Category: photography

Australia · clouds · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · photography · spring · sunset · Tweed Valley

On Palms and Kookaburras

Joanne13 Comments

Today I made a point of taking a broader view photo of the mountain, showing the nearby palm trees. In yesterday’s post, I explained that we had lost a few lower leaves on our palms during the recent gusty storms. One significant leaf, which usually appears in my Mount Warning photos, is gone. Now when I take phtos of the mountain from this particular position in the garden, it feels like the photo isn’t complete – now I have to get used to a new normal!

The broad view photo adds context to the height of the palms, and why one very large drooping leaf always appeared in my camera lens. There is a bunch of seeds below the leaves on one palm, and the leaf that always appeared as an “extra” prop in my photos was growing between the leaves and the seed bunch.

This next photo shows a different cluster of palm trees. Most of these trees – except for the one on the far left of the photo – are growing near the pool. As the lower leaves drop, new leaves are forming above, and adding height to the tree. Along the trunk of the tree, as each leaf drops it leaves a ridge in the trunk of the palm where the leaf once grew.

Surprisingly, palm leaves are incredibly heavy! When they crash to the ground they make a very loud sound, almost like thunder. The palm on the far left in the photo above has two leaves which could fall at any time. As the trees grow taller and the dying leaves are higher, we simply can’t reach them to cut the leaves down, so until they drop they look a tad messy dangling from the tree.

Every morning around sunrise, the kookaburras wait in the palm trees, keeping a watchful eye on the back door, waiting for me to go out and feed them. They rarely wait around the garden at night, probably because they know I won’t feed them. Tonight, however, I spotted one kookaburra sitting on my clothesline, watching the back door. What really struck me was the position of the bird in front of a gorgeous orange sunset.

I rushed outside with my camera and took a few photos, and seeing as the kookie had been such a willing model, I made an exception and took a tiny treat out to him. I couldn’t decide which photo I liked best – the black silhouette, or the one that shows a glimpse of his features. So here are both photos. 🙂

Australia · clouds · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · photography · spring · Tweed Valley

A Day That Sparkled

Joanne11 Comments

About a week ago we had a couple of days when storms and blustering winds hit us each afternoon. We even lost power Saturday before last. During the chaotic weather, our palm trees took a bit of a battering, and since then we have lost a few of the lower leaves. Where once I had palm leaves dancing in the foreground as I took photos of the mountain, now all I have are tall, bare palm trunks. The leaves are still growing in the lofty heights of the tree, they just don’t appear in my photos any more.

So today, the first photo I took of the mountain features a cluster of palm trees, just for something different.

There was some rain about this morning, not much, but just enough to make the valley sparkle. Some days, rain can have the opposite effect, making the valley appear dull and lifeless under a veil of grey mist. Today, the valley looked magnificent.

I had the usual morning crew here for breakfast, and if kookaburras are not photogenic enough, the light of the day added extra pizzazz to their appearance.

Here they are, getting stuck into some beef pieces for breakfast. They always dominate the feeding table, even though I assure them there is plenty of food for everyone.

Little baby magpie has become a regular visitor every morning too. He/she usually visits with both his/her parents now, but I’ve noticed the father usually feeds baby.

Later this afternoon, I went for a walk down the back to admire everything we achieved during the weekend in the garden. After putting the cut branches of our fruit trees through the hired mulching machine, we have several large piles of mulch which will come in very handy around the garden.

I took my iPhone with me down the back, and just for fun I thought I’d take a photo of the valley from our rear boundary, just to see if the quality of the camera is okay. I rarely think to take photos with my phone camera, so it was an experiment for me. This is the result –

Between the fantastic light of the day, and the magnificent cloud formations, it was probably a safe bet that the photo wouldn’t look too bad. 🙂

Australia · garden flowers · gardening · in my garden · mangoes · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · pets · photography · recipe · spring · Tweed Valley

A Day Spent in the Garden

Joanne14 Comments

There is a hazy film hanging around the valley today. Apparently, a blustery storm travelled across the state from west to east – so to the New South Wales coast – yesterday, kicking up dust as it went. My guess is that this is the tail-end of the dust, and we haven’t had any rain to wash it away.

