The House(s) of Fran_mart

The usual list of recently updated posts.  The frogmouth   and October garden posts have been updated several times I have looked at the sea-eagle cam a few times.  The chick first flew on 27 October and the linked post contains this on-link to the You-tube video of the event. More waterbird images have been added   The fungus at Cavan has been identified.  A beetle has been correctly identified.

Each year the local Lions Club arranges for a set of gardens in the Burra Valley (more or less) to open to the public.  This year we visited 5 of the 7, and found 3 of them particularly interesting, both for gardens and art. Our first stop was the Tijara Iris Garden.  We go there with the ntention of purchasing bearded irises for our own garden.  I'm sure that we will never get our garden to look like this. or this (especially the view). After a very pleasant visit and opening my wallet a little (at $9 per pot, which often contains 3 large plants, this place is the greatest bargain in the gardening world) we moved across the valley to Felix. As might be gathered from the entrance there is a resident artist here.  A feature of the garden is the appearance of red-poles in a similar role to Japanese torii throughout. Much of the external fabric of the house has also been painted. In addition to the art the place sold jams and preserves (which we didn't acquire no

 When we first moved to Canberra we took a trip to the Snowy Mountain Scheme reservoirs and our daughter (then about 6 years of age) ran across a car park exclaiming about a porcupine (we had recently lived in Denver).  This was the first echidna we had ever seen but we have seen a few since then. Since moving to Carwoola they have been a regular and enjoyable element of our lives.  So it was pleasing tonight when the small dog went into "spot and bark" mode as an echidna walked across the lawn. I rushed out with the camera as it buried itself in some foliage.  Despite the canine cacophony emanating from the house it soon poked its nose out again. Realising that it was not alone it moved briskly to a nearby tree and tried to imitate a root. After a few more minutes it seemed to realise that it wasn't really rooted and gave me a wistful look. It was last seen heading for the nutritional delights of the many meat-ant nests in the adjoining paddock.

After Monday's great trip to Robertson I wondered if anything could match it.  I think the ANPS trip to the pagodas on the Eastern side of the Endrick River, just past Nerriga did achieve that.  Repeating my warning from Monday, this post has 32 images in it so I have tried to keep the text to a minimum. The key to flora (and fauna) is the landscape/geology so I will start with some summarising shots.  Here is a view from the first stop showing the sandstone. Part of the soil had been taken up into large ant-mounds. The overall impression was of great diversity and a wonderful display of flowers. Here follow my photos of the dicotyledonous flowers with such names as I have been able to remember (from those provided by members on the day) or to link from the walk summary put out by Ros Cornish.  I will try to improve on these over the next short while, but thought it better to get the images out asap!  (Since first posting this, Ros has provided some specific advice on a

I will begin by thanking Denis, of Nature of Robertson, for his great hospitality to us when we visited Robbo today.  I should warn folk there are 25 images in this post so it might be a bit slow to load.  ( Denis noted in a recent post he takes up to 250 images in a day in the bush.  I estimate I pushed the button over100 times in about 3 hours: of these about 40% were binned immediately.  Another 20% bit the dust when seen on my computer, leaving about 40% 'reasonable' snaps. )  On the good side there is less text! After a refreshing cup of coffee, some pastry and a good chat in the (Le?) Café Pirouette in the village we headed to the den of Peonies.  There was an astonishing array of plants in flower: it is amazing the difference good soil and rainfall make. Two images of peonies, which pretty much demonstrate one reason why people like to grow them.  A native hibiscus was particularly interesting. The first of the plant/insect photos was taken when a red-taile