The Middle of Summer

Enjoying a damp summer with milder days and still the chance to spend time at the beach. Here is a selection of images from the past few weeks. Have been going daily down to Merewether and Bar Beach for a bit of variety. Here the girls are at the end of a marathon swimming and running session - they have simply exhausted themselves. It was the last shot I took before we packed up for home.

The End of a Long Day at Bar Beach

At the beginning of October we planted a handful of butternut Pumpkin seeds, and when we saw how quickly they sprouted and spread, we sought out some watermelon seeds and put them in alongside.  The site is this waste ground at the back of our house where grass clippings and garden waste has been dumped for decades (since the house was built in the seventies) and just weeds have been growing.

I had struggled with weeding it or whether to poison and never really got on top of it, until we thought of the idea of planting some rambling pumpkins and watermelons!  The idea was that the melons would out compete the weeds of we planted them right and we might also grow some worthwhile fresh veggies as well.

A watermelon or (pumpkin?) seedling day three.

It didn't take long for the plants to thrive and they have covered the whole area quite thickly, and the sail-like leaves of the pumpkin meshes neatly with the frilled leaves of the watermelon.  They have greened the whole sloping site, roughly half a tennis court, and we are eagerly anticipating the bulging pumpkins and melons as they swell with all the rain

Watermelon leaves have this pinnate structure

So I have finally relented and purchased a digital SLR camera and am now taking much more control over the images I produce.  Only problem is the images are so large and slow to load on blogs etc.  The wife has decided to do a SLR course at WEA so it will be great for shooting products not just learning by trial and error.

Native Violets in the front Garden

OK, will be posting a bit more often now we are all back in work mode...