Flowers and grovelling apologies.

It appears some apologies are in order. BIG apologies.

Like a queen ant, I am all behind.
————————————————Goulburn Evening Post 3 Aug 1945.
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article103229668

It seems as though it was only a week ago when I last posted, but I checked my emails today and it has clearly been longer than that.

I’m not quite sure when I lost track of time (or last checked my emails) but such unforgivable neglect wasn’t intentional, I promise!

I have been taking photos for you as always (my camera was bulging at the seams) and thinking of things to write all the time, I have just had difficulty getting it from head to screen!

Although I can only blame myself for being so hopeless I was assisted by that ever present evil, bad internet. 😦

It has been sort of ok during the day (when I am busy of course), but in the evening it has become abysmally slow right when I have time to actually use it. Grrrrr…

Funny thing about that though. Over the weekend I was hard at work with a saw (blistered palm, ouch!) clearing away a stand of scrubby trees at the very furthest and highest part of the back garden.

When I stood back to admire my handiwork (ok, I was really hoping that The Man would notice, take pity on me, and take over) when I realized that through the trees I could actually see a new(ish) mobile phone tower on a lower hill a kilometer or so away.

Hmmm…. That means we are in between two towers, one on top of a hill to the west and another lower hill to the east. Nevertheless, I still can’t get decent reception! Aaargh!!

I promise I will be better at keeping track of the time from now on and here is a photo of the most powerful plant in my garden, the Donkey Ear Orchid, as an apology.

Why so powerful you ask? Well, there are a few of these guys scattered over our hill and the Man has a particular affection for this flower above all the other equally beautiful orchids out there. This is possibly because it is the largest and tallest and, although he is horribly afflicted with domestic blindness, even he can see them when he is clomping around out there.

His affection for them means they have saved the entire population of the hill from being blitzed with the mower! Yay!! ….. for now, anyway…. Here’s hoping that they outlast all the others so they all get a chance to scatter a few seeds about for next season. 🙂

Mower repellent….

More sundews.

Yes, I’m posting about them again…. I can’t help it! 😀

This post is on request of Meeks. She lives a similar place to us so there is the possibility of having sundews growing in her garden too. Well, maybe not in her garden, thanks to the munching of the alpacas, but perhaps there might be a few bravely growing just out of nibbling reach on the other side of the fence.

Just like fat grass.

As you can see, with the help of my ring for scale again, they are small enough to pretend to be grasses and remain unnoticed. The tallest are about 20cm high but can be much smaller.

They are quite fragile things. I tried to put my ring in a better spot and each plant I gently placed it on immediately keeled over under the weight and glued itself to the ground with its sticky tentacles.

Never fear, I carefully unstuck all of them and stood them back up.

One plant tipped itself onto a large ant who was passing by who was no doubt quite startled to suddenly find itself under assault from above. It probably went home screaming something about Triffids to its friends…

Finally I found his little group who were the best option for comparison as they were all already stuck together and holding each other up!

No grass here….

I took this photo yesterday afternoon in the small window of time that the small light pink/white flowers that top each of the sundews was open. (click on it to see it more clearly)

Each of the white dots in this low-level landscape is one plant, generally only one flower per plant seems to open at a time.

The flowers stay tightly shut when the sun is at its brightest and will only open when it has passed over.

I am surprised that any of the flowers are ever pollinated. After all, every other part of the plant wants to eat the bug doing the pollinating! Clearly the flowers are irresistible to some brave bugs out there.

I hope this helps you find some of your own fly eaters in your garden wanders Meeks. 😀

Pretty, and sticky.

Onion Orchid. Better than it sounds!

I was sad when I found that this tiny green orchid had such a blah name. Common onion orchid. Blah….

Onion Orchid

Look how tiny they are and how well camouflaged. That background greenery is just long blades of grass! They should be called something like the Stealth Orchid. I haven’t noticed that they smell like onions either, the Man isn’t allowed to mow the Hill at the moment and I don’t really want to know what they smell like when they are squished. 😉

We have heaps of these little native guys in our garden and this week is the one they have chosen to start their season. I almost missed them altogether yesterday as they are so well hidden. It was only because one of them was parked right next to a different kind of orchid I was already photographing that I noticed them at all.

Of course once I got a glimpse of one I saw them everywhere!

