The House(s) of Fran_mart

 A few more images from our Canberra trip.

 Our morning walk goes through the site of Floriade (and sundry garbage concerts by pop bands).  Unlike the latter appalling events (except the offering by the Oils) thus far Floriade has not led to the entire area being closed off by the goons.  There is still evidence that the Barr Government is aiming for a fence-hire led economic recovery. It was a bit cool as a load of topsoil was delivered.  (That must also be a nice little earner for someone's brother-in-law.) On 22nd we were astonished at the workforce involved.  The ACT must be approaching a negative unemployment rate! A couple more workers and note the instructions about colour.  (Given the ACT Government's predilection for inclusiveness I am surprised that the colours aren't also labelled in languages other than English,) I've filled in a few blanks and returned to traditional values in suggesting how some Alyssum could be used.  (The origin of this idea came about on a run through the area in 1990 when there

 The first image is recording a mistake by me.  When I saw lights in the trees in Glebe Park I assumed that as part of the "improvement" of the Park fairy lights had been installed in random trees. On looking closely, after Frances had made a comment, I realised it was simply the street lights shining down on dead leaves in the trees!  So I then took a look at the true fairy lights in City Walk.  Rather insipid at this early time of day. My birding outing was to Upper Stranger Pond.  I had been aware of this water body from other's eBird activities but never visited it.  As it is just across the road from Isabella Pond (visited several times) that is surprising.  It is also upstream from Stranger Pond: again visited several times. The trip did not begin well with the tyre pressure warning going off in the Jetta (as it had on the drive up.  So into a parking area and change the tyre.  This revealed a screw having inserted itself into the tyre: hopefully a quick - and relat

This starts off in town, with some scenes of the bream fishing competition as seen from our deck.  This was about 0630. A clearer shot about 0650.   Quite a few of the boats had turned their lights off by this point.  By the time the boats actually started  the weather had got really murky.  With that  and the strong wind it would be most unpleasant out on the lakes.  At a rough count there were about 40 boats in the competition:  a slight drop on previous years, but given the chaos that is COVID, not bad. The weather continued to be ordinary as we drove up to Canberra.  I wrote on the weather forum: Basically intermittent light rain from Mallacoota to Cooma. Lots of water lying around in the paddocks once we got out of the plantations South of Bombala, all the way to Cooma (about 100km) . Less water around from Cooma to Canberra. We'd had our usual bet on the temperature at Nimmitabel as we left 13C at 'coota. I went for 7 and Frances for 5. It had only dropped to about 12C ha