Pictures of paradise
Last thing about Port Douglas. Cordylines and other beautiful plants.
I now know that this absolutely stunning plant on the left here is called cordyline fruticosa - I asked one of the gardeners who told me cordyline, and then I looked it up on the net, and came to the conclusion that the ones growing everywhere in the grounds were varieties of cordyline fruticosa. They are simply amazing. Yes they are that colour - and a whole heap of others too.
On my walks around the grounds this time I took lots of photographs of the plants and trees that I saw. The colours and textures were amazingly beautiful, and what made this holiday for me. I guess I have cropped some of these pictures a bit, but not a great deal, and those colours are real. That plant above looked just like that. So here is a gallery of pictures - I am not on Facebook which might have been a better place to put them, so I thought to put them on here. If you click on the first picture you will get a sort of slideshow - the thumbnails you see here are not the entire picture.
Interestingly these are all mostly leaves, or trees - not flowers although in many ways showier than flowers.
I forgot to say yesterday, that one of the difficulties of the escape notion, even the luxury notion, is that I am extremely lucky to actually be living in a luxury escape here in Melbourne, so why would I want to escape? It's an increasing problem when the places which we would perhaps like to visit, like France and Italy, are so far away. And just to demonstrate that Melbourne too has beautiful plants, I took a few pictures on my walk this morning - shown below. There are not many flowering plants in bloom at this time, and the natural landscape is not as elegant as that in the tropics, but even so this is the time of year when you realise why Australia's national colours are green and gold - because it's wattle time. And as befits the last days of winter, the blossoms of the wild plum trees are in flower promising a bounteous crop around Christmas time. And in the garden - a lone daffodil and a bunch of jonquils. The daffodil photo is a bit blurry, so you've just got the jonquils - or narcissi - I don't know what they are really. So spring like.
Isn't nature wonderful? And those cordylines - very common in Hawaii where they are known as the Ti plant - although they are actually native to south-east Asia - they can be used for food - the root is roasted or steamed and ground - it's sweet, and the leaves can be used as wraps. Then of course you can make alcohol - you can make alcohol from almost anything it seems to me. Those Hawaiian grass skirts are made from it and the leaves are also used for thatching and for making ropes. A very versatile plant.
I ate some of last year's wild plum jam for breakfast today. Yummy. And as I came home I noticed I have a goodly crop of nettles by the gate - maybe I should make some nettle ravioli. I believe they are very, very good.
