community garden

There is a community garden in the Adelaide parklands that is run by the Walyo Yerta Community Garden Group in association with the Gilles Street Primary School and the Adelaide South West Community Centre.

It was established in March 2010 and is situated behind Veale Gardens. It forms part of our afternoon daily walks in the parklands. More often than not we pass it on our way to the more open and dog free spaces of the south western parklands.

cabbage

I’ve taken a number of snaps of the garden in passing —of the winter vegetables and the sunflowers.

floating red rose

It’s been around six days since I’ve been on a poodle walk. I’ve been in Melbourne attending a family funeral and taking photos in the Point Nepean National Park, of bathing huts along Port Philip Bay, and freeway overpasses in the CBD.

Last night was the first walk. We went shortly after I returned home.

red rose

The rose was floating in a sculpture pond in Veale Gardens. The ponds have only had running water in them this year –they have been dry during the long years of the drought in Adelaide.

beach erosion

An example of the erosion of the beach at Victor Harbor.

beach erosion

There is constant coming and going of coastlines as quite natural and that this has been going on for decades. It continues today. However, another discernible pattern is being overlaid on this cycle—it is noticeable that the sea is slowly eating into the sand dunes. Some of the low lying coastline where there are holiday houses are vulnerable, and some local councils are starting to take measures to defend, retreat, or block development.

pink gum trunk

A lot of the landscape outside of the conservation parks around Victor Harbor and the Fleurieu Peninsula in general has been stripped bare, and now consists of dairy and sheep farms. The remnants of the native bush can only be found in the roadside vegetation scattered here and there.

trunk, pink gum

It is a pity because the bush is interesting and it supports a biodiverse fauna and flora in its native state. As the farms give way to urban development some people do plant trees; but most of those who built their holiday houses near the coast prefer the panoramic views of the coastline.

cacti

The poodles and I are down at Victor Harbor for a couple of days. The automatic irrigation system for the garden is not working properly and, as it is ten years old, it needs some repair work. This was meant to be done on Monday but the irrigation chap had been held up on another job.

Yesterday, after the walk along the beach, we went exploring the roadside vegetation on the road to the rubbish dump. It’s quiet and it has picturesque views both to the sea and to The Bluff or, more accurately, Rosetta Head.

cacti

We had been along the road before when we’d been exploring the landscape around rubbish dump. I’d taken a picture of this pink gum and farm dam

I was checking out the light for a large format shot of the pink gum, but the sun has shifted and it no longer shines on the tree before it goes behind the hill. So the picture will have to be done in the early morning just after dawn after returning from my Melbourne trip next week.

fungi

The best poodle walks are down at Victor Harbor, which is on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula about an hours drive south of Adelaide. There Ari and Agtet can run and hunt freely once the short walk past the holiday houses is over and we access the field adjacent to the cliffs. We walk along the cliff tops to the various beaches or we climb Rosetta Head.

Just outside our weekender is a heavily tree’d reserve and this constitutes the start of the first section of the short walk. I noticed these fungi on the start of one of our walks. It is from the archives and it was taken in the winter of 2010.

That was a particularly wet winter as the decade long drought had just broken and all the storm water from the houses up on the hill flows through the little reserve then to the seashore.