Shades of Green: Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens in early summer

Mount Lofty Botanic Garden in early December ... how green it is! 2013 was an anomalous year, so cool and wet.

Starting the easy hike clockwise: the view out over the water catchment dam...

...and to give you a sense of where you are ... the map! Notice the big red "You Are Here" icon.

Halfway along the catchment lake. Look at those water levels, in December!

This was just about the first really warm/hot day of the season...

...step into the shade, and the temperature instantly  fell ten degrees C. Nice!

Down by the "duck pond," with its lily pads and ferns and iris.

Not to mention the alien vegetation that has snuck in here!

Moorhens ... they call this the "duck pond" for a good reason. 

The walk takes you right around the pond, up by the rhododendron gully --

...shady here, cooler, with Seriously Odd Trees. Anyone know what they are??

And though it was hot, a glance at the sky shows that the weather's about to change.

Beyond the pond, at the lowest point in the park is the Bog Garden.

If the rest of the gardens were lush, you know how the Bog Garden was!

Tiny lizards -- baby blue tongues -- were scampering around the rocks -- too fast to photograph!

From the bog garden you climb up steeply, and suddenly you're looking down on the pond.
Catch your breath here before pressing on...

The flowering trees are so beautiful. Ker-choo!

Did we say, shades of green? Don't think we're ever seen Mount Lofty Gardens this green!

Everything was in bloom, in fact, except for --

The roses. Alas, these were almost the only roses blooming. We arrived
about a week after every bush had been hard-pruned. Darn.

Heading back down toward the parking lot ... Dave's sharp eyes spotted this guy:
a wild kangaroo taking a nap in the early afternoon shade.

The hike back takes you to the other side of the catchment dam, and across it...

One black swan seems to live on the dam. This is so odd, because swans always come in pairs ...
they also mate for life. We've seen this swan alone here since 2006. Did he lose his mate? It's a little sad.

Back on the low side of the lake: hang a left for the parking lot --

Hey, the Millennium Possum waited for us! (Either that, or it made it back in the nick of time...)
And we'd worked up an appetite by now. Anyone for lunch?!

Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens is one of those little patches of paradise. It's been open to the public for about 35 years -- something like 250 acres of trees and shrubs from around the world, from the magnolias that bloom in August to the rhododendrons that run amok in October, to the deciduous trees that change color on the Australian fall, say April and May -- and we'll revisit the park soon to share those images.

This trip was one of those "Where haven't we been in eons?" outings ... and in fact, we hadn't been to this particular park in three or four years. Other parks, gardens, national parks -- sure; but this botanic garden is perched almost right at the highest point of the Mount Lofty Ranges.

We were lucky with the weather: it changing that very afternoon, heading back into showers and gray skies, but it held together ... hot, bright, dry ... while we did the whole "easy" hike, clockwise around the park. There's a lot more to the  Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens than what you see here, but unless you're a mountain goat, you might think twice about it!

So, here you have December 11, 2013 ... and for contrast we just have to give you a link. One of the most beautiful travel/photo/adventure blogs on the web is "Jill Outside," which used to be called "Arctic Glass" when Jill Homer lived and worked in Juneau, Alaska. She's not in AK any longer, but all the Alaskan posts are still there in the early part of the blog ... and on December 11, 2009, she posted "There's no way to write it down," a picture essay depicting the Blackberry Ridge area. Contrast? Same day, albeit in different years.

From other years, we have the images of the magnolias (August -- winter), the rhododendrons (October -- spring), and the fall colors (April or May -- autumn), and we'll come back to  Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens in future posts and share them.

Food Fight at Christies Beach!

The Beachside Food & Wine Festival at Christies Beach draws crowds. Big ones...

This was a few days earlier ... not so crowded...

The weather was getting steadily hotter all that week.
Christies Beach looks like the perfect vacation spot.

A long-shot ... this guy was way out on the horizon, and headed out, not in.

The beach was the place to be: camel and pony rides! Dave had wanted to do this, but it was HOT
and the lines were long. So ... another time. 

Camels, green sea and sailing ships. Perhaps only in South Australia!

The One and All is a training ship, built up at North Haven, at Port Adelaide.

The sand sculptures were all finished by now, and on display...

Dave, and the Octopus Garden -- a few days before. Thank heavens we got all our arty pictures before
the food festival: on the day, the thing you saw most of was the back of the guy in front of you!

Sunday was HOT for the food festival itself, and one One and All was just one of many vessels offshore.

Jade soon put away the big camera and switched to the phone for pictures --

In this crush, the Samsung Galaxy camera was just as good! And --

-- the closer to the food you got, the harder it was to find a picture...

...or a place to sit, or get out of the sun.

Wow -- take the picture, quick! There's activity on the beach ... people, and all!

The weather for the Beachside Food & Wine Festival can be summed up in one word: HOT! It was almost the first really hot day of the season, and Christies Beach was hopping. The event usually draws a big crowd, apparently, and this year ... well, if we had to guess, we'd say the organizers were caught unawares.

The perfect weather plus the sand sculpture exhibition, organized by Sandstorm Events, about 15 whole meters away from the first of the food and wine, brought a lot more people than they appear to have expected. You could deduce this from the clues at hand, to quote Mr. Holmes, because ...

