The Christmas tree in Fitzroy Gardens has borne fruit, well parsley.

It’s just common parsley – not the good Continental stuff – but when you’re short and the shops have closed, it’ll do at a pinch.

It reminds me of those weird planters the council put up at the intersection of Victoria and William Streets and Darlinghurst Road – they had strawberries, although none seemed to make it to fruiting. Still, I’m really into the concept of council decorations that are useful for the locals.

Early this morning, at Fitzroy Gardens in Kings Cross, Council erected a festive Christmas tree, with stars, baubles and power to light up at night.

We admired it this afternoon.

Notice anyone suspicious in the photo above?

Hang on, there is someone lurking around near that hedge.

It’s the tree’s very own 24 hour security guard.

Do Sydney’s other Christmas decorations get the same attention?

Kings Cross’s glorious El Alamein fountain was switched off for a moment this morning.

It gets cleaned a couple of times a week, according to the council worker who flicked the switch.

“You wouldn’t believe what foreign material winds up in here,” he said. “Hungry Jack’s burgers, doner kebabs, you name it.”

He reached up and screwed up one of the fountain’s spokes and on went the water.

Braving the chlorinated breeze, it was a perfect time to capture the fountain without its characteristic splash.

There’s a great big courtyard in the St Margaret’s development on Bourke Street, Surry Hills. It’s occasionally hosted art launches and graduate architecture shows, but there’s a new sign on the wall announcing an application to hold a weekly farmers’ market. The DA says it would be every Saturday from 8am ’til 1pm (set up at 7am and pack down at 2pm), initially with 30 stalls.

It’s great supporting urban agriculture, and I doubt anyone would complain about having access to good, fresh food that’s been grown in the Sydney basin. But how many farmers actually take part in these markets every weekend – is there really enough farming to support yet another?

There are 1050 vegetable farms left in the Sydney basin (according to a NSW Government and Horticulture Australia quoted in the SMH), which is just over half the usual quoted figure of 2000. And the report says it’s falling fast, with current development plans likely to further halve the vegetable growing land over the next 20 years.

That suggests big long term challenges for Sydney in just feeding itself. But in the short term, there are less and less farms, but more farmers’ markets – and it’s a pretty huge time commitment for farmers to drive in from western Sydney, with seven hours from set up to pack down. With the Fitzroy Gardens farmers’ market going strong in Potts Point, do we need another farmers’ market in the neighbourhood?

It’s been a busy week for the guerrilla knitters in Kings Cross.

Three days ago, we caught their yarn going up in Fitzroy Gardens, but they’ve been working around the clock with a crane and a giant ladder, and the results are spectacular.

I love the idea of public art, but all too often the stark modernist blocks and balls in our public squares seem more alienating than intriguing. They stand so defiantly, inscrutable.

I Heart Kings Cross is something quite different. Warm, friendly – probably a bit smelly after all the rain – each piece of crochet and cross-stitch is so obviously made by someone.

It’s glorious and wonderful.

A pair of eyes are ogling across at a bikini-clad pole (that’s at the pedestrian crossing where Darlinghurst Road becomes Macleay Street), and, as if to underscore the knitters’ take on public art, they’ve wrapped one of the discs in Dennis Wolanski’s Angled Wheels of Fortune in a relaxed, loose weave – “Chill out, ’80s sculptor.”

The police station has been drafted, too, and the entire spectacle now stretches a little further down Macleay Street and up Darlinghurst Road, though the focus remains on Fitzroy Gardens.

This is one of the most unexpectedly glorious things I’ve seen in ages. Walk by, if you can.

They’ve been knitting for a month or two, now, in cafes and bars and on park benches, but over the weekend the assembled thread wound its way around Kings Cross.

Centred on Fitzroy Gardens, and the beautiful El Alamein fountain, but extending a little way along Macleay Street and Darlinghurst Road, it’s a project called I Heart Kings Cross, and it’s part of the council’s Art & About program.

The guys behind it, Reef Knot, formed out of the ashes of Knot Gallery four years ago, where the crew had collaborated with designers, musicians, sculptors and painters to create installations for street, art and music festivals.

Inspired by the work of Newtown’s Denise Litchfield, Texas’s Knitta Please, and Stockholm’s Maskerade, they’ve tackled this massive knitting project.

Collectives are springing up all over the place to knit in public places. It’s being called guerrilla knitting, and I reckon its roots are in guerrilla gardening. It’s a little bit political, and a lot about creating sections of spontaneous beauty in sometimes tired neighbourhoods.

We don’t usually post so many pictures, but this is really just spectacular, and every single bit of knitting is worth seeing. We started to feel a little sorry for the trees without woollen cloaks, especially with the current cold snap.