Plants and Plants and

There are so many things on this weekend, it is going to be impossible to get to them all.

This morning I had to go to the guild Sit and Sew, because final arrangements were being made for our exhibition next weekend. After signing up for various duties, I spent some time sewing down binding on Bloom. Now I am more than 75% of the way round it.

The local branch of the Australian Plants Society have a flower show and plant sale this weekend, so that was where I headed when my shoulders told me I had sat and sewed enough. The show is at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, so I popped in to look at the conservatory as well, where there is a display of Schizanthus:

 The massed display is beautiful, but the individual flowers are quite lovely too:

They come from Chile, and their common name is poor man's orchid, although they aren't orchids.

The display of native flowers is quite impressive, although I didn't manage to get any decent photos. This might give you a bit of an idea:

 All the flowers on display were grown by members. There must be some amazing gardens out there!

In the sale area there were a couple of commercial growers, and a smaller section which I think were grown by members. Their tubestock was 4 for $10, so here's my haul of 4:

Two very prickly blue devils, Eryngium ovinum, and two austral stork's bills, Pelargonium australe. I've been wanting to get hold of the pelargonium since seeing it flowering in the middle of a Ballarat winter on an excursion last year. I had a chance of buying a decent sized one for $1 when we had our trip to the Brisbane Ranges in September this year, but I didn't have $1 on me. So I'm very happy to finally get my hands on it!