Wash Day and the Corpse Flower

Out of necessity and a rapidly shrinking selection of clean clothes, we joined the good Melburnians of Fitzroy in a Sunday morning routine: laundry and brunch.
Fortunately, the Soap Bar launderette made the experience a much more pleasant one than it could otherwise have been. Equipped with the kind of industrial stainless steel washing machines, of the kind familiar from American movies and Levi's advertisements, the Soap Bar is the kind of place that serves Vietnamese coffee, has comfy sofas, plays cool tunes and shows The Life Aquatic while you wait.

Cà phê sữa nóng at Soap Bar launderette

With newly laundered togs, we wandered down Brunswick Street, alighting on Ethos Café for brunch. The sun made a warming  appearance, so we settled on eating outside to the rumble of passing trams.

Brunswick breakfast

Our tour of the area continued through galleries and shops selling vintage clothes and 'upcycled' crafts. It is a fascinating and colourful area of town to while away an afternoon and offers endless inspiration.

Funky Brunswick St

Dropping the freshly laundered clothes at home, we elected to take the scenic walking route south via the Melbourne Cricket Ground and over the Yarra River to the Botanic Gardens.

Yarra River

It was here that we managed to catch (just) the final day of the blooming of amorphophallus titanum - its Latin name giving a suggestive indication to its shape.

Stench blossom

Better known as titan arum, or more infamously as the "corpse flower", owing to its odour when blooming, the enormous inflorescence only lasts  for a few days. The flower was in full bloom and stench yesterday, its smell designed to attract insects that will pollinate it. The botanists at the gardens have tracked its progress long before and, especially keenly, after it came to bud on 12th February, at which point it was not clear whether it would become just a leaf or the towering flower that we saw.

An enterprising company was setting up in the gardens for an outdoor film screening. This was a regular occurrence after dusk throughout the summer, but I thought that this time of year was pushing their luck, as the evenings were becoming cooler. Based on the temperature, but mainly the screening - Fifty Shades of Grey, which even the staff didn't seem interested in - we chose to return home.

Supper

The Baden Powell is closed on Monday, which meant we had no choice to join the revelry. Instead, I picked up a few beers and we settler in for a quiet evening with our own showing of Predestination - a magnificently Escheresque confabulation of a film - and the remainder of yesterday's picnic breakfast.