Tonight my body aches from head to foot, but I’ve had the most wonderful and productive day in the garden. I’ve done a lot of pruning with the garden shears today, so even my hands hurt! By 3 pm I decided to call it a day, but paused to look over what I’d accomplished. Up in the pecan tree I could see several Figbirds, so zoomed in on them with the camera to get a close shot. The light, or rather lack of light, wasn’t in my favour, so it’s not the best photo. If you look closely though, you might notice the ring around the eye of the bird in the fork of the tree – that’s the male, and the other bird higher up the tree is a female.

Those cheeky birds were pinching my mulberries! I went down to have a look at the tree, and some of the fruit are looking pretty scraggly now, as you can see.

I decided to go right down the back and see how the orchard is going. We’ve done a lot of clearing down there during winter. The whole area had been taken over by gamba grass, which is classified as a weed in our area, but we’ve got rid of most of it now. We have to keep a lookout for any new shoots coming through though.

My poor grapefruit tree looked pretty dismal when we found it amid the grass, but look at it now! It’s covered in flowers, and I’m so pleased to see it looking so incredibly healthy. It’s quite an old tree, I think we planted it about twenty-five years ago, and every year up until now it ends up covered in huge grapefruits. It looks like it will be the same this year too.

As you can see, the whole valley has the smoky-haze appearance today. If you look closely at this photo though, on the right there’s a bare-branched tree with more figbirds in it! I think it might be a Jacarada tree, so I’ll keep an eye on it and get some photos when it flowers.

And here are the figbirds closer up! I wonder, are they all after my mulberries?

Another tree in flower is my Pomegranate. This is a fairly new addition to the orchard, but it had some beautiful big pomegranates on it during summer. There’s quite a few flowers on the tree now, so I could be in luck again this year.

Our lovely old Mango is preparing for summer fruit too! I had a great time last summer making Green Mango Chutney with freshly picked fruit from the tree and the next day my eyes were puffy and I had blisters on my face, hands and arms. It turned out to be a reaction to a poisonous substance in the sap of the mango tree that I had an allergic reaction to! But the chutney was great. 😉

While I did my gardening, my son’s dog Forrest – who lives permanently at my house now because it’s the only place she’s settled – and my Labrador, Bronte, followed me everywhere. They are good company, but it’s very difficult to get them to sit still long enough to get a photo of them. This photo of Forrest is a tad blurry, but the best I could get.

The Figbirds often sit atop these bunches of palm tree berries and I’ve often taken photos of them, from a distance,  munching away on them. They were too busy with my mulberries today and seemed to have forgotten the berries, so I got a much closer photo of them on my way back to the house.

This is a Prince of Orange in my pool area.

And these pretty Daylilies are in the pool area too.

I absolutely love Evening Primrose flowers. They are such easy plants to grow, they are basically the plant-and-forget variety. And every summer the plants multiply, so I get even more flowers.

I love the closeup detail too, the veins through the petals and the dainty yellow carpel and stigma in the centre. (I think that’s what they are called, so correct me if I’m wrong.)

The only way I could get a photo of Bronte today was when she was on the other side of the pool fence. Every time I pointed the camera in her direction, she would run to me for a pat, so you’ll have to excuse the shadow of the fence across her fur. Actually, I’m surprised the sun shone long enough to form a shadow, it’s been such a dull day. It’s been very warm though, I think about 27 degrees Celsius, so around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a high temperature for a spring day, but cooler weather is predicted in a few days.

So that was my day today, a wander around the garden after I finished my chores there, and it was a wonderful change from sitting at my desk. I’ll have to get back into uni tomorrow, but I think I’ll feel better doing so after having a break. 🙂

Australia · butterflies · clouds · garden flowers · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · photography · spring · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley

Another Garden Wander

Joanne4 Comments

Just this one strip of mist lay in the valley this morning. The mountain sits to the south-west of the back of my house, and directly to the south the valley looked completely clear and sparkling green. We had rain overnight, hence the vivid greenery. I didn’t take any more photos today, because the clouds rolled in and we have rain again. It’s just as well I took some photos around my front garden yesterday.

