The House(s) of Fran_mart

This is part 3 of a series about things related to the soggy Summer. While wandering about photographing the plethora of fungi I suddenly noticed about 20 greenhood flowers waving in the grass.  Here is a close up of the labellum (more or less to prove I don't always trigger them).  As there were no rosettes visible I concluded that this was a Diplodium sp rather than Pterostylis sp .  That being the case green labellum suggests D. reflexum .  This has since been confirmed by a couple of experts. Note from the future (2 March): I discovered another of these plants about 300m away, in a very similar habitat. Even further in the future!  On 3 March I found yet another colony on Whiskers Creek Road - about 1km in a straight line form the initial lot.  Here are a couple of images. The initial colony had completely 'gone over' by 7 March. In case anyone is interested here is a plot of the position of the three colonies (if the single plant ...

This follows on from my post announcing that we had scored record rainfall this month.  I could have appended this and the next two posts to that one, but it would have made a very slow loading item.  To my surprise the rain did not put Whiskers Creek over our drive last night, but I did wonder how the Molonglo River was going at the low level crossing on Briars-Sharrow Rd. So I fired up my bike and went for a ride.  The answer is that the River was well over  the road.  A ute (diesel 4x4) trying to get to Rossi had a pause ..  and decided that as the water was only halfway up the marker poles they would be OK.  And they were.  They had a brief conversation with a hatchback approaching from the other side who decided that whatsit was the better part of thingummyjig and did a u-turn. A nice high truck with trailer also had a bit of a think and went for it.  Hope there was nothing soluble in the bottom of the trailer. I went a bit...

This is the second post about the side effects of the recent rain .  In the case of fungi, I suspect that the relevant indicator is that we have received some rain (and I really only record ~1+mm) on 17 of the 29 days of February.  Cutting to the chase as we looked around the property today there were more fungal fruiting bodies - in both numbers and diversity than we have ever seen before.  It was like a rain forest without the trees! I am putting the images up now, in the hope that I can update IDs etc later. What really kicked this post off was Frances noticing a lot of brown lumps in the top paddock while we were walking the small dog this morning.  These turned out to be a heap of fungi. On getting closer they were clearly agarics of some form. Then we started to see large white fungi (lots of them) with 'drippy bits' - a partial veil.  As Denis has commented below, this is Macrolepiota dolichaula - which I have included before but didn't have the...

I shall add to this as the next few days unfold, but we have just gone past the highest monthly rainfall I have recorded in the 5 years we have been living here.  That is 162.5mm in the first 28 days of February 2012: the previous record was 158.3mm in February 2010. Here is the radar immediately after the record fell: Clearly there is more on the way, in the short term, and by the time I went to bed (10pm) another 10mm had fallen. In the medium term the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is forecasting - through a computer model with no forecaster intervention - another 25 - 50mm on Wednesday.  That is, tomorrow. The day after Wednesday is Thursday.  Here is what they have in mind - or rather in computer - for that day. That blue blob represents 100mm -150mm.  That is roughly between 25 and 33% of the total rainfall of 2009 in one day! So we made it through the Tuesday night, scoring another 10mm of steady light rain through the night.   That has got us ...

Kangaroo family life Yesterday afternoon I was looking out of a window and noticed a medium sized Eastern Grey Kangaroo with a large joey beside.  The joey appeared to cuddle the adult and then proceeded to stick its head back in the pouch for an extended guzzle.  (Sorry about the chook wire intervening in the image - see below.) The adult didn't seem to mind this at all and settled down to do a bit of joey-grooming. I decided to try to get some images of the happy duo from the other side of the fence so invaded our neighbours property,   Unfortunately, despite my full array of skulking skills being deployed mum spotted me so stopped her activities to fix me with a steely gaze.  The resultant image does give a clearer idea of the relative sizes of the two animals. Personally, I reckon junior is big enough to get a smack round the ear and be told to get his own grub, especially since Mum would almost certainly have another joey in the pouch slurping fr...