Family Gatherings.

We had a family gathering here last Saturday.
Originally Gordon and Wendy were going to be over from Western Australia and it seemed a splendid opportunity for family members to catch up with each other.Unfortunately Wendy's bad reaction to a drug administered  to her last month, prior to her back operation, meant that it had to be postponed till, ironically , this Saturday.
We decided to still go ahead with the gathering as Julie came over from Sydney specially, Elsje all the way from Streaky bay, Yvonne from Clare

 and other members from Strathalbyn and the Northern suburbs.
Everyone contributed to the table and I couldn't bypass the massive bottle of Cab Sav and photographed it alongside a normal bottle.The food was wonderful and as usual a lot more than it was possible to eat.
The day had started off with sunshine and then deteriorated into rain and wind but by the time everyone had arrived the sun was shining again and it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. The children all exclaimed that the grass was green, as at other times the gatherings were later int he year and the grass had taken on its usual summer hue of straw.
The last time the children were here they had also been able to count all the big hay bales and this time of course the hay has not even been cut.

Jo's grandchildren are a delightful bunch and very good at entertaining themselves. They explored the our wild garden, climbed trees, found rabbits (I shall have to keep an eye on them, they seem to appear each spring time but then seem to go elsewhere, one or two in the pot of course....) and had a picnic lunch on the rug.
The five in a circle are home schooled and the two middle ones go to public schools. All are highly intelligent children and it will be so interesting to see what careers or artistic pursuits they will follow.

After lunch they decided to entertain us with a little musical soiree.
Alida plays both flute and clarinet (as well as the piano, though not all at once...) Gabbie the flute with Lucie on the flute as well and Jeremy and Susannah play the trumpet.
Joanna who is the youngest wants to learn the clarinet and will be able to join her sisters and brother in playing that instrument perhaps in a year or so. Monique is learning to play the piano
and her brother Benjamin is still making up his mind about what instrument to choose.

The audience in the background sat back with their beer or wine and thought they were so lucky to have "live entertainment", a beautiful afternoon glorious food and cheerful music, what more would you want?

On the right it shows Elizabeth ( a future violin player......) trying, without success , to distract her sister Alida , I think the wind was playing havoc with the sheet music and they had forgotten to bring the pegs to pin the pages down so Elizabeth is holding the page down for her.
I feel the whole day was a tribute to our parents who, at the instigation of our older brother, in 1952, when they themselves were middle aged,
brought us all out here to this wonderful country
where we have all thrived.......

At long last...Baby Tawny Frogmouth!!

 What joy this morning to see the Tawny finally has a chick! We could only see one clearly and you will have to click on the photo to see its little face poking out from beneath Dad's front. It has been a long and anxious wait for something to manifest itself. I had noticed the last week or so the old bird wriggling about a lot and wondered. But he has been sitting since early August and I was beginning to despair after such along time of sitting and not seeing a thing happening.

Right next door is a Willy Wagtail nest in the same tree only a few branches away.It is a beautifully constructed cup-shaped nest. It is made with soft fibers and lined with soft feathers. The Willy Wagtail is quite aggressive a lot of the time but even more so when he is nesting. We saw one attacking three magpies the other morning, it would be like us annoying three elephants or poking the stick in the lion's ear....

The Magpies too are nesting now and their nest is quite a large collection of sticks. They will also use binder twine and wire in their nests. One year I found a baby magpie with a malformed foot because some wire had wrapped itself around the leg.The adult magpies are busy feeding the babies with the Kalamata olives which are dropping off the trees. I have preserved as many olives as I can, but this year is a very prolific season for olives because of the excellent rains we have had and they are dropping on the ground.

In the gum tree to the east of the Ashtree where the Tawny and the Willy Wagtail are nesting , is a mud Lark nest. This too is a beautifully constructed mud nest, round and very solid.
The Murray Magpies, as they are also known, are quite alarmist birds and pipe and carry on if you get too close to the tree. Yet the nest is so high up there is no way a human could rob or damage the nest. This year at least they have not attacked the windows as they do other years, seeing their reflection and thinking it is another bird.

Two weeks ago I took this photo of the flowering peach trees, opposite the High School. They made a stunning display but unfortunately the blossom only lasts two weeks at the most.
In our garden the Quince tree is flowering now and the apple trees are coming into bud. The fig tree has the Christmas crop on at this stage, it never ceases to amaze me how large the figs are of first crop.

Christinus Marmoratus- Marbled Gecko

This morning, while cleaning the fire place, lifted the fender and there underneath was the lizard which had rushed into the room with me the other night. Getting only a fleeting glimps of it  at that stage I mistakenly thought it might be a juvenile bearded dragon. So I captured him with my spider catching equipment and popped him into a big jar to photograph him. He turned out to be a marbled gecko. His little padded feet are very noticeable in the photograph and his markings just lovely.He seemed much larger the other night when he rushed in with me but he is quite small.

 We have them on occasions climbing up the windows in the nights when there are a lot of insects attracted to the light and I suppose he was near the door the other night because there were a lot of moths about.Apparently they live in little groups according to some information I found and make quite good little pets. I had rather they lived in the garden and did their own thing there, I would worry I may feed it the wrong thing and it might perish, besides if they are community living creatures they would miss company of their own kind....

