A trip down memory lane!

One of our most favourite places from our first visit to Melbourne was the allotment site down in St Kilda. It used to be a peanut farm but it is now a community allotment garden with art studios along one side. It's a completely crazy place and my post of 21 June 2012 shows quite a number of photos to illustrate the point. This is no average allotment site.

With only a small apology for the number of photographs shown now, I hope you enjoy this second jaunt around St Kilda's Community Gardens!

Last year this lady was wearing some grassy headgear - not quite sure what this arrangement is meant to be but it's made of rope.

Tansy girl!

A rather wonderful gate into the ground has appeared over the last year and it has some beautiful yellow resin pears dripping from it's rusted steel tendrils.

There were not a huge number of vegetables growing on the site, possibly because summer is nearing its end here. I saw a few French beans, purple beans and rather more runner beans than my harvest last year (just one!!!!), a butternut squash that was quite literally the size of a baby hippo, some small white aubergines, herbs and various other bits and pieces.

There is a buzzy bee in this photo. If you are good at 'Where's Wally? you will be able to find it easily!

There was one cool and summery corner of the gardens which had wonderful zinnias, white cosmos and it reminded me of my grandmother, she loved zinnias, and a summer's day in an English garden. It was lovely.

I don't think much gets past these two!

How I would LOVE to be able to grow basil like this - armfuls of the stuff.

There's even a kitchen for the Aussie faction of the Borrowers!

I love the freedom of expression on this allotment site. Lots of little tiny details as well as big crazy artistic statements, all mixed up with flowers and vegetables. It makes your heart sing.

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In a vase on Monday - colour

The intense colours in my vase this week come from nasturtiums, sweetpeas and a single glorious zinnia! Their beauty and love of life speak for themselves and need no further words from me! Enjoy!

Colonsay postcards - on arrival

The first thing I do, once we have unpacked our car, which has been groaning with all the stuff we need for a week's stay in the holiday cottage, is head for the outer gardens of Colonsay House. It is a place of wonder for me! I particularly love the leaves of the giant rhododendrons. There are many different varieties, all planted in the early 1930s. The outer gardens are generally overgrown, having had little tending over the decades. That makes them even more magical! The old woodmill falls apart a little more every year, but that's fine by me because I love corrugated iron and especially if it's rusted! And of course the bees. Colonsay's beekeeper, Andrew Abrahams, has one of his apiaries on the edge of the pine wood. So lovely - the hum of busy bees and the heady smell of the pines. We are here - finally! Delayed by four months by the wretched virus, but now I am on holiday! Hooray!

Found items IAVOM

I am on holiday on the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay. It is my happy place. Thoughts of Colonsay rattle around in my head each and every day I am not here! I haven't got a vase to share this week but some lovely things I have found over the past few days, which are just as beautiful as a vase of flowers! I hope you agree! Here are some leaves of giant rhododendrons, growing in the outer gardens of Colonsay House. Some skeleton leaves of magnolia. The dried stem of a kelp seaweed. A couple of conkers (can never resist those!), and a branch heavily populated by a number of lichens. The air on Colonsay is so clean that lichens flourish here!

the running wave

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