Well, no place to park, for a start. We wound up a kilometer away, up a hill. Not enough shade, by a long shot, especially in this kind of heat. Nowhere to sit! Many people (ourselves included) were standing to eat lunch, in the shade of our own hats. Take note, Festival Organizers: think through your parking and seating for the 2014 event!

The One and All was offshore ... she's a training ship, built at North Haven, on the Port River, in 1985 ... see her website right here. And she was only one of many vessels out on the water. You saw everything from kayaks to some of the big fishing charter boats. And on the beach itself, camels and ponies for the kids. And the big kids. Dave would have been on a camel, if the day hadn't been so hot, and the lines had been a tad shorter. The same entrepreneurs organize camel rides at Victor Harbor in the summer, too. Now, there's a thought...

The biggest challenge was the NOISE!!! Heaven alone knows who or what the live band was supposed to be, but they were so far over-amped, with loudspeakers every 20 meters along the waterfront, your whole body vibrated with the "music." Jade quickly plugged the ears with wet tissue, and it was absolutely bizarre: mostly deaf, body vibrating fiercely. Note to Festival Organizers: turn it down a  bit next year!

Dave got some very nice local wines (including a Moscato to die for), and we had Korean and Spanish food (spring roll, kebabs, paella), and Jamaican lime tea, which were nice. The food was along the lines of "ethnic fast food" -- interesting, gave you a chance to try something you wouldn't ordinarily have.

So Jade quickly put away the big camera and switched to the Samsung Galaxy's little 5MP camera, built right into the phone. All the longer shots you see in this post were done with the Fuji Finepix HS10; the last five images -- people; and that one shot of the beach -- are from the phone! Thy don't have quite the resolution of the "real" camara, but dang, it's handy to be able to take simple shots from the palm of your hand!

Will we do the event next year? Hmmm. Depends ... on the weather, the parking, and the band. Put it this way, if you're cruising half a mile away, looking desperately for anyplace to park the Millennium Possum, and the band sounds loud even from there -- keep right on cruisin' and go for coffee. You could do worse than The Boat Shed, at Hallett Cove, and we'll take you there in an upcoming post.

Sand Sculptures at Christies Beach - Part Two

Sand sculptures at Christies Beach -- late November, 2013 ... beautiful!

Christies Beach is also the perfect venue. For a start -- check out the beach. And the weather...
Note: the beach is empty. Imagine if this were Europe.Woo hoo!

It was also perfect boating or fishing weather ... loads of boaties were out, with a line in the water...

...but we were here for this: the Sand Sculpture Exhibition,
with the theme of "Under the Sea."

If you're wondering how the work is done -- read this!
Might even have a go myself...

Sand sculpture really is art, even if it's sadly temporary...

The work in progress. This artist is working on the "Santa Clause House, which unfortunately
wasn't finished till after we'd left...

...and this will give you an idea of the scale of these works. They're big.

Time for a dip, to cool off? The day was absolutely perfect. So --

A walrus ... sculpted in sand. This is so cool.

I was so impressed with the detailing in the sculptures. The artists came from Canada and Europe for
this event; Sandstorm Events stages them in many places...

Here's the flag carrier, displaying the "Under the Sea" theme...

Raptures of the Deep -- sculpted in sand. So pretty!

Perfect weather and beautiful sculpture came together to make this a terrific display -- and they were very lucky with the weather. Days before, November had been much more like September: inclement would be a kind way of putting it. But summer came to South Australia almost without warning, and it was a day for hats and sunblock! Here ... "for those who came in late" ... we're at Christies Beach, which is a metropolitan beach on the west side of Adelaide, which sprawls north-south along the east side of the Gulf St. Vincent. Okay, now you know where you are!

If you're wondering how sand sculpture is done, do take a moment to read the billboard, which explains the process. You might have to view the image at full size to be able to read -- but it's interesting.

The scents of frying sausages and onions were tantalizing, wafting along the foreshore from what we call a "sausage sizzle" ... a barbecue set up in a pergola, with lashings of all the food that's probably very bad for you, and smells so divine in the open air. They set up these barbecues to torment you. They do it deliberately ... also to raise money for charity and local groups.

So we had a fine time, took about three hundred pictures of which you're seeing a tiny fraction in these posts (but the right fraction), and then went for coffee to the Blu C Cafe, only about two hundred meters away ... which I didn't get a shot of, because we'd left the big cameras in the Millennium Possum, down on the waterfront. So -- Ma Google to the rescue here. Again. I did have my phone with me, though, and the two-year-old Samsung Galaxy has a 5MP camera built in. So long as you stay away from the digital zoom, which tends to turn images to soft, grainy crap, you can get very nice pictures. So, when the coffee arrived, how could I resist, especially when it looked like this:

Monjava cappuccino at the Blu C Cafe ... now, that's pretty! 

Oddly, though, the coffee wasn't startlingly good on the tongue: it's Monjava, which doesn't have that knockout richness we've come to demand, and expect (and before anyone says anything: it's some folks' favorite, so ... each to his own, right?). It was nice, though -- and the cafe is very pleasant, just a short walk up from the beach. So --

Tomorrow I'll share the "food-fight" which took place on the Saturday, about three days later. See you then!