I set it free in the garden but later found that they don't like the sun and perhaps that is why it is a different colour amongst the leaf litter.
They aggregate under rocks in the hot weather and some of the aggregations can contain ten individuals. They are also evidently territorial and each group will contain a male. I am sure they would do a lot of good in the garden. Some time ago I did see a larger skink than the usual drop tail skinks which we do have now, spaced throughout the garden.

I have finished the lairy butterfly batwing jumper and put the corded edging around it instead of bands. The yarns are a mixture of cotton and fine wool. The colours mix well and give interesting variations in the butterfly pattern.
This afternoon , after voting and then doing the mowing with the big mower to get the weeds down and more manageable
( the place now looks like a badly clipped horse, in fact it reminds me of an ad on TV where a farmer shears his sheep and then the dog, leaving them all ragged and the dog ashamed of himself, the inference being that the farmer needs glasses ) I needed to do something more gentle.
So gathered fine cotton yarns for the background and some attractive ribbon yarn for the weaving in yarn, I did a swatch for a top or two which I want to make for the coming warmer weather.I do enjoy knit-weaving though the butterfly batwing is a fairisle pattern.The necklace on the black jumper has a Chinese button knot and recycled beads.

8th September
Yesterday afternoon we voted in the old Agricultural Hall and in the evening we watched the fascinating computer graphics about the scores of electorates of the country on the ABC...
...so, this morning we have a new government and exchanged one glorious leader for another...life will go on much the same for us mere mortals and we will grumble and grizzle like the Israelites in the desert.....but, did the tiles in the bathroom look whiter and shinier this morning, the garden more colourful and less like a badly clipped horse... and I am sure our stud Merino ewes will produce twin lambs in the coming autumn....

Tawny Frogmouth Puzzle

The Tawny Frogmouth is proving a real puzzle. I first saw him on the nest on the 8th of August and it is now the 4th of September and he is still sitting there. Surely they don't take as long or longer than a domestic fowl to hatch their chicks? As you can see the Ash tree has sprouted and the Murray Magpie has built a mud nest in the next gumtree. All the birds seem to be busy nesting now and the blackbird is singing his lovely mating song in the morning and late afternoon.

The blue tongue lizard has appeared again after his winter hibernation and came under the door into the laundry so I had to pick him/her up and put it outside. It finally decided to soak up the sun by the house wall. Last night when I came back into the house as I opened the door, a small lizard on long legs dashed into the room ahead of me. I couldn't catch him of course and I have no idea where he went. As I said he had long legs but was not a skink so I wonder if he may be a juvenile bearded dragon. This would be so good as we used to have a few of them in the garden when we first came here.

I confess to being an aracnophobic so I feel quite proud to have taken a close up of an orbweaver spider clinging to the studio window yesterday. He was gone this morning and I had wondered why he was there in such an exposed position and a bird hadn't taken him. I remember a huge orbweaver in one of the erosion gullies at Hughes Park. Its web went from one side to the other and it would have been meters wide.
I often wonder why we have these particular fears, I am not the least bit afraid of snakes and lizards or mice and rats.
Funnily enough we haven't seen any snakes here other than a young one under a stone near the gate, I lifted the stone to mow closer to the gate post.
The mowing is taking me most of the time at present, the wet winter has made the weeds grow to amazing heights.
The burning of the heaps is a real chore as they are still wet underneath.

Yesterday morning I saw this white thing from the kitchen window and thinking it must be a tissue blown onto the dicondra I went out to pick it up. It stopped me dead in my tracks as it is something I have never seen before. It wasn't frogspawn as that was my first thought , but it seemed to be some sort of fungus instead.Remember you can click on the photo if you want a clearer and closer look, then press escape to get back to the blog.
I hope my friend Cher, who was able to tell us about Kenny's Nob at Pt Elliot and is very knowledgeable on obscure things may be able to identify this......

Cabin fever and the Myponga reservoir!

We have had a weekend of ferocious winds and lashing rains, so we were unable to do anything outside much other than getting in wood to keep the fire going and to feed the chooks. The poor Tawny is sitting on his nest exposed to all the fierce winds and torrential rain. I hope he manages to save his eggs. I am astounded at the sense of duty( I know, it is instinct....) to sit on a few sticks with the eggs and nothing to shelter him. It would be tempting to put a little roof over his head.....

Today we thought we had better do Something or go quite mad, and this is after only a few days of house confinement!! no wonder Northern Europeans have cabinfever after a winter of being at home because of the freezing cold and snow. So after lunch we took our cameras and trotted off  (well... in the comfort of my Subaru)
through the water flowing on our road and elsewhere, and went to the Myponga reservoir to see if that was overflowing. The photo above was taken the last time we were at the Myponga
dam when it was full late July.

