Today Flash and I had to get out of town, high tail it to the hills and get some FRESH AIR, so we drove through the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, to Lithgow, back around to North Richmond and home to Sydney, on the way we stopped at Mt Tomah Botanical Gardens...kind of accidentally, but in a serendipitous kind of way.
We only had an hour before it closed, but it was great, we had tea on the verandah overlooking this scenery, the colours of the hills changed as the clouds moved over them.
We ordered lime coconut cake ,scone bread pudding and a pot of Earl Grey...the cake was like a polenta cake, very tangy with long coconut threads, it came with clotted cream on the side, the pudding was made from ( yesterdays) scones with lots of dried fruit and spices (cream too) we ate half each and then swapped...we are civilised that way!(please note I did not take a photo of the food...I was tempted too, it was served beautifully on a circle of banana leaf...Flash drew the line at me taking photos of food in a restaurant)
Off we wandered, there are lots of different areas...Gondwana Forest, Rock gardens, herb gardens, NZ garden,Asiatic garden ( which will look amazing in a couple of weeks) etc etc...we have to go back for another look.
I was very taken with the number of red and pink blooms, my taste seems to be moving away from blues, towards red...I have always seen blue as calm and red as vibrant...what does this mean I wonder ? anyway, here is a taste of some of the beautiful spring flowers
The chocolate red of these tulips was striking and sophisticated...ah I miss my garden. They had many dye-plants, madder, indigo and another I can't remember the name of ...it yields a golden dye..."dyers something"
Glorious frothy flannel flowers, one of my favourite Australian natives, I can't resist their velvety softness and abundant blooms.
After the gardens we drove through Bilpin...home of the mountain apple! if you get a chance head out there for some sweet crunchy pink ladies and apple pie...every roadside fruit stall sold apple pie, and they all smelled delicious.
