Haiku IV

                                                     Noisy Miners Strike

                                                      Small Soft Lorikeet Stone Dead

                                                        The Wind Shakes Green Reeds 

Haiku III

                                                         Assertive Wagtail

                                                        Twitters on the Birdbath Edge

                                                        Who is Listening?

 

 

        I am adding this little bit of information for those of you who have been trying to comment on the blogs, dear friends... even I can no longer comment as the cursor will not engage for me. It has been possible to comment under Anomymous but even that is no longer possible for me...so I apologize for this and if any one of you know how to get back to being able to comment ...please let me know...yours frustrated, Tineke

Haiku II

                                                         Candelabra Lilies

                                                          Their brilliant Blooms in a whirl

                                                            Dervishes in hot Pink 

Haiku Once again

                                                    Bold Paintbrush Lilies

                                                    Announce Cool Autumn Mornings

                                                    Soft Cushions for Frogs

Joys of Aproaching Autumn& Weird Fungi

It was quite a jolt the other morning, to see that the white Amaryllis Belladonna lilies had suddenly appeared, just like that...no fanfare or drumbeats from the Earth, there they are in all their white beauty....it made me stop and almost dissolve in tears with such gloriousness to see so early in the morning.... they are commonly known as Naked Ladies as the bulb throws up these impressive blooms before there is a leaf to be seen, hence the surprise to see them as heralds of the coming Autumn. I wonder if our Northern Hemisphere cousins have that same reaction of delight when their first crocus appears to herald their Spring...

It is the same time of the year for both of us...we have had a reasonably cool summer so far with not much rain in our area but it almost feels like autumn already...

Now this morning, when filling the birdbath, I saw this black blob under the Holm Oak and thought at first our neighbour's dog had left yet another visiting card....when I went to remove it, I suddenly found instead of a dog turd, a black fungus...where do these things suddenly appear from? I have never seen one in our garden. Then wondered was it edible? Sadly no, it is Daldinia concentrica and grows on dead wood...yet my Holm Oak is very much alive...The edible black fungus is Aricularia polytricha and used a lot in Chinese cooking..

 Quite a few years ago I had the white fungus appear in the garden in front of the kitchen window.It looked like dog vomit ...but no, this too is a fungus and so we have had quite a variety of fungi in various places, one that looked like a gone -to -seed- cauliflower..

I wonder if the opening rains this year will bring a great crop of the small, delectable field mushrooms, they too, appear quietly and are always most welcome....

Remembering Birthdays....

                                 Snowy Mountains wombats in the wild live from 5 to 14 years.....

                                  Today would have been my son Gregory's 59th birthday......

                                    He made it just past his 17th birthday and lived life to the full....

                                    The wombat was sent to a sanctuary and became aggressive 

                                   to the point where he bit a tourist in the leg...and guess what happened....

Toad of Toad Hall

We are having El Nino or Nina weather pattern this summer and this means some of  Australia suddenly gets more rain than it bargains for....

So last week here in Willunga we had over an inch of rain which is very welcome in our southern dry climate... but not so good in other parts of the state which received inches in hours which washed away large sections of roads and railway tracks.

The rain here though, made the bark of the eucalypts bring out these wonderful colours...

click on the photo to get a better look....

The next day I found this poor little green parrot dead, in front of the Studio window.We have had an influx of those and also the Rainbow Lorrikeets which chatter and screech away in the tops of the tree.

Yesterday when Kym was digging over some of the vegie beds, getting them ready for Autumn plantings, he dug up what he thought was an old potato...He was about to take it to where he had deposited some stray onions from another bed,when the potato tried to hop off...

So here we have Toad of Toad Hall, stripped of his flamboyant costumes and naked as the day he was born-.....

 It is of course, a Burrowing Frog and the first one I have seen here in the thirty odd years we have lived in this place. I did have the Burrowing Frog at my Watervale cottage back in the late eighties, but those were more brown and darkly spotted. I could not find an image on Google the same as this frog so cannot give its proper name sadly.... we buried him back in his little bed and hope he does a lot of good in the garden.....we need all the help we can get...