Badly timed bite.

I have also included this picture illustrating the dangers of low level photography when accompanied by an interested canine.

A long time ago we had a dog called Reddog. If I crouched down to take a picture he would quickly make off in the other direction fully aware that getting in my shot would result in a scene.

The little Jackal has only just begun learning that the thing I am looking at might well be interesting but must be left alone at all costs. Just as I pressed the button on this shot she dived in for a look, eeek! She was smart enough to let go and run away before any harm was done to the plant though. Just as well or she would be locked inside all alone next time I take my camera for a walk!

I have enlarged one of the pictures I took so you could see the tiny flowers up and down the stalk. Each stalk can have something like 50 little flowers on it, so the dozen I found today means that there were hundreds of flowers in just one small area of the garden but still almost invisible. I wonder how many other things are hiding in plain sight just waiting for me to find them?

Onion orchid close up

Blue Sun Orchid.

This post has been a week in the making so I hope you like it. But it is only one photo you say! What’s so hard about that?

Well this is a photo of a Blue Sun Orchid, so named because these little lovelies only show their faces on a nice day when the sun shines brightly on them. Yes, it has been sunny all week, that is not why the photo took so long.  I’m confessing to the fact that it has taken a week between me noticing they were ready to flower in the backyard and me getting coordinated enough to be out in the backyard with my camera when they are open. It was just as well that I took the photos when I did as the weather changed the next day and they will probably go back into hiding for a while.

When the sun is not on them they are tightly closed and pretending to be just another piece of grass, if slightly lumpier. Not a very exciting photo for you!

Some years they are bright blue with tiny dark spots although this year they all seem to have gone for the pale blue look. In the past we have also had salmon pink ones as well. Unfortunately I have not seen any of them for a few seasons, hopefully they are just on holiday.

There are over a dozen of these shy little guys in one open section of the Hill and, as the Man has been forbidden from mowing up there for a while, the grasses have grown up around them so they are doing a pretty good job of hiding. I actually thought there was only one or two and was worried that something had happened to kill them off. When I went up there to check them out I was amazed, and very happy, to see so many. There are other single ones scattered under the trees but they get so little sun I am unlikely to ever be organized enough to get a picture of them. 😉

Sun Orchid.

It’s orchid season. No mowing here!

The only thing making our holiday return bearable (yes, I’m still moaning about it) is that we have come back at my favourite time of year, orchid season.

Firstly I should explain that our garden is a long narrow half an acre, and that I use the term ‘garden’ loosely. In front of the house we have a traditional garden, then immediately out the back door is the grassy standard all the way to the Hills Hoist. After that however, the land starts heading skywards, that half of the block is what we call ‘The Hill’. The Hill is just that, and is populated by gum trees and scrub and much ground level greenery, none of which was arranged by the hand of man or could be even vaguely described as lawn.

One of the lovely things about it is that it is made up of locally native plants, so every time we are wandering around up there and see something weedy that doesn’t belong it is quickly yanked out!

This time of year the Man is not allowed up there with the mower, even when the grasses are getting a bit too long, he just has to bide his time. In amongst those grasses are a selection of small native orchids that I call my babies. He starts up the mower near the back door and I shout out “Don’t you dare go up there mowing my babies!” Sometimes, when the flowers are just coming up and quite hard to see, everyone is banned from walking around up there with their big stompy uncaring feet. It is hard to ban the dog, but she has tiny little feet and I just have to pretend that she isn’t up there at all.

Waxlip orchid.

This is the time of year that my camera and I talk walks up on the Hill and everyone knows to stay away. It is also the time when the neighbours probably think I am crazy, walking slowly around looking at the ground, stopping every now and again to take a photograph.

One of the first ones to come up in our garden are the purple Waxlip Orchids, this is the same time the tiny carnivorous plants start flowering too, so there are beautiful purple flowers standing high in the grass and tiny pink ones topping the sundews.

Over the rest of the year different kinds of orchids will come up at different times but the very first ones to come up are the Greenhood orchids. They live in a large patch just over the fence in the corner of the (nice) neighbours block. I have invited them over but they stubbornly remain on the wrong side of the fence. The neighbours don’t mow much so these little guys are safe but their appearance always alerts me to the fact that the mowing activities of the Man need curtailing for a while!