The Death of Dasypodia Selenophora and thus Consider the Lilies in the Field.....

Why was I so upset this morning to find the beautiful Dasypodia Selenophora dead on the floor ? It had been fluttering through the sitting room all last night. Was it watching some old DVD with us as there was nothing worth watching on the TV.? I'd like to think that is what made it give up the ghost, the sheer boredom of  it all. To my horror though, it appears I trod on it in the dark of night as I wandered through the house without a torch. Brian said he had seen it on the floor as he uses a torch on his wanderings.
I love the moth as it is such a beautiful creature

and at night it has this lovely habit of fluttering against the windows , softly softly, it is like a faint whispering on the air. When I moved up to my Watervale cottage in the mid eighties and had to get used to sleeping on my own, this whispering kept me awake all night as I was conjuring up all sorts of scenarios in my
alone mind on my first night there.....and it was such a relief at first light to see it was this beautiful moth. We used to call it a wood moth but this is incorrect as it is better known as Old Lady Moth.Hence the Latin name as at least we all know what exactly we are talking about.

I could get very interested in the subject as there is a huge variety of moths in South Australia alone! There are also daytime moths, did you know that?
And so to the lilies of the fields.....
On the left is the beautiful white Belladonna lily
at least we think it is a Belladonna as it arises out of the barren ground with the first rains like the pink Naked Ladies by the gate. They are better known as the Amaryllis lily. It never ceases to amaze me what nature will come up with, the ground looks dry as chips and a little rain brings

up these glorious blooms. The bulbs get no looking after by us, they sit in the ground hibernating ( or is that aestivating.....) all summer
and how sensible is that!! and then decide to grace our gardens with their presence, to be admired and loved after the conditions are right for them.
I particularly like the Jacobean lilies which are Sprekelias. Their brilliant red flowers show up from a long way off and they love being in clumps.

They are wonderful cut flowers as well and will last quite a while inside. Their form is just so beautiful and elegant, no wonder they were copied a lot in embroideries.I was thinking especially of crewel work which was so popular in the 18th Century.
The next lily to appear will be the Candelabra Lily or Brunsvigia Josephinae. They are really impressive, standing five feet tall and a huge rosette of flowers but they will need more rain first.

All this blogging I do has its beneficial effects in that it makes me use dictionaries ( I would have spelled so many words wrong ) and also all other reference books to look up what the names are of Plants, birds, insects, etc etc. and then there is always the Web , it is astounding what information is available to us now....

Rain! Craftday and Snakeskins..

Last Thursday week ago, the 13th February, we had the most wonderful rain which lasted all day long and into the night as well.I couldn't resist taking photos of the rain falling on this dry, dry land and flowing into the pond, the frogs singing their happy croaking songs all day long continuing into night as well, allowing me to count how many were in the chorus,four tenors, three altos and the occasional basso profundo and one that sounded more like a cricket than a frog.

 I took a photo of the puddle lying on the track with the limb which came down in the last storm and the shiraz vines of our neighbour in the back ground. I know it would seem crazy to the poor people in the south of England who were enduring huge floods at the same time but we have been so dry since early October that rain to us is such a treat at this time of the year.All the trees and plants have responded dramatically and the Jacobean lilies , the Bella donna lilies are all up and looking beautiful.

Craft day was at our place last Thursday and we were only a small group this time. It is always a pleasant day with everyone doing their own thing in craft or doing their own thing in contemplating others doing craft while as hostess I am in and out crafting the simple lunch of soup and bread.
My creativity is out the window at present, can one blame the heat waves we have endured during January/ February? Books are much more interesting in the heat of summer. I am re reading all the Patrick O'Brian series with Aubrey and Maturin the main characters. They are an education in themselves and have looked up so many references to not only 18th century sailing ships but the characters were great natural philosophers as well and have looked up numerous words and names of unusual species.
We were all amazed when one of our group brought in this beautiful freshly shed snake-skin she had found in one of our National parks while climbing the hills.

 We think it is possibly a brown snake.
It was truly amazing because it was totally intact without a break anywhere. You can look up how a snake sheds its skin on "youtube". It is fascinating to watch and it must feel so good to a snake to do this, rather like peeling off a tight body stocking I imagine.....
We didn't measure it accurately but it would have been well over four and a half feet,or nearly one and a half meters for those of you who are more familiar with metrics.

 It was so intact that you can see the lenses of its eyes and the colour of the scales are this soft lovely browny green. The jaw line is quite visible too. Snakes evidently can shed their skins three or four times a season. The person who brought this in also watche a red- bellied black snake swim across the little dam they were standing by. The match box with the head is to give you some comparison for size.
I have met some amazing snakes in my life...
Once, riding out with my future husband who was talking to me, so did not see the King brown snake ahead of us till he wondered why my eyes were the size of saucers watching this snake rear up

chest high to his sixteen hand horse! He managed to evade it but it was not shy this snake and would have struck if the fence had not been in the way at this stage. Another snake had crawled into the dunny shed and was blasted by a shotgun in self defence as it hung from the rafters a few inches away from his face....it left rather a draughty hole at the back ....
In those days we did kill them but now we conserve them in the hope they may bite a politician......

Purple Crowned Lorikeets and the Heatwave...

It was the hottest February day on record yesterday, and it was very, very hot indeed!43C!!
I kept a sprinkler going in various areas of the front garden as the birds were all desperate for water.
I became very excited about the little green birds we had fleeting glimpses of  earlier in the week and suddenly I  saw them in the Holm Oak which provides dense shade, when shifting the sprinkler to a new area.

 To start with I thought they were Double Eyed Fig parrots when I looked them up in the bird book. This would have been too rare for words as those little parrots are only in special areas of rainforest on the East coast of Australia. So having another look this morning I came to the conclusion they are Purple Crowned Lorikeets. This is much more likely as they inhabit most of Southern Australia. It is exciting all the same to have such interesting little visitors.

The poor little New Hollands and the Greenies , both honey eaters, were sitting with beaks open on the edge of the fish bowl which sits in front of the window here, busily trying to have a drink before the bigger Wattle birds would demand their go at the water.
Meanwhile the Magpies were darting in and out of the sprinkler along with the Murray Magpies.
The rest of the Magpie clan were hogging the bird bath and wouldn't let any other bird near.

The Murray magpies are annoying in that they screech and give their warning call the moment I came out to fill yet another bowl with water for them or to shift the sprinkler thereby upsetting all the other birds except the Lorikeets or the Willy Wagtail who take no notice of me at all.

 The Murray Magpies were also domineering the pond and the Wattle bird was having a tough time there trying to get a drink.
I did not find any dead birds this time, last time there was a dead wattle bird after the heat wave which I didn't bury, thinking the ants might leave a clean skeleton for me , but no, something has carted it off.

As you can see on the right, there are three lorikeets and I took that photo with a night time setting on the camera as the shade is quite dark in the Holm Oak.
This morning it is much cooler but we are being pounded by huge winds and I have had to shut doors to keep them from flying and banging shut. Also brought the washing in as I thought the rotary hoist might be lifted out of the ground....
How did the men on sailing ships in the 18th century cope ?...