The House(s) of Fran_mart

 The day started with me playing a couple of social croquet matches.  In the first myself and my partner had much higher handicaps than our opponents so were happy to fight them to us losing 6-5 (we ran out of time).  The second was a much closer match-up and after a slow start (my - different - partner and I lost the first 2 hoops) I hit a jump-shot on hoop 11 to win 7-4.   Then a visit to the dentist and back to the Croquet Club for a competition game.  My opponent was a relative new player but seen as very competent.  And so it was.  Basically she bashed me all around the lawn with very good roquets; a couple of hoops I should have run got in the jaws (and were duly whacked out) and a 3 metre jump-shot knocked her ball through while running the hoop 🤬🤬🤬.  So 1- 7 was a fair result. On the other hand the sunset was pretty spiffy. Early on the next morning the moonset was also interesting as it included Black Mountain Tower. That was shor...

 On the 15th we started with a walk in Commonwealth Park as it is a little longer than our walks in Reid and we wanted to do most of our outdoors stuff before it got hot.  On the way we noted this new crane, which looked very colourful against the blue sky. In the park this tree appealed.  I suspect it is some form of smokebush. The traffic seemed busier than it has been recently.  Canberrans must be coming in to their office for Christmas parties!  Comments at the Croquet Club also referred to heavier traffic and on16 December the Target carpark was full for the first time in many months.  I thought this to be an interesting art installation.  On closer inspection I think it was a planted tree that had blown over but left in this manner: perhaps art baisse? The next image shows where the top of the falling tree ended up. To avoid the worst of the heat we went to Kelly's Swamp.  There were lots of baby fowl around.  The first is an Australian...