Growing Cold

We had some bright sunshine this morning, but around the middle of the day this happened:

The driveway is normally dark grey - close to black when it is wet. The white stuff is hail.

On the other side of the driveway is the rose and perennial bed (surrounded by an electric fence to protect it from wallabies). Behind that there is a row of crepe myrtles, three of which are in this photo but you would have to enlarge it and know what you were looking for to pick them out probably. In the background are the two beds I showed last week.

Here's the view down the driveway towards the orchard and vege garden:

You can see the build-up of hail even at the neighbour's house across the road. While I was out taking pictures, the nature of the precipitation changed. The hail stopped, and a more floaty form of ice fell for a short while. Yes, we had a little bit of snow! But then it changed again, and turned to rain, after which all the hail build-up disappeared.

A week or so ago I noticed a flower spike forming on this orchid:

Fortunately last night I moved all the orchids into the greenhouse, so they weren't out in the hail.

Here's a hyacinth bulb appearing in a pot in the back yard:

I presume a bit of cold won't hurt it.

But I'm a bit worried about the tree dahlia:

The first couple of buds are just starting to open. The weather bureau were forecasting a low of 1 in Ballarat tonight, and if it is 1 there it could be lower here. Dahlias do not like frost. But the forecast has been revised to an overnight low of 3, so perhaps we will see some fully open tree dahlia flowers this year.