The House(s) of Fran_mart

When we started on our walk with the dog this morning I called in to see how our large - 60+ plants - colony of Cyanicula caerulea (the blue not-Caladenia) were going.  The short answer is that they have gone for this year.  However I did find my first Stegostyla  sp. for the year on our property.  I will take a punt on it being S. ustulata in view of the absence of purple on the visible areas. A PARENTHESIS FROM THE AFTERNOON I thought I should go back and see what else I could find in the afternoon.  First off, I proved that "...to everything there is a season ..." (attribute to Ecclesiastes or the Byrds as you wish, but the Byrds have a better melody line ).  So it is with orchids: I found quite a few more S. ustulata and got down and close: Then as I neared our house I found this: I believed that to be S. cucullata b ut a couple of folk whose opinions I completely respect have explained that it is still S ustulata - see comments for detail...

Two weeks ago we went for a short walk in the outskirts of Queanbeyan .  The area is the Council preferred route for the Queanbeyan by-pass, and an alternative route which had been suggested is probably off the table following the ill-advised judgement of voters at the recent Federal election (not that I'm bitter and twisted or anything). Feeling like another stroll this afternoon we decided to take a similar route to see what had changed.  The overall change is that the Acacia s have largely finished flowering while the Fabaceae have started to hit their straps. (On the former visit  Dillwynnia sieberi,  a member of the latter family, was very evident from the start of the walk but on this visit the flowering of this species was restricted to the upper end of the route.) The main species visible on this walk were Pultenaea s.  To begin with they were mainly P. subspicata ..  ... while P. microphylla kicked in at various spots.  Some Leu...

Having given the daffodils around our place a bit of webspace I thought the tulips should get a go.  I will begin with some shots of the mass plantings in a friend's garden.  We don't have the massed plantings but the next three are close-ups of some blooms in our gardens. This is a lily which has appeared in our garden for the first time this year.  We have no memory of buying or planting this bulb but it also would be strange for it to suddenly appear after 6 years!  So I presume it must have hitch-hiked on some other things we have acquired and planted!  My friend Alison has suggested this to be a Tritelia, which has shown many of the same characteristics in her garden.  (On looking the genus up on Wikipedia it seems to be a taxonomist's delight with splits and lumps all over the place!)  We do remember planting bluebells and this is the first year they have flowered.  Close ups of our camellias.  They are proving a...

I do apologise to The Seekers for using their song in this context.  Even though one of their members was a Liberal politician I would be surprised if he is a fan of Tony Abbott. It now seems that the results of the recent Federal Election are known and it is about as bad as could be expected.  My support for our local Member, Mike Kelly, has had the usual result for people I work for: they lose . Some aspects of the likely future have been foreshadowed in a recent blogpost by my friend Ian Fraser .  In commenting on that I suggested that "...  in 10 years time there will be a popular game of picking the worst decision by the Abbott hegemony.".  In the first week since the Gang of 40 (ie 10 times as bad as the final days of Maoist rule in China) were sworn in - rather than sworn at - there have been a number of omens of what is to come which might be contenders for that title: The decisions about secrecy on asylum seeker boat arrivals; Sacking the Secr...

I followed direction and didn't get out of the car at the quarry so the images start when we eventually got to the Nature Reserve. My expectation is that the snaps which follow will pretty much come in the order in which I took them. Some of the ones I ended up with were - to quote the current Princess Royal from a few years back - pretty naff, so I don't have any of two of the commonest genera Patersonia and Leucopogon . Good of the NPWS to have put up this sign, but a pity that there is no mobile coverage in the area to check if they had in fact finished.  In the event we didn't hear any gunfire so I presume they had.  On to piccies of things natural  Here is - I think - Bossiaea buxifolia . This is the overall habitat.  The soil was basically sand. The flower of the Schoenus sp.  A grasshopper nymph.   Mirbelia platylobioides  Berries of Persoonia mollis .  An orchid!   Diuris pardina .  (I think we were a ...