The House(s) of Fran_mart

This post will primarily concern itself with the native orchids found on El Rancho, or in the near vicinity. However, in starting to photograph the orchids I found we were also seeing other nice flowers so have included them also. For an expert view on the vegetation around here see http://www.flickr.com/photos/carwoolaplants maintained by Ros Cornish and John Wilkes. For those who prefer hard copy I recommend "Wildflowers of the Bush Capital" by Ian Fraser and Margaret McJannett. These first ones of mine are Glossoidea major , and was one of a patch of at least 50 found in the middle paddock on 29 September 2007. This could be considered a bit of a cheat since it wasn't actually growing on the grounds of El Rancho. Instead it was located at Cuumbeun NR (on 23 September) about 16km away. However I was the one that spotted it! It has been (tentatively) identified as Prasophyllum odorata but with some misgivings and concern. The guru of Australian orchids has been consult...

In several of my posts I have included images of parts of the landscape of Carwoola being bonsaied (or in other words, severely pruned). However we are also attempting to reduce our carbon footprint somewhat by planting a fair bit of stuff. An initial aim of this was to have an olive grove, which is now up to 9 trees. This included 3 trees already in existence when we arrived although they had been well munched by the kangaroos. They were also on a rocky hill and not enjoying it (even though it resembled the envoironment along the coast of the Mediterranean) so were very small and sorry looking. We increased the number of trees by 6 on a visit to Adelaide where we acquired 6 trees at $5 each from 45 Wright St, Renown Park (sorry, they don't seem to have a website at the moment). I then noticed a truck from Greening Australia driving around Carwoola and on following up with an acquaintance there found that they could, and would, give us lots of stuff. Here is a link to their site h...

Spring is sprung, the tulips is riz, I wonder where the tourists iz? The silly sods are probably all at Floriade while the cognoscenti are round at the Ey menage looking at Rob's massive (3,000+ corms) display and enjoying the hospitality of the family Ey. The street frontage is rather specitacular of which this magnificent array is part. The 4th image below provides a wider context. Being a fan of the large and lurid, in flowers at least, these yellow and red items were my favourites. They lurk by the deck at the back of the house. Having attended Floriade in the past (mainly to see what political messages are spelt out in the grape hyacinths) I am well aware of the protocol for taking plant photos. As promised this gives a bigger vista of the front garden. Let there be no sizism in this garden. Obviously this lad gave his right arm (as I define such things) to be in the garden.

This post will include a few images of various folk at work on tasks around our place. The tasks generally have a fairly vigourous physical aspect to them - none of that namby-pamby driving a desk stuff. This shows Frances in the early days of her vegetable garden. It is in an area which was designed as a dog run and was a veritable mongrel to dig. I don't know why I only have one photograph of her working as she does a lot of stuff; some more will be added later (see below). As well as the tyres, decsribed in my previous post, we inherited a large pile of prunings and other junk wood. On a cool moist day in June I sent them up. As you might gather from the distance I am from the fire it generated quite a bit of warmth. Needless to say three months later the pile is nearly back to the original size. I didn't want to run out of firewood next year so invited Milton and his chainsaw around to assist with bonsai-ing a dead stringybark. We definitely defeated this tree, so took a b...

One of the typical issues facing the new owners of a property is the crap left behind by previous owners. Commonly this takes the form of animal shelters especially where goats have been involved. In our case the main problem was a heap of car tyres that Simon and Fiona inherited from the person from whom they acquired the place. One of my first actions on getting here was to put an ad in the Stoney Creek Gazette inviting people who needed tyres to come and take them away - on the principle that re-using was about as good as it could get. This got rid of two trailer loads: >to make a no-dig potato facility (30 tyres); and > for construction of some horse jumps (25 tyres). It could be noted that the second group of people, while charming, were not very good at tying the tyres into their trailer. The first one bounced out going over our ford and I found two more lying beside Briars-Sharrow R oad when I ran along there the next week. I found that I could fit 21 tyres into our traile...