Out and About Again

There is so much on around the place at this time of year that we never seem to be at home.

On Tuesday last week it was time to take my car to Orange for its annual service, so a good excuse for a day out.  Unlike last year, when it snowed on us up there (yes, in November) it was a glorious day.

I visited their beautiful Cook Park.  Like Bathurst, their park now has a significant grey flying fox colony.  These animals create quite a bit of controversy in both towns, as they are not something that ever lived in this area.  Some want them to be moved on, while others are saying they are endangered and it is our fault they are there as there is not as much of their native habitat around. All I know is that we are now told to avoid parts of the parks due to the chance of having an unpleasant gift land on us from above.  There is even quite a bit of daytime activity as the bats vie for room in the trees.

The flowers beds were looking lovely.

As the car was dropped off fairly early, it was a good excuse to enjoy a sneaky second breakfast at the garden centre.  It’s a beautiful setting.

 This was much larger than expected, so there was no need for any lunch that day.

While wandering around town I came across a new to me mural.  There seems to be impressive wall art everywhere you go now.

The side of one of the supermarkets has also received a colourful treatment.  This is a 1970s building with a textured treatment on the front wall, which was never originally painted.  If you look at it straight on it is white.  If you look at it approaching from the other side it is white.  The colour is only painted on the one side.  So simple, but so effective.

Next up, on Thursday, we popped along to the Lifeline Book Fair.  There were so many books.  They had a section beautifully decorated for Christmas.  You could buy one of those book stacks as a Christmas tree.  Maybe I could do something similar with some books from here.

The next thing was to guess how many books were in the Christmas tree. It looked so good.  I’d love to know how many there actually were, but haven’t been able to find it anywhere. There would have been many hundreds.

A few books possibly came home with us.  Mick has no shortage of reading material at the present time, and I found a couple of interesting ones too.

I was particularly pleased with these two that were issued by museums.  At $3 each, an absolute bargain.

On Saturday morning we had a quick trip down to Wallerawang, near Lithgow, to attend their biannual quilt show.  I only heard about it by pure chance a couple of days before.

It is hosted by the Friends of St Johns Church. Silly me, I forgot to take a photo of the exterior of the church, as it is a beautiful sandstone building.

Each time they have a challenge theme.  This year the them was “Green” and you could vote for people’s choice.  Next time it will be black and white.

Let’s have a little look at what was on show.

There were some lovely quilts for such a small group of women.

We then had to head back home as we were having visitors for the next couple of nights.

The next day the four of us headed up to to Millthorpe for their annual Garden Ramble.  We haven’t attended this for many years.  There was a variety of town and country gardens.  I’ll just share a random sampling.  Once again, we had the perfect weather for visiting gardens.

There was a nice variety of garden sculptures and bits and bobs.  Here are some of our favourites.

That will probably be the last of the open gardens we visit this spring.  We were spoiled for choice this last weekend, as not only were the Millthorpe gardens open, Blackheath had their Rhododendron Festival, which we have never visited, but hope to one year, and Crookwell also had their open gardens.  That would make a wonderful weekend away.  We did visit one garden down there many years ago and would love to see more.