Prelude to Spring

With tomorrow being the first day of Spring in Australia (I'm not sure whether all countries in the Southern Hemisphere regard 1 September as the beginning of Spring or not), I had a quick trot around the garden this morning - with the camera, of course.

Beginning with the sunrise, naturally.

Perennial Wallflower

Plum blossom

These Swiss Giant Pansies are exactly that.

Snowdrops

Hardenbegia creeper

Grevillea

Grevillea close-up

Calendula

Pyrethrum and pink Rosemary

Rosemary and Osteospermum

This one is for Kerri. In this little patch of ground, about 10" square, are about 100 self-sown Centranthus. Kerri - BEWARE!!!! Fortunately they are pretty easy to pull out when they are in excess.

Winter joy perennial Wallflower.

Miniature white jonquils

Osteospermum

Hellebores, jonquils and white violets

Acanthus

Hop Bush

Banksia

Total Eclipse

I was a bit blase about these photos I took last night of the total eclipse of the moon - that is until Kerri told me that she and her husband sat out on their porch in the early morning to watch the same phenomena. Both of us watching the same event but on opposite sides of the world left no room to be blase at all.

The moon completely covered by a transparent reddish shadow which didn't provide enough light for it to show up on my camera.

Coming out the other side.

Mrs Dimwhitty and the Log Cabin

This fine bird is the last of a flock of Rhode Island Red fowls that my parents owned. Dad nicknamed her 'Mrs Dimwhitty'. I don't know where he got that name from. Maybe it was a character in a book, or a play perhaps? Mrs Dimwhitty had full pecking and scavenging rights wherever she chose to wander. She was also rather partial to big, fat white Witchetty Grubs which were often found in logs of wood waiting to be cut for firewood. The grubs were actually found when the wood was being chopped, so it was necessary to make sure that Mrs Dimwhitty's neck was not on the chopping block as well.

Richard boarded on the farm next to ours and would often come over at the weekends and wander down to the woodheap and spend a couple of hours cutting wood so that Mum and Dad didn't have to do it. He cut and stacked the wood as though building a house, and we used to joke that if we couldn't get a school with a residence to move into after we got married, well, we'd just live in the 'log cabin' at the woodheap. Fortunately, it didn't come down to that, and we did have somewhere to live.

I think Mrs Dimwhitty earned her keep laying as many eggs as she could during her reign as Queen Chicken. Mum was quite fond of her. So much so that 2 and a half years after our wedding, we cut the top tier of our wedding cake (a rich fruit cake) on the occasion of Shelly's Christening, only to find that I hadn't sealed the cake properly and it had fermented. Mum took the cake down past the woodheap, dug and hole and buried it. She explained that she didn't want Mrs Dimwhitty to find it in the compost and eat it in case it made her drunk!

Is this unlawful......

....using non-union workers and child labour? But what if they volunteer, even if their concentration span is somewhat limited?

We can always stop and watch the rosellas visiting their house in the tree.

Then back to work.

Surveying our handiwork.

Now it's time to give Grandpa a workout.

How come........

...... it takes weeks or even months for adults to establish a garden, but grandchildren can grow an instant garden?

Crocus to Clouds

Four crocus out of 20 is not really a good result, but maybe quality is better than quantity.

Or perhaps I'm just impatient and more will come up.

Two's company, even for bird seed on warm sunny afternoon.

Billowing clouds. Can you see the small dot in the bottom right corner?

It's an airship advertising a Holden car.

Yesterday's sunset