Water

A couple of views of the bottom of our block, which you wouldn't want to try walking across at the moment:

This is all normally dry land, but now has water everywhere.

 

Imaginary Blog Posts

So for the last little while I have occasionally taken photos for a blog post, then not written that post. So here are a few of the things I didn't get round to posting.

The 29th September was my 13-year blogiversary. My first post in 2009 was of aphids on a rose bud. But here the climate is a bit different, and the roses hardly even had leaves at the end of September, definitely no buds. However, tulips are budding at that time:

And daffodils are flowering:

On the 8th October I attended a quilting meeting, and a few other people brought along their blocks for the birthday quilt I made blocks for in September. Here are most of the blocks laid out:

They looked pretty good! (I think I have a photo somewhere of the whole top assembled. Will have a look for it.)

Also on 8th October, the crabapples were looking great,

I had a couple of magnolia flowers,

and pots full of tulips looking lovely:

 

On the 9th of October we had a field trip, and on the way home saw a sign pointing to Nimon's Bridge, so took a side trip to check it out:

It is an old rail bridge, now just for walking across. Next time I will take the path that leads to the bottom of the bridge, as it is probably more spectacular from down there. The view from the top was pretty nice, but I didn't photograph it.

On 13th October I started quilting my Positivity quilt:

It was a good day for it, as this terrible photo of the weather station shows:

27mm rain that day.

On 22nd October, I sewed down the binding, and Positivity was officially finished:

Closer view of the quilting:

 

Just found the photo I was sent of the birthday quilt blocks assembled ready for quilting:

Made by 8 different people. I'm glad I didn't have the job of assembling it. There were the usual issues of blocks not being all the same size, which for a design like this was a bit of a problem as you don't want to trim blocks and lose the points. But I think the assembler did a good job of making it all work. I hope the person it is for loves it!

The last 4 days of October were a bit mad, as we participated in the Great Southern BioBlitz, trying to do as many iNaturalist observations as possible. But I did take the time to notice on 31st October that my tree peony flowers are beginning to open:

Also October was the wettest month ever since we moved here, with a total of 115.4mm! Everything is mud and the lower half of the block is under water.

That's it for all the posts I didn't write in October. I'll see if I can do better for November.

Life Goes On

Thank you to everyone for your kind comments on my last post.

Last Sunday we went on a orchid hunt, and for the first time in my life I saw helmet orchids in flower:

Two different species of helmet orchid.

They are teeny-tiny things, but fortunately we had a guide who know where to look for them.

Lunch among the trees:

It was a fantastic day out.

On Tuesday on my way to work I stopped to photograph these swans who have newly-hatched babies:

A couple of times in recent months I have thought I've seen a swan on this dam as I was driving past. But a lot of the water is hidden by an embankment and long grass, so I could never be sure. 

 On Thursday some heavy-duty machinery showed up:

to make a large delivery:

It was cold and rainy so I didn't stay out to watch how they managed it.

Yesterday I attended the quilt guild AGM and found myself with a new job for the next 12 months. It was good to see people again after a long absence. When I got home we tried to take the dogs for a walk, but we didn't get very far before we had to turn around and run home:

That's hail.

So I had to do most of my daily step count on the treadmill instead!

A Bit of Rain

 24mm in 30 minutes!

The garden really needed it.

This was 1:40pm despite how dark it looks.

Later in the day we went out for a walk and everything looked fresh and green and the air smelt fantastic!

Snow

 Well this was unexpected

not normal weather for late September

apparently it was the coldest September day in this part of the world for over 50 years.

 It was also the first day of the Great Southern Hemisphere Bioblitz on iNaturalist. Areas all over Africa, South America and Australia are competing to add as many observations as possible between 25th and 28th September.

The snow (and the freezing temperatures) meant finding insects, birds, or even plants to photograph wasn't possible for several hours in the middle of the day.

Some people found other ways to amuse themselves though:

Timesoup

I read an article this morning that suggested we aren't living in a timeline, but in a timesoup. "As the hours, days, weeks and months become a blur, it’s no longer clear if time is passing too quickly, or too slowly." That resonates with me!

