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Portraits of family in the ‘wild’. This was our first camping since last summer (January 2014), so it’s been awhile; and it seemed that everyone was missing it. The time spent outdoor was enjoyed to the max. Dog especially loved to bask in the morning light.
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Nikon D90 | AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G | ISO800 | f/3.2 | 1/20 |
A lamington is a dessert of Australian origin. It consists of squares of sponge cake coated first in a layer of traditionally chocolate icing, then in desiccated coconut. (source: Wikipedia)
Baking Friday is here again. Lamington is one of my family’s favourites, and it’s been quite awhile since the last time I made these babies. As I expected, once my kids found out what I was doing, they came and circling close to me like vultures to dead animals. While they were watching me dipped the cake in chocolate and rolled it in coconut, they begged. Incessantly. I had to ‘let go’ some of the smaller (not perfectly square) ones for them to eat, just to stop the nagging.
I couldn’t blame them, really, because nothing beats freshly baked Lamingtons.
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I read somewhere that the best way to blog is to blog what you know. Today’s post is the total opposite of that, so yeah, I’d understand if you want to leave this page straight away.
Let’s start with the flower in the photo. I did not know what flower it was. At the supermarket I saw them next to the check-out counter and they were on sale, and believe it or not I’ve never seen this type of flowers before. If I had I wasn’t aware of it otherwise I would remember. They looked so attractive to me because of their petals that I thought was quite unusual. I know shit about flowers. But the heart wanted what the eyes saw, and it was only 4 bucks for the tiny bunch, it was the quickest decision made.
I spent a lot of time searching on the web to find out the name of this flower. Asked a friend too by describing the shape, and she’s such a good gardener she could tell straightaway (I confirmed it later). I wished my mom was here, she would know too. I found out that if you know zilch about flowers, it actually was difficult to try to find out the name on the net. I typed ‘white flowers with many petals’ trying to Google it. Stupid I know. And pathetic. Well, tell me something new.
Cut the story short, I finally found out that they are Chrysanthemum, or mums flower. This is what I found in Wikipedia:
“In Australia, traditionally the chrysanthemum is given to mothers for mother’s day, whilst men will wear it in their lapels to honour mothers, as the flower is naturally in season during Autumn.”
There you go. There is so much I don’t know in this world it’s starting to scare me.
Just before you feel sorry for me for not getting any flowers at all last mother’s day, in our house, when it comes to gift giving me, my family knows that chocolate trumps flowers. Any time. Any occasions. Maybe that’s why I know so little about this flower giving ‘tradition’. I feel so enlightened now, that’s the best $4 spent today!
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Today was the last day of school holiday in Canberra. It’s a typical Sunday in the suburb. We drove around a nearby suburb looking for a fast food restaurant for a quick take-away. Too tired to cook, and couldn’t be bothered with more nutritious choice. Good thing I bothered to look up to see this sunset sky, otherwise we will suffer another book cover pattern shot.
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How lovely it was to be back home and found that most of the green trees have changed colours. Someone told me that the reason most of the trees in Canberra are changing colours in autumn is because they are not native Australian trees. These trees were imported from Europe, and Australian trees don’t change colours. I don’t know whether that’s true, I might google it at a later date, but one thing for sure, I LOVE it. I’m grateful for that person who made the decision to plant beautiful trees with changeable colours many many years ago.
At my own house I think we are surrounded by native plants. The leaves of the big tree in front of my house stay green all year round. Major bore. Fortunately, the trees in the neighbourhood are of wider variety. One tree had gone all burgundy red. It’s beautiful. I took a short walk around the corner and was rewarded by this pretty sight. A yellow tree! There was one, much bigger one close to my son’s school which had gone yellow as well, but this week that tree had lost almost all of its top leaves (totally missed the train on that one). The sun hit the tree just right, I felt so lucky to be there and captured it. Now you all can see it too.