Tag: grevilleas

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 · birds · in my garden · Mount Warning · movies · native Australian birds · sunset · Tweed Valley · winter

A Day in the Garden

Joanne6 Comments

The valley looked a tad hazy today. I’m not sure why, but it just wasn’t as clear as usual.

Husband and I spent the day in the garden, weeding and mulching garden beds mostly. When we stopped for lunch, we ate on the front veranda and a Noisy Miner also stopped for lunch in the grevillea tree.

After lunch I checked on the bottle brush tree and a few young blooms are appearing. There are also stems that haven’t opened yet, but it’s looking pretty good considering it is still winter.

We have had this orchid in the garden for a few years now. I think my husband rescued it from a throw-out pile somewhere, and even though we don’t give it any special attention it always seems to be in flower.

This is also a flowering orchid – so husband tells me! We brought home heaps of potted orchids from around my inlaw’s garden when we tidied up the house for sale and for want of somewhere to put them, I shoved them on the ground under our large pine cone tree in our front garden. Now this orchid has flowered, yet I hardly even water them! I’m sure orchids must thrive on neglect.

It was just after 6pm when we came back into the house and the sky, just after sunset, looked pretty enough to take a photo.

While husband made dinner, I caught up on a bit more uni work, then we watched the James Bond movie Dr No. I have just finished reading the book for one of my uni units and seeing as I quite enjoyed the book, I thought I’d like to see the movie too. It was so different to the book though! It was well worth watching to see a rather gorgeous Sean Connery as Bond though. 🙂

Australia · birds · garden flowers · in my garden · Mount Warning · photography · sugar cane · Tweed Valley · winter

Around the garden

Joanne4 Comments

The hazy valley today, rather than being caused by nearby bush fires or dust-storms, was the result of a few good ole sugar cane fires. They seemed to be burning in all directions and filled the valley with smoke.

The thick tuft of smoke toward the top-right in the photo above is near the sugar mill. Which reminds me, I must take a drive down there and take a few close-ups one day.

Usually when I take photos of kookaburras sitting on this branch, the green cane fields form a backdrop for the photo. Today, it was just smoke. The kookaburra didn’t seem to mind though.

Earlier today I had a visit from Larry and Shilo, my two regular kookaburras who have been visiting for years. This is Shilo, hinting that it’s time for breakfast, I imagine, because she didn’t leave until after I had fed her and Larry.

We had other visitors for breakfast this morning too. Six sulphur-crested cockatoos landed in the palm trees near to the house and watched as I fed Larry and Shilo. They must have decided that minced meat wasn’t to their liking though, and soon flew down to the pecan tree. I didn’t realise there were any nuts left on the branches, but those observant cockatoos knew they were there.

I’m pretty excited about this rose bush. I transplanted it during the colder part of winter – although it is still pretty cool even now – and it has several buds on the bush. This is the second bud to open and I love the velvet texture of the petals. I felt I could be taking a chance transplanting three rose bushes that had lived in the same position for about ten years, but now I’m so glad I did. All three look much healthier than they ever have before, and being closer to the house now I can admire them more often.

One of the most photogenic flowers in my garden each year is the grevillea. The whole tree is covered in buds and blooms, and the native honey eating birds are loving it!

I’m working on a uni assignment again, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging and taking photos this week. At the very least, I’ll take one each day of Mount Warning. 🙂

Australia · clouds · flowers · in my garden · Mount Warning · photography · seasons · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley · winter

Flowering During Winter

Joanne3 Comments

Somewhere beneath that mass of greyish-white clouds sits the sleeping giant, Mount Warning. I haven’t seen her today at all, but every wondrous landmark needs a break from the limelight once in a while, right? So with the lack of a stunning mountain photo, I’d like to share a few photos I took in my garden yesterday, when the sun shone brightly in the sky and the clouds didn’t get a look in.

This red rose is significant – it’s the first rose to bloom in my garden since last summer. What makes it even more special is that I transplanted three roses about a month ago from where they sat dormant in the garden. I had planted them several years ago under a large deciduous tree, thinking roses would grow well there, but they didn’t. I think they may have had too much competition with the roots of the tree. Also, they were quite a long way from the house, so not as easily accessible for me to tend each day, therefore they were neglected. But look at this beauty now! A blooming rose already, plus there are two more buds preparing to break out. I’m very happy with the success I seem to be having with my roses, and it’s still winter here in Australia.

My mother-in-law poked a couple of cuttings of her white geranium in my garden about five years ago, and they have thrived. Here they are already in bloom too …

… and this dainty gerbera, another plant my mother-in-law gave me years ago is flowering beautifully as well. In my area, gerberas are a flower that seem to be in bloom for most of the year.

I planted a border of alyssum along the full length of one of my garden beds several years ago and most of the plants disappear during the heat of the summer months. Some of the plants resurrected a couple of months ago though after a deluge of rain, and here are the results of my self-sown alyssum.

If only I could tell you the name of this next plant! I remember that it’s an Australian native, and I know it’s been in my garden for a number of years and when the flowers appear they stay in bloom for some time, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. I have an app on my phone to identify plants, so hopefully the rain will have passed by tomorrow and I can give the app a go. I’ll add the name here later if I have any success.

This is another gerbera, and as you can see it’s quite different to the dainty pink gerbera in the photo above. Both of my in-laws have gone into aged care within the past year, and with my husband being an only child we have had the massive task of sorting through their material lives, disposing of things that are no longer needed through either sale, donation or tip runs. My mother-in-law was quite the hoarder and her hoarding habits were not limited to the house either. We have given away massive amounts of pot plants, and what we thought we could use ourselves we brought home. I planted this gerbera not knowing what colour it would be, and although orange is not a colour I usually choose for my garden, it’s an unusual flower and I will always think of it as Irene’s gerbera.

This grevillea is on a small native Australian tree. The flowers disappear during winter, but now I have some young buds reappearing it won’t be long before I have an array of honeyeaters flitting around the branches outside my window.

Last summer I found a small solar powered fountain to put in my bird bath. A few petals blew off my tibbouchina tree the other day when it was windy and landed in the bird bath, so cleaning it out will be a job for tomorrow, weather permitting.

My last photo is the full moon, setting in the western sky the other morning. I have seen photos taken by some lucky photographers who have captured the full moon setting right behind Mount Warning. I’ll have to keep an eye open for the next time that occurs as it would be a beautiful sight to see, and to photograph. 🙂