Case Moth

This morning I was checking over the TreeProject seedlings. Some of them are getting very tall, and would be ready to plant out if there was some chance of good rain to get them established. However, I found that a number of the eucalyptus seedlings had been decapitated, and this was the culprit:

The larva of some species of case moth. It has constructed its case of twelve or more sticks of equal thickness:

Unfortunately those "sticks" were the main stems of multiple eucalyptus seedlings. In the shot above you can maybe see the silk wound around the sticks to keep them together. You can also see the severed stem of the tree on the right-hand side.

Fascinating as the case moth is, I couldn't really allow it to continue munching its way through the seedlings, so I carefully removed it:

That's it sitting on my gardening glove. I took it to a young eucalypt about 3 metres tall elsewhere on the block. The tree has plenty of thin branches that the case moth can use to extend its protective cocoon without endangering the life of the tree. When I checked back a few hours later, it had moved off, so I hope it lives out its life happily in the bigger tree.

GPS Beanbag No-No

Warning: Do not do this!  It is not legal in this state. The GPS has to be attached to the car.

My new GPS has a window mount, but the windscreen on my car is a long way forward - too far to reach from the driver's seat. So today I made a little beanbag for it to sit on:

Side view so you can actually see it:

I filled it with crushed walnut shells, so it has a bit of weight to keep it in place. To test it out we went for a drive this afternoon. The beanbag held the GPS at a good angle and didn't slide off the dashboard, so I think it is a success. And the dogs enjoyed our trip to the Ballarat Botanic Gardens:

Bloom Eleven and Twelve

Block 11:

Block 12:

Which finishes the third row, and now the top is 60% done!

Linked to Cheryll's Bloomers Party, even though Cheryll is away at the moment. She is a dedicated host who scheduled the post before she left on her travels.

Pansies

Last spring I posted this picture of a gorgeous pansy I had planted last autumn:

At the time I said I wished I had made a note of the variety, so I could buy some more this year.

It turns out I didn't need a note because recently I found them for sale again:

So today I planted them out in the same garden bed as last year. I hope they do as well as their predecessors did!

More Nurseries

The Friends Nursery at the Geelong Botanic Gardens opens on Wednesday mornings. We were looking for a particular plant, but it turns out that they had a big autumn sale a week or two ago, and stocks of everything were low or gone. They had none left of the plant we had gone to buy.

I bought these instead:

Two hippeastrums of unknown variety. This morning over breakfast I was reading some blogs, including this post at NeedledMom, featuring some amazing hippeastrums in flower (called amaryllis in the US).  Many years ago I had some I bought at a garage sale in Coburg, but I don't know what happened to them in the end. I've been wanting a replacement for a while. Now I just need to work out the best way to care for them here. They might be candidates for living in the outdoor living area in winter to protect them from frost.

We met a family member and had lunch at the kiosk in the gardens, then on our trip home we stopped off at Roraima Nursery in Lara. The gardens there are fascinating, with all sorts of rusty bits and pieces used as planters or as sculptural decoration.

I like this ball of augur bits hanging in a peppercorn tree:

And the combination of plants in this rusted-through box:

Lime green and pinky-grey:

Just gorgeous!

These ball-shaped succulents are beautiful:

Agave victoriae-reginae. The nursery had tiny ones for sale for $15 and $20 dollars, so I have no idea what this massed display of basket-ball sized ones would cost to emulate. Nice to look at, anyway!

I think that might be enough nurseries for a while. It must be time to just do some work in our own garden.

Lambley and a Fire

Last Thursday my GPS kicked the bucket. I got a new one yesterday, and today wanted to go for a drive somewhere to check it out. I decided Lambley nursery would be a nice spot to visit. The gardens there are always a treat, and we wanted to buy some of their vegetable seeds after attending a talk on vegetable-growing by David Glenn (the owner of Lambley) a couple of weeks ago.

It was a very bright sunny day, (and much hotter than you might expect at this time of year) which is not ideal for photography, but here are a few views around the gardens:

And in the nursery:

Sun-loving plants in the foreground, and shade lovers behind.

On the way home we could see a lot of smoke from a fire which turned out to be quite close to my parents' retirement village. I was almost home when I received a call from Mum's home care co-ordinator telling me that the village had been evacuated to Buninyong. I rang the village's main number to confirm exactly where people had been taken, and was given the address of the recreation centre which was being used as the fire relief centre.

I was relieved to think that the village had an emergency evacuation plan, and that my parents were somewhere well away from the fire.

Back in the car and off to Buninyong, where I found that there was no sign of my parents, or of the village bus. There were a number of elderly people there, and various cats and dogs in boxes and on leads. There were people handing out cups of tea and coffee. There were fire officials and police, but no-one knew where my parents might be. Eventually I was directed to someone who was the representative of the company which runs the retirement village, but she also had no idea where my parents might be. She made a phone call, and eventually I discovered that my parents were out on the street in front of the village.

Here is a news article about the fire in The Age. They don't mention in that story that a big part of the "massive amount of evacuations" was a retirement village. Or that the evacuation involved moving immobile people out to the street and leaving them there for over three hours.

Basically anyone who could drive was told where the relief centre was, but those without cars were just told to get out of the village, then left to their own devices. The village bus, which I had imagined had taken such people to safety, was parked blocking the driveway to stop anyone entering the village. My parents don't use mobile phones, so couldn't ring anyone (me) to come and get them, or even tell me where they were.

I asked the village manager why people were just sitting out in the street, and he said that it was safer for them to be there than in their units, in case the fire turned towards the village. I can understand that, but I think it would have been even better for them to have been loaded into the bus and taken to the air-conditioned relief centre, with access to toilets and refreshments, and well out of danger.

Autumn Colour

A few touches of autumn in the garden.

My ginkgo is turning gold.

A deciduous azalea:

The liquidambar doesn't have much colour, but it is starting to turn:

The stars at the moment are the crepe myrtles:

 They are looking the best they ever have.