Blue Mountains Journal

The holiday is well and truly over and I am still short of time so will not be continuing here at least for a while. I am however posting daily about my summer sojourns beyond the mountains at Sweet Wayfaring . This path is the street front of my garden. The fence is deliberatly low so passers strolling under the pines can look in and enjoy. You can too as I am starting a daily garden meditation . You may like to visit occasionally and reflect. Words to walk with: The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by littl...

Today the City Daily Photo bloggers are selecting their best picture for 2008. From my perspective 2008 has not been a good photographic year, too busy working. However, I think this photo of my front garden taken on Anzac Day in April is good one and a nice match with the summer photo at the back of the house in my last post. Notice the pine cones littering the path -- I just swept them up yesterday! So this brings to mind a few New Year Resolutions: 1. Clean up Autumn well before Summer 2. Take more photos of my lovely garden 3. Try to take life a little slower in 2009 and savour the ride -- mmm with recession looming the slow bit might be easy and the ride rough but that's the fun of each New Year. I hope you all have a good one. I am still on vacation from this blog for a while longer but have begun posting my recent seaside and country tour on my Sweet Wayfaring blog , please stop by and enjoy the holiday with me! I was too relaxed on holiday to register for the Theme Day but ...

It is a hectic time of year with annual planning in full swing at work ... endless meetings, revisions and late nights. Add to that the frustration or rainy roads causing traffic chaos ... take for example, more than 3 hours to get into the city on Thursday morning (I arrived nearly an hour late for my meeting) or last night crawling over 2 hours from Penrith because an accident blocked the highway and the nature of our terrain doesn't allow for alternative routes. So I am signing off for the summer. I won't be posting, reading blogs or commenting for a month or two. I will be back some time in the New Year revived and with a backlog of pics (I hope) to tide me over the tough times. Thank you all for your regular comments and I do so much enjoy reading your blogs and am always inspired by your great photographs. During the summer break I will be going to the beach for a while so sometime after Christmas expect new pictures at Sweet Wayfaring . For today's picture we are tak...

I have noticed these purple flowers growing beside the road near Springwood so stopped for a closer look. They appear to be spreading along the road, but nowhere near as fast as the Calliopsis I showed yesterday. I don't know whether this is a native plant. So I don't know whether to call it a weed or not.

The other day Julie took me to task for calling these delightful yellow flowers weeds rather than wildflowers. My definition of a weed is a non-native plant that spreads prolifically, displacing native plants. So by my definition I guess these are still weeds even though I love 'em. Fortunately they tend to colonise sunny roadsides rather than the bushland. Words to walk with: Here is an update with info from the Weeds Australia site: Native to central and south-east United States of America ... In Western Australia it is a garden escapee along the roadside between Perth and Albany and it is known in the Blue Mountains in NSW. In Queensland it was first recorded as naturalised in Kingaroy in 1944 and is currently spreading as a roadside weed from Tin Can Bay to the NSW border. It is also abundant in the Stanthorpe district and has the potential to become a major ground cover weed in forested areas in coastal and sub-coastal districts of Queensland and NSW.

The road then descends quickly to the bottom of the mountains and I can see the growing city of Penrith sprawling across the plains below. At its border is the lovely Nepean river and this is where our pictorial drive ends. From here there is a high speed motorway mostly edged by hard concrete, grassy slopes and planted trees. About this point I put on the radio and hurtle along oblivious to Sydney's western suburbs hiding behind the trees.

We are nearing the bottom of the mountains now. This interesting art deco building is at the Airforce Base at Glenbrook.