The House(s) of Fran_mart

I'll start by echoing Ros's thanks to Roger and Christine for the garden tour, coffee and cakes after the walk.  Good wishes to them for their Northern expedition. We were indeed lucky with the weather.  Before leaving home it seemed cold and windy, but I, like most people, shed a layer during the day.  While it did look a tad ominous towards the end ...  ... no precipitation occurred. Getting on to the plants seen, I will begin with the orchids, or evidence thereof, seen.  This was a surprisingly good haul, although the designation "sp." is very appropriate.  The first plant spotted was Corunastylis sp. I didn't keep count of the number of colonies, let alone plants, seen but they were widely distributed throughout the area.  A clear specimen of Speculantha sp. was found in a 'gone over ' condition.  The timing of flowering given in The Book suggests that S. rubescens is the more likely of the two local species, but given the weir...

Over the 7 completed years we have been here, the month of May has been the the driest.  So it has not surprised me that we have had a 3-week spell without significant rain.  That all changed yesterday afternoon and evening as shown by BoM 128km radar. This is the picture at 1516 (or, for those who like 12 hour clocks, 3:16pm) local time.  The UTC (again for traditionalists, Greenwich Mean Time) time is shown in the bottom of the image. By 1550 the band of rain had got bigger.  By 1655 the worst had passed us, having deposited 7mm in my gauge.  A second wave appeared on the 2020 image and dropped a further 3.2mm in about 30 minutes. That was accompanied by very strong winds, noticeable when I took the small dog outside shortly afterwards.  They are shown in this doppler image. The small dog had had an active evening snuffling from time to time at the pile of moths along the bottom of the window.  There were many more moths than in prev...

A small cluster of fungi have appeared just outside our garden. Having just acquired a new fungus book which includes a key to genera of gilled fungi I thought I would try using it.  The key begins with the colour of the sporeprint. This looked rusty-brown so quickly directed me to Key 3 "Spore print some shade of brown or black".   I then look at the image from my mirror shot: This shows pretty clearly that the gills are not separate from the stipe (aka stem) but are what I consider to be at least adnate and possibly decurrent (run down the stipe) . At this point enthusiasm replaced sense as I noticed that the genus  Cortinarius  had rusty brown spore print and this influenced my answer to the points in the guide so that I ended up with  Cortinarius .  However I overlooked the presence of an annulus (a ring around the stipe showing that a veil had disintegrated).  Applying that correctly directed me to Gymnopilus sp which can have a bright...

This is pretty much a gathering of images I have taken over the past couple of days, with a common theme (after a bit of a stretch) of things being in the air. The first 'thing' is a Carwoola sunrise.  This is more or less to show that the high country can do dawn as well as the Victorian coast.  This next  image meets the criterion of 'in the air" as it is a snap of a TV program 'aired' on SBS.  This was "War Horse" about the role of equines in the First World War.  I thought the picture was very evocative.  This large raptor was definitely in the air.  Despite the 'pinked' shape of the tail it was clearly a Wedge-tailed Eagle (one of two soaring over our place on 23 May).  Now that is a wedge shaped tail!  Looking at the images in "Birds of Prey of Australia" by Stephen Debus suggests it is an adult male bird.  The last couple of evenings we have been visited by a few Bogong moths ( Agrotis infusa ).   These nor...

This post came about from looking up Mallacoota on Wikipedia .  The entry is generally pretty accurate but I was struck by the sentence " The town's largest employer, the abalone co-operative, was formed in 1967." I know the abalone fishermen are an important lobby group around town (hence the extremely controversial breakwater at Bastion Point) but I was surprised to see that they are town's largest employer.  So I decided to explore the Census data to see what the picture is.  Obviously the data isn't going to be precise (and neither should it be). There are two possible aspects of abalone fishing that could contribute to employment.  The first is the divers etc who go to harvest the abalone and the second is the workers in a factory or warehouse who process or pack the harvested product.  According to the 2011 Census there were 24 people in the "Other fishing" industry - which is where the divers would appear - and 13 in the seafood processing ind...

We have travelled again to Mallacoota in the East Gippsland region of Victoria. It is still in Victoria, but so close to the NSW border that they actually show Rugby League on the TV! We started the trip down by pausing to look at a large array of solar panels. Well done that company!  Pity about the low-IQ nerk who has written the sign that really makes the place look gross. Surely they could have used a thumbnail dipped in tar ? A quick stop in Michelago got a photo of the school, where there are Memorial Honour Boards but I wasn't game to invade the place in school hours to see them These days one would get one's name in the paper in the non-positive pages very quickly for that! The corporate coloured railway station is looking very spruce these days.  It's good that the 'ladies' have a room but in my observations what most females who visit this locale are interested in is the khazi across the road. We also found a Memorial Hall , but ...