the Arts Trail

This weekend the little town featured on the council's Art Trail - I think there are four towns that do it over successive weekends. It was also the long weekend - and lovely weather - so lots of Canberrans passing through on their way to the coast. We went to the antique / bric-a-brac / collectible fair, where we didn't buy anything, because nobody needs that stuff in their house. We had a look in at the quilts that they'd hung in the library, including one of mine, very exciting. All the shops were open for once so we wandered down the main street in the sunshine and popped into shops we haven't been into before. Normally you could shoot a cannon down the street with no risk of injury so it was fun to see everyone out and about. 

The garden continues to bloom and blossom. This tree (an apple? possibly?) is gloriously covered, along with the pom pom tree.

We think this is a Persian lilac. I pruned it not knowing anything about it in the winter, which turns out to be the right thing to do, and it's making very pretty flowers which smell lovely. 

The grass is sprouting slightly - it may die off in the late summer Dad, but it's got to be better to have something there than nothing? I will do more remediation in autumn and compare success rates. 

And here is another before and after; this one the bottom rose bed (we are calling it the 'agapanthus bed' even though there are agapanthus in every bed). It was impossible to weed in any normal sense so I had to mattock off the top layer of grass and soil with no respect for the agapanthus ... bulb chips flying everywhere. They will recover, and the roses seem happier to have some space even if their shallower roots did get a bit mattocked. The before shot isn't even proper before - I had pruned the roses - which were all well over ten feet tall. It was insane.

On Sunday I went to some more arts trail things while my husband went to pick up number one and girlfriend who came out to see us and stay the night. Which is very exciting, they are always super busy but it's so lovely to have them come and see us when everything is looking so pretty. Number one had been at an aerospace conference in Sydney so we heard all about that, sounds amazing (what we could understand, which wasn't much).