I have no idea how much time has passed. I am very surprised at how long it is since I wrote a blog post. It was last month and we are now almost two weeks in to this month. 

We had snow on the 4th August:

 

I never wrote a stash report at the end of July, although when I went searching through my blog apparently I didn't do one at the end of June either. How did that happen?

Stash report for the end of July:

Thread:
No spools emptied, none added.
Year to date - no change.

Dress fabric:
None used, none added.
Year to date - up 4.25m.

Quilt fabric:
1.8m used, 0.5m added
Year to date - down 7.64m. 

But I've just realised that I never added into my spreadsheet any fabric used for face masks, so more fabric has been used than I have recorded.

 

There are signs spring is coming, such as more daffodils opening:

 

 Although the liquidambar still hung onto two red autumn leaves:

The tulips that took 3 weeks to travel 60kms back in May/June have started to pop up:

I planted the bulbs in a pot which just fits in my wombat planter. There were 3 tulips up when I took this photo 5 days ago, but by yesterday there were 5 up. I haven't looked at them this morning. 

This plum tree is the first tree in the orchard to have any blossom:

Photo taken on 10th August, when a birthday was celebrated in a very low-key isolated way.

Each day we watch for the new virus case numbers, hoping that the current restrictions will bring the numbers down, and worrying about what will happen if they don't. Doing too much worrying.

Some wildflowers are appearing:

Nodding greenhood orchid above, tall greenhood orchid below:

Nature is following its normal timeline, even if the humans are lost in timesoup.

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!

Foaming Trees

Seen today while taking a long walk in the rain:

A bit of searching once I got home lead to the information that eucalyptus bark and leaves contain saponins, which foam when wet. They don't ooze out of the tree, but wash off the the leaves and bark  when it rains. The saponins are wetting agents, that help water to soak into the soil at the base of the tree.

When I saw the foaming trees I was amazed. But now I am more amazed that I don't remember ever seeing this phenomenon before.

There It Is

Compare this photo with the one in my last post:

It is amazing what a difference a wind change and 8.8mm of rain makes!

I couldn't remember exactly where I stopped along the road to take Tuesday's photo, so this isn't exactly the same view, but it is pretty close. All these turbines should have been visible in that photo too.

Not Fun

Today was our first Total Fire Ban, and first day of Severe fire danger of the summer. So many parts of the country are burning already, but until now our weather has been relatively mild. Today's top was forecast to be over 40 (it got to 41.9), so it was a day of being prepared, and watching the Emergency website.

"Go bags" ready to go:

I spent the morning in my sewing room, doing some quilting. Around the middle of the day I was thinking to myself, no emergencies yet, maybe everything will be OK. And just as I thought that, my phone started alerting me to a fire right on the southern edge of my "watch zone", at Meredith:

Initially it was a hay shed on fire:

And up to 16 fire vehicles were involved in trying to stop it spreading:

I'm not sure what happened, whether a spark from this fire ignited another, or a separate fire began to the west of this one (and if so, did someone deliberately light both of them?) but somehow a grass fire broke out. In the map below, from several hours later, the hay shed fire is in the small yellow area at the top, and the grass fire is the black section in the orange area. The red area is the area potentially at risk from the fire by then:

Because the wind was from the north, there was no danger of it coming towards us, at least until the expected cool change this evening. The evening was spent watching the "Victorian Observations" weather page to see where the wind change had reached, and the Emergency page to see what was happening with this fire. And I forgot to take any more screen shots. Up to 66 vehicles were working on this fire, trying to get it under control before the wind change. The whole map to the right of the fire became a warning area, as once the wind changed the fire could change from being a narrow front heading south east, to a very wide fire front heading north east. We love our cool changes, but they can be very dangerous when fires are burning.



Post Script:
Two days later, this fire is under control, and firefighters are working on hot spots and trying to ensure it stays under control. Across the state there are much worse fires still burning out of control, and the news of fires in other parts of the country is all bad.