Category: winter
Up in the Clouds.
Drizzling rain has hung around on and off during the past couple of weeks here, and as it turned out, the drizzle was simply a rehearsal for the main performance. The unannounced showtime took place yesterday with a number of bedraggled birds taking their seats in the front row.
You may remember the view of a gentle sunset over Mount Warning that I showed you a couple of weeks ago, a “Wordless Wednesday” post. To fully appreciate the amount of cloud surrounding my home yesterday, take a quick look at the contrasting view in the link, to the one above….
Way down the back garden I noticed a kookaburra, sitting in the bare branches of the pecan nut tree.
The wet kookaburra in the distance turned out to be a cold Larry, who waited patiently while I took photos of him, fluffing up his feathers to look his best, before flying to the veranda for his breakfast. He’s been visiting me for so long now, and seems to know the routine ~ food for a photo.
At nesting time, many of the old regulars return to the area, including a family of Currawongs. They are timid birds, watch the veranda from a distance, and fly away to the safety of a far away tree if I venture outdoors when they are in the garden.
My regulars, a pair of magpies, are nesting nearby right now, just as they have done for the last few years. I can hand feed these two, and I suspect that I may have known them when they were tiny babies, brought to my garden by their parents, for a safe haven and an easy feed, between lessons on worm-catching.
Never far from the magpies are a flock of Noisy Miners. Watching the various birds flitting around my garden over the years has taught me that Noisy Miners are the protectors of the Magpie Family. I always know where to find one of my cats in the garden, as that’s where the miners will be kicking up a ruckus. And during summer, when we have Channel Billed Cuckoos in the area (they fly over to Australia from Papua New Guinea about mid spring,) the Noisy Miners help the Magpies attack the Cuckoos. It’s such a sad sight, knowing that the cuckoos, if they manage to get to the nests of the Magpies and Currawongs, will remove the eggs and newly hatched baby birds from the nests and lay their own eggs. We found three dead, featherless baby birds around our garden last year, and as a result we had no baby magpies in our area. That’s the sad side of nature. 😦
I had to go out shopping during the morning, regardless of the weather, and I left my home amid the rain absolutely bucketing it down! We are having a baby shower here on Saturday morning, and thankfully the weather forecast is looking a tad more promising for today and tomorrow, cloudy, with patches of sunshine. So far, the forecast is accurate.
I love the expressions on the faces of the Noisy Miners! Even on a beautiful sunny day, they have the most forlorn little faces. I watched this little fellow, above, for some time, as he ducked under the shelter of large leaves, stayed there momentarily, then ducked back out again. I wondered, did he expect the rain to suddenly stop?
As I mentioned before, we are having a baby shower here on Saturday morning, so today I am spending some time pre-preparing food for the party. In case you missed the news, my first grand-baby is due in November, and my soon to be daughter-in-law is now over her morning sickness, looking beautiful, and becoming more excited every day by all of the upcoming events. First of all the baby shower, the wedding in September, and the baby due in November, it’s a very exciting year for both families. 🙂
And for an update on our baby, I hope that Mary won’t mind that I “stole” a lovely photo of her that she posted on Facebook which she told me her sister had taken one day when they drove down to Murwillumbah, one fine-weather day. Mary is standing near some sugar cane fields, looking very pregnant and just lovely.
Happy days, filled with blessings. ❤
Wordless Wednesday
What’s New in the Garden?
“In the garden I tend to drop my thoughts here and there. To the flowers I whisper the secrets I keep and the hopes I breathe. I know they are there to eavesdrop for the angels.” ~ Dodinsky
Little Miss Tibbs loves gardening. She thinks she is in seventh heaven when she’s sniffing the stories of the breeze, rolling in the freshly laid mulch and basking in the sunshine amid the colourful flowers. 🙂
Under the watchful eye of Miss Tibbs, I planted Cornflower and Foxglove seedlings, the whole way along the line of the fence. I haven’t tried out either plant before, so it will be very interesting to see if they grow well. Both are classed as old-fashioned flowers, and I’m an old-fashioned person, so we will be very happy together if they like their new home. Just imagine the cut flowers I could be bringing inside in a few month time!
My son and his lovely wife-to-be will be married in our garden this September, so the rush is on to have the whole garden looking just right. I’m planting seedlings and flowering shrubs, weeding and mulching, whilst husband takes care of the heavier work to be done.
Husband is tackling the biggest job of all right now by replacing a retaining wall, which holds up our paved area right behind the house, where the main events of the wedding will take place. Over the years the wall had moved and the paving dropped ~ cracks were beginning to appear throughout a whole section of the area, and now, with the wedding imminent, the rush to have it repaired is on!
Little Forrest puppy, my son’s dog, and a little adventurer, had discovered how to escape out of the back yard, so my son has begun to fence the back garden into two sections, the upper section will be for entertaining, gardens, and the swimming area, whilst the lower section (where the escapee likes to break out!) will be known in future as the food area. This is where we have our fruit trees, the pecan nut trees and vegetable gardens.
The food area is also the area where my future chook pen will be positioned. safely away from bouncing dogs, and I’m hoping that my future chooks will oblige by fertilising my fruit trees in return for a large run. 🙂 But they will have to wait until after the wedding.
I have planted three fuschias in the garden this year, and so far, all three have survived, which is a first for me. Previously, I have tried to grow fuschias in hanging baskets and have lost them all, so I’m hoping they will continue to flourish in the flower beds.
Fuschias bring back happy memories of my very young days, living in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. We had a beautiful fuschia bush, and my “middle” sister (she’s 13 years older than me) would help me to lay the cut flowers between pieces of blotting paper. We would then carefully place heavy books on top of the flowers to “press” them. The same method of pressing worked very well with pansy flowers.
Last week I asked our local stationer if they had any blotting paper and they unfortunately didn’t. He told me they had been trying to get it in stock for some time now, without success.
I wonder what Miss Tibbs could smell here? We hear the occasional possum or bandicoot out and about at night. Perhaps they have ventured along this fence at some stage, leaving a scent for another, more curious feline-type animal to investigate.
My daughters loved snapdragons when they were little, so when Emma and I saw these at the garden centre, we had to bring some home for the garden. They are so colourful, and another flower that brings back happy memories of years gone by.
With my first grandchild due in November, I want to have a happy garden in which they will be making their own new memories.
I found a climbing shrub, Duranta, about a year ago. I hadn’t heard of the plant before, but the flowers looked so pretty, so I thought I would give it a go next to the chainwire fence. I think it likes growing there, it has grown substantially bigger since I planted it, and has started to flower again this year. Happy Plant ~ Happy Gardener!
I never seem to go wrong with either Dianthus or Alyssum as edging plants for a flower bed. No matter where I plant them in the garden, sun or part shade, they grow well, and continue to flower, year after year.
Well, that’s the latest of my plantings in the garden for this week. I thought it might be fun to try and keep a journal of what I’m planting, and when they are planted, and if the plants I choose are successful or not, for future reference. It also may be of interest to my overseas friends to compare the difference between the plants we grow in each of our countries.
Fingers crossed, I’m hoping that all of my choices grow well in my sub-tropical climate. The harsh summer time will be the biggest test for them all, but we have a wedding before the heat arrives, and all being well, I will have some beautiful flowers to admire come September, which will double as backdrops for the wedding photos. 🙂
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Secrets
“If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.” ~ Khalil Gibran.
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In My World 