The House(s) of Fran_mart

 Excuse the boring title but that was all I could think of.  Dawn on Sunday gave a nice view of Mount Ainslie to the North. The light also revealed interesting marks on the window.  I assume these are bumpers on the swinging stages as the guys remove and replace the cladding.  Probably not a good idea to wash the windows until the cladding project if finished. Our morning walk started with a pretty Magnolia in Glebe Park. Passed through an alley in Reid (notable for the signs about dog poop)  .. .. and past some good topiary in a garden in the Northern section of the suburb. Frances returned to Lifeline Book Fair while I went for a walk to Justice Robert Hope Park.  Few birds around but it was good to get three species of Acacia in flower in one image.  I think they are A. ulicifolia; A. baileyana and A. melanoxylon . Bad news for the local frogs! A flowery street scene in Watson.  Note that the heads-up display on my windscreen shows the 50kph li...

 Not an uncommon situation for me!  The morning began for previously stated reasons with a walk through the nearby suburb of Reid.  I think it is unique in not having (and neve having had) a retail centre: Civic is supposed to fill that void. This egregiously out of focus shot (and we will return to egregiously bad shots later) still illustrates my belief  that 'Reid' is a Ngunnawal word meaning "Country with many Photinia hedges". There are digital signs warning that ANZAC Parade will be closed next Tuesday for some reason.  I think these marquees indicate the site, but I was having great trouble finding out what the event is!  It turns out it is because of opening/installing/whatever the  Australian Peacekeepers Memorial: interestingly this didn't show up in the list of NCA road closures but is on that site under "Parking"!  NCA is the most incompetent in public administration in OECD countries. Back into the suburb and we approached a house whe...

 This includes our visits to the Book Fair and Kelly's Swamp as well as some views from our apartment. This group of cars on the roof of the Target carpark intrigued us.  It turns out they are Teslas and the Canberra dealership is somewhere on Bunda St.  Possibly a cheap place to park your stock.  I am still surprised there are so many available when most other brands have 6 -12 month waiting lists. As the muppets running Floriade have blocked off Commonwealth Park we are going through Reid on our morning walks, This is a very pleasant thing to do, especially with some flowering street trees. And some flowering garden trees. The weather hadn't improved by the time we got home.  (As I type, I think back to January 2020 when the view was similarly, or worse, restricted but due to bushfire smoke rather than water vapour.) So our second outing was to EPIC to visit the Lifeline Book Fair.  The main arena would probably have caused Thelwell to come over all unnec...

 There is a Lifeline Bookfair this weekend - hopefully  will not be trashed by Sovereign Citizens and other oxygen thieves - so we have come to Canberra to see what we can acquire. The drive up had a few slightly interesting moments.  Not really interesting as in the sense of "may you live in interesting times".  There seemed to be more than usually heavy traffic on the Monaro Highway from Cann River to Nimmitabel.  Some of this was caused by people who didn't seem able to overtake a truck! In this case the truck was fine on the flat or downhill, but dropped to less than 50kph on the uphill bits.  Neither of the other two would overtake.  I was able to get past the truck somewhere after Ando. We stopped at Nimmitabel to hand over a small package we were carrying from one wildlife carer to another.  It was in a plain brown envelope and as Frances said, the other people at Lake William probably thought it was a drug transaction.  (Which it was,...