but it's long so it can be wound around the wearer's neck twice for extra warmth.

I'm ashamed to admit it but I finally got around to putting the zipper in this Tomten jacket! How embarassing - I finished knitting this in 2009!

More about my other finshed projects when I have photos to show!