Saturday, June 8, 2013

Scatterday - X




This time it is the turn of possibly the most dreaded letter!
Our categories are
# hidden
# famous
# alive
# crosses in quilts.

As you will see, most of my photos were taken during a trip to one venue.

Hidden:
The "O" gate at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne is composed of multiple "X" shapes. Maybe the Xes aren't very hidden, but there is something hidden among the Xes.  Can you spot it?



At each intersection there is a flower medallion, except for one, which features this instead:


Famous:
Xanthorrhoea, or Grass Tree, in the Botanic Gardens. Xanthorrhoeas grow very slowly, so this one must be hundreds of years old. It must have started its life somewhere else, as they are not native to the Melbourne area.

Alive:
Xeriscape of the Arid Garden at the Melbourne Botanic Gardens. When I was a kid I didn't quite believe that cactus plants were alive; they looked to me as if they were plastic.
Another view of part of the Arid Garden. I took these photos last week. I'm including a second photo because on Tuesday night this week someone attacked this garden and chopped down most of the tall cacti. It is hard to understand what would motivate a person to be so destructive. Staff at the gardens will propagate replacements from the chopped pieces where they can, but it will be a couple of decades before the cacti reach the size of those that were attacked.

Crosses in quilts:
Not actually on a quilt, but definitely related to quilts; this is the badge of the online group SCQuilters, or Southern Cross Quilters. Before I joined the group I had often seen the badge on women at quilt shows, and leapt to the interesting conclusion that a lot of nuns are quilters. In my defence, I'd never got close enough to read the small print. From a distance it resembled the badges the nuns wore at a Catholic school I once taught at, so I thought all the women with this badge belonged to another order of nuns!

As usual, you can visit Cinzia's blog to find out how everyone else met the dreaded X challenge.

10 comments:

Dee said...

Congratulations on fulfilling the hardest letter of all. Brilliant choices! ;o)

cinzia said...

Great post. What a low life to be so destructive. I find actions like those really infuriating. It stops others enjoying something and is of no benefit to anyone not even the perpetrators.

Ozjane said...

Lots of lovely individual thought.
My Xenophobia has the explanation otherwise.
Yes I agree Cinzia I was so angry to hear about the desecration of the cacti garden at Melbourne Botanical Gardens.

Birdydownunder said...

one word ... brilliant.
Some folk just dont have any respect.

Sue said...

Great phots and all from the one area. It was terrible what the vandals did to the cacti garden, such a senseless waste.

Vireya said...

My "Please explain" comment on your post was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, sorry!

mitchez2013 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mitchez2013 said...

Sorry about the above the comment jammed and I had to bail! Loved the cacti section of the Bot Gardens and it is now top of my to do list when next in Melbourne. The ironwork, grass tree and cacti are superb. I too am saddened by the vandalism.

Go weed stitch!
Pauline

Wendy said...

Great Post Vireya - (mine was late due to technical issues)I must check out the Gardens - haven't been for a while. Cheers

jacaranda said...

Very clever Vireaya and what a wonderful garden to do your posts from.