I do enjoy a walk over the weekend and do prefer going into the local national park. Today is election day in Australia-between home and the national park are a couple polling stations, meaning annoying traffic in the area-something I don’t want to deal with on a weekend. This is why we went walking around our local streets.
The trees in the three pictures below are called fried egg plants, or Gordonia axilaris. These slow growing small trees are used quite a lot as street trees in my local area and I think they are beautiful trees. Dark green leaves, flowers that vaguely look like fried eggs and really nice almost orange bark, which is my favourite feature of this tree. They are great shade trees too.
Possibly lemon-scented gum, possibly not-I just saw gum tree leaves and thought that’s always good to see so I’ll grab a photo of that. There are lots of big, native trees in my area and that’s one of the things I love about living here in the northern suburbs of Sydney, it’s a very green part of the city.
I love walking past this particular house as they have put some actual thought into the nature strip outside their house, as well as their garden. Instead of just grass they have flowers and gravel which makes it interesting (although I think the ‘grass’ may be plastic, you can’t have everything).
Again, gum trees are my favourites, so here is another against the lovely blue sky we had today.
This tree is some sort of Melaleuca, or paperbark. I’m not sure on the specific species but the bark is the interesting part of these trees as the bark does look a little like paper.
This is some form of pine tree. There is one or two of trees like this around the area and I really like them. I do like them, and their habit which is slightly weeping. They provide nice dappled shade too-even better in my book!
A random willow tree with a random gum tree in the background. While not native, willows remind me of my native England.
Many streets around the suburb are leafy like this one. To be honest, I do wish there were a few more.
As is common around here, all the gullies have been left as nature intended, due to the steeply sloping sides. I love all the healthy looking tree ferns-they look far healthier than many in the gardens I come across!
Several streets have these lovely old plane trees along them. While rather messy at certain times of year due to being deciduous, they are fabulous for the shade they provide in the summer-a fabulous thing on those awful forty degree days!
These are some of the favourite spots on my 7.5km walk through the streets of my local area. It was a lovely day for a walk and thankfully not too hot!