Category: flowers

Australia · Changes · daughter · family · flowers · granddaughter · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · realities · spring · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley

No Mountain Today …

Joanne15 Comments

Today I haven’t seen Mount Warning at all, not even for a second. There is no rain about, so I can’t blame the whiteness on distant rain. The day has been warm, dull, and humid, so perhaps it is heat-haze. It has also been extremely windy all day, so my granddaughter and I couldn’t even enjoy some time in the garden today while she was visiting. So indoors we remained, playing with farm animals, reading books, and watching some cartoons on TV. It is easy to keep Aurora occupied, both indoors and outside, and she is wonderful company. I must admit to being a tad tired tonight though after a whole day with my lovely little visitor.

Considering the lack of an interesting mountain photo today, it is a good opportunity to share a couple of photos taken during the past week. First I have a photo of a cute little Honeyeater who visited my back garden recently. If it wasn’t for the rustling of the palm leaves, I wouldn’t have known he was there.

The gum tree the trio of Kookaburras are perched in is right down the back of our garden. I realised these three were there when they had a laughing competition with another group of distant kookaburras. I’d love to know what they were saying to each other.

The last photo is from May. I came across this photo when looking for flower photos for The Week of Flowers posts, so saved it as an extra to share this week. It is a beautiful bunch of flowers my daughter – Aurora’s mummy – gave me for my birthday.

So here we are, the 30th of November, the last day of spring. It is with a touch of trepidation that I will turn the page of my calendar tomorrow morning to the first day of summer. Every year, I try to find positive aspects of my least favoured season of the year, and by the end of summer I always look back and think the heat wasn’t as difficult to cope with as I imagined it would be. It’s a bit like a visit to the dentist really, an unpleasant thought until it’s over. Once again, I have my fingers crossed that we will have rain without floods and heat without melting! I learned many years ago that when living in a subtropical climate, it’s useless wishing for no extreme heat and no cyclonic rain. Mother Nature will do as she does regardless. 🙂

 

Australia · challenges · colours · flowers · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · photography · spring · subtropical weather · sunset · The Week That Was · Tweed Valley

A Week of Flower ~ Day 7

Joanne6 Comments

Oh no, it’s the last day of Cathy at Word and Herbs challenge, A Week of Flowers! I have enjoyed sharing my flower photos so much this week, although regular visitors know that I share garden photos often. Flowers seem to speak a Universal Language of Friendship and Caring, so I will continue to post photos of my garden often. I love Cathy’s suggestion that A Week of Flowers might become an annual event, so I will definitely participate in future years as well. 🙂

Today I am sharing two of my favourite Grevillea photos. Our Grevillea is a small native tree that we planted about 26 years ago, and every year, without fail, we have a mass of beautiful nectar-filled, pale yellow flowers emerging like delicate spiders legs. Our native birds love the Grevillea tree, especially Noisy Miners, with their yellow beaks and eyes. Don’t they colour-coordinate beautifully with the flowers?

Going from the extreme of a small tree to a ground cover, tiny Alyssum flowers are another success story in my subtropical garden. Technically an annual, Alyssums self-sow each year, so I never know where in the garden a new plant may pop up!

Husband and I went out shopping this afternoon as husband needed to go to our local hardware store, which just happens to have a plant nursery attached. 🙂 I came home with several pots of annual seedlings which I will be planting in the cool hours of tomorrow morning, mostly in large pots situated on our back patio. I bought a large tray of ten Alyssums, far too many for the pots, so I will plant the extras along the border of a garden bed in my front garden.

Tonight we had another strikingly gorgeous sunset-orange western sky over Mount Warning. It was another warm day today – parts of Australia are experiencing a heatwave – and as a result, the valley spent the day veiled by a misty heat-haze. Tonight, however, the sun’s rays burnt away the haze and shone brilliantly across the darkening sky.

Thank you so much, Cathy, for the opportunity to be challenged to share flower photos every day for a week. Searching through flower photos to share, and meeting more like-minded flower fanatics who also shared their glorious flower photos certainly brightened my days, and I hope my photos brought some joy to people as well. ❤

Australia · clouds · colours · flowers · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · spring · subtropical weather · sunset · Tweed Valley

A Week of Flowers ~ Day 6

Joanne13 Comments

Cathy’s Week of Flowers at Words and Herbs is going way too fast. Here we are at Day 6 already! What is it they say … time goes fast when you’re having fun? This week certainly is fun. 🙂

Last year, I started choosing more drought tolerent plants for my garden. One of the first plants I chose was Gaura, which have adapted well to my subtropical garden which is rich in volcanic clay loam soil. I love the dainty flowers – and so do the bees! – so I planted more Gauras early this spring. This morning when I took these photos, my flower garden was abuzz with activity!

Some Daisies (but not all) are happy in my garden as well, and cope very well with the summer heat. Several years ago I planted this pretty lilac variety, and every once in a while I give them a harsh cutting back, usually when they try to take over the garden bed! In August, when this photo was taken, I had a patch of daisies about three metres long by two metres deep, and they looked just beautiful in full bloom! After the flowers had seen better days, I pulled out a few wayward runners and dead-headed the remaining plants. Within a week or two I expect to see the plants blooming profusely again.

My bottlebrush (Callistemon) is one of the first shrubs I planted in my garden after we built our house over 26 years ago, and it is still going strong. Callistemon is endemic to Australia, and a favourite with our small native honey-eating birds. This photo was taken in August as well, when the garden was springing to life after a brief winter rest.

Today the weather has been pleasantly warm and sunny, and in the early part of the day Mount Warning – the Cloud Catcher – lived up to its Indigenous name by “catching” a passing cloud.

Tonight, the darkening view across the valley, complete with orange sunset sky, looked equally as stunning.

Australia · Changes · flowers · Mount Warning · renovations · seasons · son · spring · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley

A Week of Flowers – Day 3

Joanne20 Comments

We had another dull, but warm weather day today as spring winds down for another year. We usually have several storms during our subtropical summer, and just as I began to type this post, I heard the first clap of thunder rolling around the night skies.

For Day 3 of Cathy’s Week of Flowers, I looked back on photos I had taken earlier this year and found several I had taken in May. My youngest son gave me a huge bunch of flowers for my birthday, and he had chosen some stunning flowers to include. He called the photo above a “Cabbage Rose”. Whether or not that is what this unusual flower is called I really don’t know, but the description certainly suits the flower.

The three photos above were all the same bunch of flowers – such variety!  🙂

If you look carefully at the last photo you will see the faintest outline of Mount Warning. I took this photo quite early in the day, and the view of the mountain became even fainter, if that’s possible, this afternoon. Perhaps tonight’s rain will wash away the haze and I will have a clearer image of the mountain to share tomorrow.

As for the new floor, it’s getting there. There’s just a few details that need finishing tomorrow, but hopefully by Thursday I will be able to clean up the dusty layer covering every surface of the house and turn the room back into my own.

I just love the new floor! It’s so lovely to walk on and it will be easier to clean than carpet.

I think the poor man laying the floor for us hadn’t planned on returning for a third day, but he’d worked a long day and thinks he’ll have the job finished within a couple of hours. Husband and I both agree he’s done a wonderful job for us and has taken great care to give the floor a smooth finish, which we appreciate very much.

It will be interesting to see how the rooms comes together now. I’m on a decluttering spree – which has lasted, so far, about a year, but that’s another story for another day – so I don’t intend taking anything back into the area unless I am sure I will use it.