Already it is the end of December with only a few warm, sunny days this Summer. Today was beautiful (hooray)! It was wonderful to feel the warmth of the sun on your back. There is still some hope that the hot days will soon be here.
The plants seem to think that it is Summer. They have been enjoying the extra rain and are flushed with growth.
The bark is shedding on the blue gums. Somedays it ‘rains’ bark. The tree trunks eventually change from pink to a cool green.
The spotted gums have gone all spotty!
The black bean trees are in flower. Although not native to this area, these are a magnificent rainforest tree. The flowers are red and yellow growing out of the branches of the tree. It produces large seed pods, the seeds of which are fun to grow and often sold at Chinese New Year as ‘lucky plants’.
The rainbow lorikeets invade the trees making themselves ‘drunk’ from the nectar. Their racket is deafening!
The flowers of the hoya plant hang secretively along a fence.They look like upturned umbrellas.
They don’t look real at all, more like plastic flowers.
Whenever the sun does show itself, the seeds on the Hoveas start to pop. These plants have mauve pea shaped flowers in the early Spring. If the seed pods are placed in a paper bag, for collecting for propogation, and left in the sun, it will sound like popcorn popping as they explode.
The many rainy days have caused some confusion with the fungi. These don’t usually appear until Autumn.
If these puff balls continue to grow, they eventually explode to release their spore. I don’t think this will happen if we get any hot days.
Meanwhile we can be like Bailey, on guard for any white cabbage moths around the tomatoes, and enjoy any warm days we are lucky enough to have.
Happy New Year everyone!
