Orchids and Car Trouble

Before I moved here I knew nothing about native orchids, but there are several species that grow on our property. Right at the moment two species are flowering.

This is a Tall Greenhood, and it is right beside the driveway:

Several flowers open and a few buds to come at the top. These pop up in various places over the property, but this particular one is in a spot where I have never seen it before.

The other orchid in flower is the Nodding Greenhood:

Each plant has just one flower. They grow in many places on the block, singly or in small groups like this.

Something that doesn't bring much joy: 

My car being loaded onto a tow truck at 9:30 at night in the rain. Hopefully it will be repairable, but I won't know until next week some time.

Pink

February's Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour was pink. Here's a pink wildflower I saw earlier in the month, the spotted hyacinth-orchid, Dipodium pardalinum, which is an endangered species:

Here's some pink birds I saw today:

 

Galahs.

A few pink things from the garden, starting with a pale pink hoya:

A deep pink hydrangea:

A bright pink penstemon:

I made two of Ivani's scrappy hearts this month, 

I know that is four, but the bottom two of them are left over from last year. Speaking of last year, this month I sandwiched last year's hearts

And now I'm quilting them.

Linked to the final pink link-up at So Scrappy.

Sunshine

 Our first sunny dry day in a while (although it is raining again now).

When I did my post of the garden in October I mentioned the wisteria had looked good this year, but it turned out I never took a photo of it at its peak. So here it is today, well past its best but still flowering:

This one has pale, almost white flowers. At the other end of the pergola there is a different one which has finished flowering now.

Under the pergola I found this butterfly, which I have never seen here before:

It's an Imperial Jezebel, Delias harpalyce.

Also taking advantage of the sunshine is this lemon-scented sun orchid, Thelymitra antennifera. It has been trying to open for over a week:

And look what we found late this afternoon:

Another koala! And this one is on our block, so that makes it ours.

Spring!

 Happy Wattle Day!

This is a blackwood, or Acacia melanoxylon, flowering for wattle day.

Other signs of spring include grape hyacinths:

and daffodils:

When we were out walking this afternoon, the dogs alerted us to an echidna:

We often see evidence of them digging out ant nests, but this is the first one we have actually seen since last summer.

In the sewing room I made some more Positivity blocks, then pinned them up to see how they look:

I made the first couple in June, but only started working on them again in the last week. With a border this will be large enough for a donation quilt, so I might just sew them together now rather than make more. Although they are a bit of fun to make so who knows?

Happy spring to my southern hemisphere friends.

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!

An Outing

Well rugged up, a bunch of intrepid folk went on a hunt for orchids and other wildflowers in Scarsdale and the Enfield State Park.

 

This is a tiger orchid, Diuris sulphurea:

I don't know how they get their common names, because it really doesn't say "tiger" to me.

This one should be called a "Costa" orchid, I think (for those familiar with Gardening Australia)

But it is actually called a purple beard orchid, Calochilus robertsonii.

 

Look at all those coats:

We were lucky it didn't rain though.

 

This was an amazing sight:

A mass of grass trigger plants, Stylidium graminifolium. Found in an unlikely place, an electricity transmission line easement:

This was the closest I found to an open sun orchid:

I think it is a spotted sun-orchid, Thelymitra ixioides. We had no sunshine all day, so it is not surprising the sun orchids were not out.

One of the highlights of the day was finding the rare Enfield grevillea, Grevillea bedggoodiana, which only grows in this little corner of the world:

The Rest of October

 October has flown by.

A couple of weeks ago we visited a new section of Woowookarung Regional Park, where a wildflower trail had been set up.

We enjoyed exploring a new place

and so did the dogs:

Notice the "egg and bacon" plants in the background? Here's what one variety looks like close up:

Golden bush-pea, Pultenaea gunnii.

 

This month there were two big events I was planning to be involved in which were cancelled when it became obvious that the covid outbreak wasn't going to allow them to happen. Maybe next year we can plan to do things without fear of them having to be cancelled?

One thing that we could get involved in was the Great Southern BioBlitz on iNaturalist between 22nd and 25th Oct. Cities and regions all over the southern hemisphere "competed", although Cape Town managed to win by a mile:

We visited a different local spot each day of the BioBlitz, photographing as many species as we could.

At Lal Lal Falls

we got caught in the rain, but Jack found us this amazing fungus:

It is called "Devils Fingers", Clathrus archeri, and apparently smells like rotting flesh, which is why a dog was interested in it! I didn't get my nose close enough to experience that for myself.

Near the Gong Gong reservoir we saw two swamp wallabies:

And then after the BioBlitz was over, we found two different varieties of sun orchid flowering on our block for the first time ever:

I'm sure it's not the first time they've been here, it is just the first time we have noticed them flower.

Almost 6 months after my father died, I have just about managed to get Mum access to her money. Dad did all the banking and bill-paying, with Mum not having even an ATM card. There is a Power of Attorney document naming me, but it had a condition in it which has been very hard to fulfill. But I think soon I will be able to get Mum some cash, and also pay her bills. It is incredible how difficult this has been every step of the way.

We had a big storm a couple of nights ago. Trees came down all over the place, although at our place the main thing that came down was two baby ringtail possums whose drey blew out of their tree and landed on the road. We took them to the local vet so that they could be collected by a wildlife carer:

Our covid numbers this month have been higher than ever, but because we now have 80% of the population double-vaccinated, lockdowns have lifted.  People from Melbourne are now allowed to travel into regional areas, but I think I'll still be staying home and avoiding any crowds for a while yet.

And that is about it for October. This afternoon I entered my sewing room for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'll save that for the end of the month tomorrow.

Sights of October (So Far)

We've been in lockdown for the last week, and still don't know if it will be lifted at midnight tonight (as I was typing that it was announced that our lockdown is lifting. Hooray for us, bad luck for Mildura, who are heading back into lockdown.)

Here are some very random photos of things from the last week. Particularly random as Blogger has loaded them in no order whatsoever.

Crabapple tree glowing in the sun this afternoon:

 

Deciduous azalea:

We have (or had) 3 of these from memory, but they failed to thrive and were moved to a different spot then overgrown and forgotten about. But one of them is still with us, and popped up a couple of flowers for the first time!

A house we walked past this morning, that I haven't seen before. Their garden looked great, so I snapped a couple of photos to try to work out what plants they had that were doing well in our climate:

This one isn't very informative.

My redbud is flowering. This photo was some days ago, and more flowers are open now. I missed getting a photo in the sun today, so this one will have to do for now:

 

The yellow flowers here are several species of plants common called "egg and bacon" plants:

They cover parts of our block and look great at this time of year. For the rest of the year you hardly notice them.

This is a photo of something you don't often see:

Not a great photo, but it is the back end of a baby seagull testing its wings. I've heard people ask, "Why do you never see baby seagulls?", and the standard answer is that they breed on off-shore islands. That might be the case near the coast, but seagulls that live a long way inland have to improvise. There is a seagull rookery on the roof of a building in the centre of Ballarat. How did I see that while locked down? I was able to go to work on Tuesday as an "Authorised Worker".

And last, but a long way from least, a wild animal seen on our daily walk on Wednesday:

An echidna!

Now that we are out of lockdown again, I will be able to visit my mother tomorrow. This afternoon I finished some pressing tasks that were hanging over me, so I may even be able to get back into my sewing room soon too.