Month: August 2025

Garden lights

There’s a carousel going up near the Botanic Gardens car park and a sign by the kiosk says ‘Light Show Packing In’. There is evidence of this happening, but there were no people in sight as I walked through the Gardens on this cold showery day. A sign on the kiosk door said, ‘Meeting in Progress’. Perhaps they were all in there keeping warm.

Later, I saw two events vehicles, one of which seemed to be driven by a brown cocker spaniel grinning cheerfully out of the driver’s window.

A tunnel of flowery lights
This one doesn’t need an electrical connection
The real thing – lit by its own brilliance
Festoons? Not a pirate’s chest full of doubloons?
Real and fake

The Illuminate Show is running for three weeks from 14 August, Thursday to Sunday, 5.45pm to 9.30pm, to cheer us up at the end of winter. $15 single admission, $52.50 for a group of four.

First daffodil

On Tuesday, it looked like this:

Today, the first of August, it looks like this:

Still, I’m not sure we can say it is spring yet. We’re having some very cold days – just 9 degrees Celsius today – and some frosty mornings.

I looked around the garden to see what else was blooming, and spotted the first rhododendron.

As I got closer to get a good shot, I noticed ants on the buds. The bane of my life. They don’t look very alive. Perhaps the rhododendron killed them just as one nearly poisoned my goat once. I treated the buds with eco-oil just in case the blasted blighters are still rampaging.