Tag: cloud catcher

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 · clouds · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · pecan tree · spring · Tweed Valley

A day spent in the garden

Joanne9 Comments

It was another dull weather day today, which worked out perfectly for getting some gardening done. It wasn’t hot, so I didn’t break out in a sweat while hauling branches of fruit frees, that we have pruned over the last month or so, to the mulcher husband hired for the weekend.

We haven’t pruned the pecan tree, which had bare branches for most of the winter, but now spring has arrived the leaves look green and lucious. Around the pecan tree there is the constant buzzing of bees, as they are congregating daily around the pecan tree doing their bee thing with the flowers. Pecan flowers fascinate me every year. Who would think these long strips of greenery would eventually turn into hard, round, brown, pecan nuts?

Just as we were about to head indoors late this afternoon, we caught sight of a foraging kookaburra. They usually watch us from tree branches while we are gardening, and as soon as we leave the area where we have been working they swoop down to find bugs to eat in the loose soil.

I’m dreadfully tired tonight, so I will say goodnight and head off to bed now. Tomorrow we intend spending another full day in the garden while we have the use of the hired mulching machine. It’s a fantastic machine and does a great job of chopping up thick tree branches, so I guess it’s best described as tiring, but satisfying work, which is the way I feel about most gardening chores. 🙂