Friday, January 25, 2013

A Memorial

Sadly this week our dear old Jack Russell Jeb passed away peacefully at 17 years of age. We are all missing him, especially our young JR Ollie who has been his companion and partner in crime for the last 4 years. Don buried him in the garden in a spot where he liked to hunt lizards and bugs and lie in the sun. We have put a bird bath in as a memorial to him - not that Jeb really liked birds - especially blackbirds!!!

The agapanthas are adding a welcome touch of colour to the dry summer garden, though they too are suffering, especially where several large trees have had to be removed.  They are such a glorious blue, especially this dark blue one.

This is the traditional colour that we have all over the garden and below is an interesting white variation - pink tinges.

I love the plain white ones - so pure. They really stand out against the greens.
Liz Needle

Monday, January 14, 2013

Trying his Wings

Today our baby galah took to the air accompanied by two very anxious and watchful parents. They spent the day in the willows, taking test flights and frequent feeds. Good luck little one.

We drove to town for our chiropractor appointment and on the way sighted 5 koalas as well as two in our garden - 7 sightings for the day. If you are interested you can check my sightings on this web page

I record every time we see a koala. This is one we sighted in our garden today.



Liz Needle

Sunday, January 13, 2013

A Momentous Day.

A momentous day in the garden.  We have had a long, hot, dry spell and the garden is looking awful. I have been watering but it doesn't seem to help much and we have lost a number of perennials and much of the lawn.

But, this morning I awoke to the sound of gentle steady rain. It rained all night and all morning and this morning all the dust was gone, the plants looked alive and the scents in the air were delicious - wet earth, eucalypts and roses.

The rain was pooling on the pavers


dripping off the camellias


hanging from the fuchsias


 and rippling in the fish pond.


Then to make the day perfect, we were lucky enough to see our resident galahs feeding their babies in the hollow of our very old gum tree.


A very proud mama or papa.


All in all a very satisfying day in the garden..

Liz Needle

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Hydrangeas and Heat

With Christmas over I had plans to get back to my blogs, but fate or technology got the better of me and I found myself without any internet access. No idea why. The modem was working because I could get wireless on my Kindle and my son's new Galaxy tablet was getting wireless, but not my PC which uses teh same modem but with broadband. Nothing we did worked and my computer guru was away on holidays.

But this morning - a week after it all went bad, I switched on and lo and behold, my internet was working. Technology baffles me.  But at least I can catch up on my blogs.


I snapped the hydrangeas just after Christmas and they looked superb. So many hues of blue, purple and pink.








 





Unfortunately this morning they looked more like this

 






Still I have these photos to remind me of their former glory and next summer is coming.


Liz Needle

Liz Needle