Blue and Red

I was out in the garden this afternoon and heard an unexpected sound up above:

We don't get many planes flying over at the best of times, but right at the moment it was very surprising. It was heading west, but no-one west of us wants anyone from here heading in their direction at the moment.

As a contrast to all that blue, here's some red:

The liquidambar has lost most of its leaves, but the remaining ones are very autumnal.

Garden Happenings

After recent frosty mornings, my Bethel sage has stopped flowering. It was covered in unopened flower buds that sadly froze. It doesn't like that! So it is time for it to be moved. In this photo the Bethel sage is the tallest branches in the garden bed:

Looking a bit bedraggled after the frost, but the highest branches are well over 2m tall. Until the frost it was lovely to sit inside and watch birds in it, but it really is too big to be planted this close to the house:

It has taken several years to get to this point. But each summer it shoots up higher and higher. Gardens in bushfire areas shouldn't have large shrubs close to the house like this, so the Bethel sage is moving to another part of the garden.

Elsewhere in the garden, my Limelight protea flower (as seen last week) is opening up:

Inside view:

I'm so glad the birds have left it alone this year! (So far, at least.) The colour combination is gorgeous.

A few days back, some garden bed edging was being put in place, and in the process my blue devils (Eryngium ovinum) disappeared. I bought them at a native plants exhibition last October. They hadn't grown much since then, but I had their location marked with bricks. Somehow as the edging was laid my markers were moved and my devils disappeared. I was happy about the edging, but not happy about the lost plants. Fortunately some more little blue devils were sourced, and I went and collected them yesterday:

I shall have to mark these ones more definitely when they are planted out.

And here's the front garden bed later this afternoon once the Bethel sage was moved:

It has left a couple of gaps that I will fill with something low-growing but still attractive to birdlife.

Sixty-Four Percent

Today's block of my 100-day project lined up ready to sew:

This is the last of 16 blocks like this. I am looking forward to making something different!

Sewn and pressed:

That is the 64th block made. Almost at the two-thirds mark.

Here's how a quarter of the quilt looks now:

It's getting there.

Lal Lal Sights

On the second day of my friend's visit, we took a tour of the highlights of Lal Lal.

We went to the falls, where there was actually water flowing, but I didn't photograph it. I was trying to photograph a bird of prey which was flying over the gorge.  This is the only photo that actually had the bird in it (I got a lot of blue sky), and there is no way I could identify it:

If you haven't seen any of my previous pictures of the Lal Lal Falls, a few of them are linked in this post.

We took a walk around the falls area, and saw a mob of kangaroos.

Then we visited the blast furnace, which you can see at my earlier visit last month.

We drove past a couple of old buildings built from bricks made of the local clay, the old bluestone station building, and the Falls Hotel which is still closed because of the virus. I forgot to point out the water tower. And I can't find photos of any of these on my blog so I obviously need to get out and take some.

Protea

Today as I was showing a visiting friend around the garden I noticed that my protea "Limelight" has a flower almost ready to open. I took a couple of photos straight away,

in case this flower, which is looking so good at the moment,

meets the same fate as the flower that never fully developed last year.

(I was going to post the picture from that post here, but Blogger won't let me. So if you want to know what happened to last year's flower, you will have to click that link.)

The Garden in June

It is looking like winter around here, but there are still a few flowers to be found. These photos were taken at about 2 o'clock this afternoon, but the dark sky made conditions more like dusk. You will also notice from the photos that it has been raining today.

Flowering quince:

Hebe:

Euryops daisy:

A little pelargonium has been flowering for months:

It might be the South African Pelargonium reniforme.

Lavender:

Thryptomene:

Salvia:

Most of the salvias have been destroyed by frost, but this mini red one still has some flowers.

Rain-covered rosemary:

Osteospermum daisies:

Anemones:

Bergenia:

Penstemons:

A little wildflower, trailing goodenia:

Viburnum tinus:

Abutilons:

This was a surprise, as ceanothus normally flowers in spring, not in winter:

Some jonquils have started flowering, although most are only just appearing out of the ground:

Pigface is another plant that I don't expect to see flowering at this time of year:

The last of the Japanese windflowers:

And that's just about the lot. I missed the cyclamens, a grevillea, and a correa that some "helpful" bird had pruned all the flowers off.

The pictures aren't in the order I wanted them, but Blogger sucked half of them in in reverse order, and moving them around is a pain with this new editor.

A Chilly Start

Everything was a bit icy this morning as the temperature had dropped to minus three before the sun came up. Brr!

Frozen salvia:

Frozen penstemon:

Frozen rosebuds:

Frozen geranium leaves:

That will be the end of the tree dahlias:

They look completely fried, poor things.

Look what the postie brought today!

This is the "extra parcel" that I mentioned was on its way a couple of weeks ago. Australia Post kept me waiting for it, as it has taken nearly three weeks to arrive after being posted just 60km away. Thank you to my friend for this lovely gift!

Working Bee

It was a cool day today, just right for a big bonfire.

The occasion was a working bee at the Clarkesdale Bird Sanctuary (previously visited in August last year), and the purpose was to clean up some of the dead branches lying around in one small section of the property. A group of about 10 people spent several hours moving dead branches large and small to be added to the fire:

There were lots of fascinating fungi growing on larger fallen trees:

After several hours all the accumulated smaller branches had been added to the fire, and it was just a matter of letting it burn down:

Then it was time to head home, tired but happy after a day out.

June So Far

On Tuesday I went back to work after voluntarily staying away for 10 weeks. I think they were happy to see me again, as I was presented with this bunch of flowers:

On my way home after work I popped in at the home of one of the guild members, and collected batting to use in a couple of donation quilts. Today I got the first of these pin basted:

It is the "Broken Herringbone" quilt I assembled in April.