On Friday last week

 Last Friday Stephanie (my Bubble Buddy) and I met at the Museum of Sydney to view the Coomaditchie exhibition. This was a small but amazing collection of artwork from the people of the Coomaditchie community near Wollongong.

After we had finished at the museum we decided to walk across the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Jeannie Baker exhibition there. On the way we found and unusual plant in the waterplant ponds outside the old glasshouses.

Pinguicula sp. These plants are 'butterworts' - carnivorous American plants. See  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinguicula and 

https://www.californiacarnivores.com/collections/mexican-or-tropical-butterworts

Behind the old glasshouses we found an area that is new since I was last in the area many years ago - Australian Ferns. I've just been weeding out the one below from my own garden where it encroaches into the lawn. It is Adiantum formosum know as Black Stem or Giant Maidenhair.

We both loved the Jeannie Baker exhibition which included all the collages from her book "Desert Jungle". She uses dried plants in her collages that illustrate her books and we were both amazed that she could use real cactus plants. It looks as though she scrapes out the middle and fills it with some sort of stable goo.

After we had finished there we walked across the Domain and had lunch at the State Library and then browsed their latest exhibition "Shot" of photos taken in Sydney since the late 1800s. One set that intrigued us both was a panorama created by a series of photos taken from the tower in a house on the North Shore somewhere near where Luna Park now stands. In this panorama all sorts of landmarks and islands could be identified but of course all the ships were sailing ships. It was worth the time we spent scrolling through the panorama.

We then walked across to St Stephen's for the Friday Music lunchtime recital give by a young lad Bailey on the magnificent organ. Bailey has been a pupil of our organist Mark Quarmby and this year has started tertiary studies at the Conservatorium of Music.

Home then on the train where Stephanie started up a conversation with two young Chinese uni students who were keen to practise their English.

In all it was amazing day and we both went home with broad smiles in our hearts.