We have had over an inch of rain here but the Myponga catchment area is in a much higher rainfall area. So sure enough, when we got there
(with a few other people with the same idea) we saw the water pounding through the sluice gates and away down the gully which will run down to the sea. It is a stirring sight to see all that water rushing down the spillway. So good to think we will have good water for the coming summer.
The Myponga dam services most of the Fleurieu.

The photo of the close up of the foamy water looks just like lace. I took that with my Nikon D80 and the zoom lens. I still have a lot to learn about photography but I am plugging away at it.
Don't forget that you can click on the photos to enlarge them, for those who perhaps are not aware of this.
After we started to feel a bit frozen standing out in this cold wind having the cobwebs blown out of our heads, we went that little bit further and looked at Carrickalinga beach where the sea was pounding the beach.There was a little Kestrel hovering but by the time I got my camera out again he had drifted too far away.....We came home via the valley which has become a wetland and when we got home , the rain had stopped!!

Tawny Frogmouth Nesting!!

 Found the Tawny has rebuilt its nest on the same site as last year.. there he is, sitting on his untidy heap of twigs that constitutes the home for however many eggs they lay. We have seen them with three young ones in the past , so it will be interesting to see how many there will be in a few weeks time. The bird book says the eggs are a lustrous white but it does not say how long they take to hatch. Have made a note of the date I first saw it on the nest but of course, it may have been there for a few days already.

The wet weather has made a lot of difference to all the winter flowering plants. It has also stopped us from planting out our bare rooted roses unfortunately, the ground is so sodden it sticks to the spade. 
The lachenalias are flowering well but the wattle birds like them and are too heavy really to use the flowers for food and so the stems break and fall on the ground.For quite a while we couldn't make out how this was happening but then saw the wattle birds sticking their beaks in the tubular flowers.

 The shrimp plant is one of the most frustrating plants I have had to deal with. It is finally looking good and I love the interesting flowers but never know if it likes the sun or likes the shade, whether it likes to be wet or on the dry side... anyway it now has a northern position and that seems to suit it. My friend has hers in the garden in a fairly sunny position and it does well for her. I don't have a suitable place for it though I suppose I could try it in an east facing bed. However it would get all the fierce gully winds in the summer!!

 This female blackbird tumbled out of the Holm Oak the other morning and stayed in that position for quite a while. It didn't look ill so I left it alone and a little later it had flown off.
Was it drunk? The male black birds are having aerial combats at present which are quite fascinating to watch as they are performed with elegant precision. I think they too, are nesting now and they usually choose quite low positions for their nests or where we walk past them with out seeing them, the nests I mean.

Because I haven't been able to get into the garden much, I thought I better do something in the craft area.
So I have made a series of dilly bags with inner pockets to put a diary, mobile phone, glasses case, pen pocket, car keys, lip salve etc etc.
Have also made a batwing for myself but it hasn't turned out as well as I'd intended. I'll leave it for a while and see how I can improve it......

Is it an Early Spring?

This photo of the flowering Japonica was taken at the Myponga reservoir last Sunday. We had just picked up our bare rooted roses from the nursery and I wanted to see if the reservoir was overflowing. It had been announced on the news that the rains had been so good that several of the Adelaide reservoirs had opened their spillways as the rains had filled them to overflowing. Myponga was mentioned with several of the others so I was curious to see the overflow there.
Unfortunately it was not overflowing but I did take some good shots of the full dam.

The Japonica was there at the picnic area which is a great place to view both the reservoir and the steep gullies with the sea beyond to the west of it. So last Sunday was still July and while I can remember Japonicas flowering late August, it seemed very early for it to be flowering in July!!
The almond trees up the road are in full flower now which is not unusual really. In fact all the remaining almond trees in the area are putting on a splendid show of blossom. I just hope there are enough bees to fertilize them all for an excellent crop of almonds.

The interesting thing is that the vines in the much neglected vineyard is sprouting now and that indeed is early. The glory vine on our patio is also sprouting and suddenly all my snapdragons I planted willy nilly amongst everything else are flowering too....then this morning I heard a blackbird singing his melodious spring mating song and you start to wonder is it going to be an early spring??

It was certainly a beautiful day weather wise yesterday. Brian suggested we go and have lunch in Victor Harbor and then go whale watching.
I had been pruning the bedding roses on my knees (to save my back!!) so I was very happy to comply and off we trotted to Victor in my new Subaru of course...The Crown had very good specials so we had fish and chips there with a glass of reisling to put us in the mood for whale watching.

We drove to Pt Elliot first and while we could see a whale in the distance they were too far away to photograph. Instead I photographed the interesting sculpture that is in the middle of the  viewing platform. It is interesting because of the puzzle it presents to see how it could have been constructed with that huge lump of granite in the middle. Perhaps my friend Cher may be able to enlighten me and also tell me what it represents.
I also couldn't resist taking a photo of the willy wagtail busily demolishing a butterfly of some sort.

We then drove to Basham's Beach where there were several small groups of whales lazing about waving fins and generally entertaining the large crowd on shore.No leaping about though and no spouting much either. Still, Brian got a few photos and on the right the black line in the water I can assure you is a whale....next time we will take a tripod I think, and be part of the line of people intent on getting a good shot of whale antics.....