petals in the park

Another weekend, another excursion involving too much sunshine...

Petals in the Park at the Botanic Gardens...

But this time I'm not sunburned ("sun kissed" maybe and with Vitamin D up to my pretty blue eyeballs... but not burned)... yaaay me! Well, me with some help from about two inches of sunscreen covering every possible inch of my exposed flesh as well as my cowboy hat (which managed to start falling apart already, even though I've only worn it about half a dozen times and only got it last Christmas)...

Of course, the weather did choose today to be over 30°C (33.5 to be exact... although it only got up there at around 2:30 or so, well after we'd left the Gardens) so the sunscreen and hat were definitely on the required list... and there's going to be more of the somewhat unseasonally hot weather to follow tomorrow.

To be honest it was all a bit lame... the Petals thing I mean... there were like half a dozen "art and craft" stalls, if that... probably only one actual food stall (a couple of booze stalls... probably not the best plan given the sunshine), and a couple of random artists. Although it was all for charity, and only really cost a "gold coin donation" and even that wasn't required...

There were, however, faeries...

Seriously... there's two of them in the photo up on the right, with the white shirts and the barely visible wings. Boy faeries too...

According to the website, "performing artists will bring a charming element to the garden by playing fantastical characters who engage in organic theatre within the Enchanted Garden throughout the day"... which basically meant that four guys and a girl in semi matching outfits, face paint and fairy wings were wandering about smiling and people and smacking small children with fake roses... okay, maybe not that last bit so much.

They were of the pretty though... three of the four boys anyway... even if the one on the right side in the photo does seem to be wearing a female faerie's costume... I saw it up close, and trust me... it was a dress... so I don't know quite what that was about... maybe they were expecting more girls and had to improvise. They were still cute though.

Also cute, but in a different way, was one of the little arty-crafty bits... there was a girl who did, among other things, these little teeny tiny dragons made out of that modelling clay stuff that dries completely hard (or you have to bake or something)... Flymo, Plymo, Fleemo, Nemo... Fimo, that's it... Fimo Polymer Clay. And it's no secret that I have a thing for teeny tiny dragons... and these were just SO damn cute. But there was one... a little "fire dragon" in this kind of bronzey colour that I just fell in love with... so he's now currently residing in the abyss known as "Away For Christmas". She also makes seahorse brooches, so I might have to get her to make one specifically for Ma for Christmas... something in pink, purple and grey maybe...

But of course, there is only so much time you can spend looking at roses and faerie boys (however cute they might be) and little clay dragons all the while listening to questionable entertainment on the stage (while we were there it was "Snap's Kakadu Club", which is "a children’s show featuring an award winning ventriloquist" which pretty much made me want to either carve out my own ears, or else find a handy sharp stick to inflict lashings of pain upon said ventriloquist... I'm sure the kids loved it but she was just trying far too hard)... so we wandered away into the rest of the Gardens in search of things to photograph... and some shade.

As Ma commented at some point, "what is it with us and the Botanic Gardens... either it's pouring rain, or else it's boiling hot". And she has a point... although I did point out that it must be her, since I've managed a turn around the Gardens without rain or excessive heat...

Anyway, there was much wandering about and the taking of the photos until we had kind of been everywhere we wanted to be and seen everything we wanted to see... so after a quick reprise of the rose garden and a little additional ogle of at least one of the faerie boys (although I don't remember which one... possibly the one in the "dress" since he did have some nice, if sparse, chest hair action happening inside the neck of his faerie outfit), we went in search of some luncheon.

We ended up going to Norwood again... it's not really that far away from my place (and about halfway between my place and the Botanic Gardens... ish), and there's slightly more to choose from than around my place (or, maybe not... but I'm more familiar with the stuff closer to home, and hence, more easily bored by it)... so off we went.

There wasn't really that much of a decision making process when we got there... okay, there was a bunch of sitting around on a bench for a while having no idea what we really wanted to eat, but knowing that we didn't want anything hot... but we just kind of gravitated to a place we nearly went last time, a little place in one of the "arcades" called Uncle Arthur's (and for those Australian readers who remember a certain comedy show from the late eighties, not THAT Uncle Arthur)... and I got a Chicken Caesar Salad... which wasn't bad... not the BEST Caesar I've ever had, but not bad... little heavy on the cos (romaine) lettuce... but then I'm so over "standard" lettuce.

But after the salad, a glass of freshly squeezed apple and celery juice (really, really nice... a sweet top note from the apple, but with a slightly "salty" base note from the celery... very tasty) and a piece of apple pie, I was pretty much done foodwise. I still am a little bit... mostly because I can't make a decision about what the hell it is I want, or what will satiate me or appeal... who knows... I'll make something up later... maybe a sandwich.

As we were on our way back in the general direction of the car I ran into a woman I used to work with (actually that's probably something of an ungenerous classification... we were more than just workmates I guess... more like that kind of workfriend crossover thing... where you work with them, but they're also something of a friend and somebody you see outside of work)... and however unkind it might seem (and however much it might seem like the pot calling the kettle pigmentally enhanced), my first thought on seeing her was "Damn, but you got fat!"... not like circus freak fat... but her face was a hell of a lot rounder than I remember it being. Course, the same could probably be said for me too.

She always was a little like a slightly overcaffinated something-or-other... and trying to catch up on probably about seven years (maybe slightly less) worth of history didn't help... or at least the Readers Digest version of said seven years.

That was pretty much the end of the day actually... we went back to the car, came back here, Ma went home and I watched the end of Art:21 (Art in the 21st Century) which is this groovy documentary series on what I suppose you could call "modern artists" (mostly Americans). I watched a previous series a few years back (although the series they're currently showing is from back in 2005 anyway), but with Ma and I doing all this excursioning on Saturdays I've never gotten around to seeing the most recent ones. Shame really, because I quite enjoyed the previous season... and the episode I caught today. Maybe I need to start setting the VCR or something...

Anyway, once that was over I came in here... and now here we are...

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