This is primarily about a return visit to the Dandenong Botanic Gardens, home of the National Rhododendron Collection. When we left Frances said words to the effect of "That was soul restoring." I agreed with this saying in addition "There was room for that!" I shall justify my comment with a note about the first half of the drive towards the end of this post, but let us begin with nice pictures of flowers.
We set off heading for the Cherry Grove passing by the valley, which was just beginning to come into flower (I was expecting that the gardens would not be in full blossom).
There were plenty of rhododendrons out however. The next three images show some of the colours.
Most of them were of the main type. The next image is a Vireya type.
A combination of colours.
When they get going the massed colours are wonderful.
This huge tree was some distance off the path. I think it was a rhododendron.
The attraction of this was the carpet of red petals under the tree.
The beginning of the Camellia garden (with Azaleas in the front).
A sign suggested there were three species in the Genus Camellia: I couldn't remember the one we noted that was not C. japonica so consulted
the website of the International Camellia Society which lists 267 (and counting) species, thereby proving that onanism is not restricted to ornithology. I think the species I was trying to remember is C. reticulata with very large flowers (and presumably a quirk somewhere in its sequence of bases). Here is a sample.
The following section is particularly for my running mate 'Big W' who feels about Magnolias the way I do about taxonomy.
Getting towards the Cherry Grove there were some nice daffodils in front of more Azaleas.
Many, many daffodils at the base of the cherry trees.
The blossom on the cherry trees was not happening yet. In fact, based on a timeline posted at the start I don't think most of the trees are at the stage marking 2 weeks to go! These 4 flowers obviously haven't studied said timeline.
The Protea garden was attractive.
An unusual
Leucodendron.
As well as all the exotic trees and shrubs the indigenous vegetation is also impressive. This is a Mountain Ash (
Eucalyptus regnans).
And these are Ribbon Gums (
E. viminalis).
Having covered the good stuff, I will return to the drive from 505 to the Gardens. We were planning to combine the Gardens with a visit to Aldi at Monbulk to get a load of heavy stuff into the car, rather than lugging it on a tram. The cause of the problems which ensued was crashes on the M1 which meant Google maps did not like the normal route towards Dandenong along Malvern Rd to the M1 at Burke Rd (turquoise arrows).
They offered us 2 choices Punt Rd/Hoddle St to the M3 (red arrows) which I thought I had chosen or something involved St Kilda Rd (Green arrows) which is what Sheila (our Google Maps satnav app) presented us with on departure. Although I had misgivings about such a complicated route we decided to follow it, thinking that the hordes avoiding the M1 may have gone up to the M3 and Sheila was aware of this. (Sheila had also turned off her speakers making life tricky. We resolved that fairly easily just after St Kilda Junction.)
The problems began at Chapel St, (point 1 in the following image) where herself suddenly directed us to do a sharp left. As this might be taking us back to Malvern Rd (remember the turquoise arrows ?) we took it.
Instead of going to Malvern Rd we, and much other traffic, were directed onto the narrow Inkerman St which was very slow. Many turns needed and eventually (points 2 and 3) we ended up on Waverly Rd and passed under the M1, without me noticing this, at point 4. We then got to an appalling intersection where we seemed to be sitting forever. However I saw an Aldi sign and headed for that. After shopping we headed off again for the Gardens. To my surprise we were on the Northern side of the M1 (refer point 4 above)!
It
It is astonishing what a small proportion of the trip got us to Chadstone Village Aldi. Perhaps a quarter of the trip and took us nearly an hour, as opposed to the 31 minutes suggested by Google Maps. Another 40 minutes to the Gardens was close to what it took, quite a bit at a 60km limit. I suspect strongly that Sheila has been "improved"😡😡😡 with AI.
Comments
Post a Comment