I think I first saw Queen Anne’s Lace on my blogging friend Robin’s old blog, Bogs of Ohio. Robin started a new blog when she moved from Ohio in 2013. Gosh was it that long ago? Well, after all these years I’ve finally planted some Queen Anne’s Lace, which I’m sure Robin told me can get out of hand if I don’t keep an eye on it. It’s looking very pretty and well contained right now.

This white Buddleia is less than a year old and already it is about a meter tall and covered in flowers. The flowers are supposed to attract bees and butterflies, and as you can see, it is doing well in the butterfly department. At first I thought this could be a cabbage moth, but it’s actually a Female Brimstone.

A little Noisy Miner dropped by to say hello during my wandering around the garden. I’m sure it had something in its beak, but it didn’t sit long enough for me to see what it was. We’ve hung the little bird dishes on the chain wire fence for some Eastern Rosellas that we often see on the fence where the Miner is sitting, with some seed and water in. I think they may have a nest nearby.

I still don’t know what this plant is called, but it’s covered in pretty white flowers. It’s been in flower for a few weeks now and the flowers are growing bigger and more prolific every week.

The daisies are growing well too! I love this lilac colour in the garden.

The flowers on the Callistemon tree, or Bottle Brush as we like to call it, are maturing well, much to the delight of the birds. We planted this tree as a tiny plant about twenty-five years ago and now we have to trim the top back every year to keep it from growing too tall and hitting the gutters of the house.

My Spanish Moss is very special to me. My mum gave me this, and she’s been gone for twenty-seven years now. Over the years I have started up new collections of the plant by draping it over tree branches, but this one is the original. It’s crowed by some of my mother-in-law’s orchid plants at the moment! To the right, one of my Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, or Brunfelsia, shrubs is covered in flowers too. That’s another plant I have to prune to keep control of, as it grows so vigorously in our subtropical climate.

I’m so proud of my potted Fuchsia! It is thriving just now on my front veranda and the flowers look incredibly healthy. I think it enjoys the drink of seaweed solution I feed it every fortnight.

And finally, this is the lavender that I didn’t think would survive. It’s planted under a tree near the front boundary of my garden and was over-run with weeds up until two weekends ago when I tidied the area. Since then, it has burst into flower again! I think it could be Italian Lavender, but I’m not one-hundred percent sure.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I plan on spending the day in the garden. There’s a bit more weeding to do, some pruning to finish before summer arrives, a vegetable garden to organise, and a few new plants that arrived by mail order that I need to get planted. 🙂

Australia · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · photography · spring · Tweed Valley

Mist in the valley and birds in the palms

Joanne6 Comments

This morning I awoke to find the valley floor had disappeared beneath a beautiful layer of misty-ocean. This alternate view looked spectacular and even more so now the weather is warming. I know our misty valley mornings are limited this year.

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun shone across the mountain, revealing nooks and crannies which could be seen from afar.

The greenery in my garden stood stark against the blueness of the sky and whiteness of the mist, like two different worlds melded into one.

Way across the other side of the valley, the only evidence of the sugar cane mill was the steam escaping from the mill chimney.

A few birds dropped by to admire the misty ocean too. This little guy in the palm tree is an adult honeyeater. Juvenile honeyeaters have yellow around their eyes which progressively turns bright blue by the time they are around eighteen-months old.

Just as the honeyeater flitted away, a kookaburra landed in the same place on the palm. Both rummaged around inside the cup-base of a partly fallen palm leaf, so I suspect they found water from our recent rain caught inside the leaf.

Shortly after the sun had burned away the mist, I looked out just in time to see two female figbirds munching on juicy red berries on a different palm tree. I couldn’t go too close to take the photo because figbirds are pretty shy little birds.

When I took a break from my assignment writing at around midday, I took a walk in my front garden, taking photos of new flowers as I walked around. When I downloaded the photos I was pretty surprised to find I’d taken over one-hundred photos! Hopefully I will have finished my assignment by late tomorrow, so I’ll choose my favourites from today and add them tomorrow.

My garden is looking really lovely just now. I need to finish my assignment so I can spend the weekend out doors! 🙂