Twenty Four

Temperature data:
10/11/2017   27.7   orange
9/11/2017    23.4    yellow
8/11/2017    18.3    green
7/11/2017    12.9    aqua/teal
6/11/2017    14.9    aqua/teal
5/11/2017    14.3    aqua/teal
4/11/2017    13.3    aqua/teal

It is interesting seeing the colours gradually change:

The week ahead might be the first without aqua. And might see the first appearance of red.
Linked to Sarah's Weekly Weather Report.

Castlemaine Botanic Gardens

Weeping elm planted in the 1870s at the front gate:

Lake Joanna:

A sea of nepeta, humming with bees:

A pair of Australian wood ducks (Chenonetta jubata) with their ten ducklings:

Enjoying the shade on a warm day.

Growing Things

Zinnia seeds germinating in the greenhouse:

Triffid-like giant echium, grown from seed last year, now over 2m tall and still growing:

Friesia rose:

Coral Charm peony:

Cup Day Rose

Just as well the race isn't run here. This is the only rose in the garden today:

Just Joey. 

There are lots of buds all round the garden, but just this one opening today.

I do have a peony, though!

Although I may have mentioned that once or twice before.

Quiet Day

After all the excitement of the weekend, today was a day to take it easy.

My peony opened further:

And I finally started hand-stitching the binding I sewed on nearly a month ago.

Wrapping Up the Show

A few shots around the quilt show before we pulled the whole thing down again:

Christmas table runners:

I didn't do any demonstrations today as I was just too tired. Yesterday the first paper-foundation one went quite well, but the next time I did it was not so good. And no-one was interested in demos on EPP.

Yesterday I met up with 2 friends from Melbourne who came to the show. A report and some great pictures from one of them here. I also spent time with my sister who came along later in the afternoon. But I couldn't persuade my mother to come, either yesterday or today. I took my quilts to show her on my way home tonight, so at least she saw them.

The quilt these people are admiring came second in the viewers' choice:

It is a lovely version of Wendy Williams' "Birdsville" pattern.

What I didn't realise when I took that picture was that in the background there are a couple of surprise visitors. A couple of members of the quilting group I used to attend at my local Neighbourhood House in Coburg had made the trip to Ballarat without warning me. I was overjoyed to see them! After they had seen all the quilts the three of us went for a coffee at a nearby cafe, and caught up a bit on happenings since we last met. Spending time with them made my day!

Below, the quilt to the left of my "Berry Delicious" was the winner of the "Circles" challenge last year. This isn't a great shot of it. It looks a lot more colourful in real life.

Finally, my version of last year's Bonnie Hunter mystery, and a few of its neighbours in the show:

During the week Bonnie released the colours for the next mystery.  One of her colours is aqua, the most common colour in my year quilt so far. (Both yesterday and today have been aqua days - see all those coats and jackets on the quilt show visitors.)  Another of the colours is coral. Here's my "Coral Charm" peony this morning:

Beautiful!

Pulling down the whole show and packing everything away took much less time than putting it up did. In a bit over an hour it was done. I am exhausted. I think I will need a couple of days to recover.

Frost in November

The weather forecast for this morning was "possible frost". So last night the tomatoes were moved back into the greenhouse. I took down my hanging baskets and moved them under the back verandah:

I put upturned pots over all my dahlias, which I optimistically planted out in the garden last week:

This morning at about 4 o'clock, I looked at the weather station and saw that it was 0 degrees outside. I started to worry about all the salvias that have sent up so much new growth this spring. So at that rather ridiculous time I was out in the garden doing this:

Covering a garden bed with 5 metres of fabric!

And there was actually frost, as you can see in this shot of part of the rose garden later in the morning:

But hopefully not enough to damage those daylilies which didn't get any protection.