The House(s) of Fran_mart

Now any rev-heads who have ended up here while looking for he of the white Nomex will realise that  theyhave followed a typo and  there is an 'e" in the abbreviation for Stegostyla ustulata.   The catalyst for this post was finding the first plant of this species for 2014 this morning. If you don't agree that that flower is some top gear,, I have great sympathy for you! Nearby I found some flowering Drosera peltata , in a surprisingly dry site for that species. In a sheltered spot this Viola betonicifolia was flowering prettily. My reason for being in this part of the block was doing my daily count of the flowers of  Glossodia major in a study site.  The count today was 158 flowers in an area of about 33 square metres: a special post about this study will come later.  Here is one patch of the flowers amidst the (boo, hiss)   Kunzea ericoides .

This was not to check if there were any Kangaroos loose up there.  I can find them down here .  It was to collect some rock from a creek bed and incidentally to photograph some lilies. I will begin with the lilies.  The first is a carpet of Early Nancies (which must be getting close to being Late Nancies as they have been out in swathes for about a month).  That must come close to defining a carpet of flowers. Still emerging are the Bulbine Lilies ( Bulbine bulbosa ).  If not yet a carpet they must rate as at least a doormat! Here is a close up of a head of buds.  And one which has opened! So why do I need rock?  The answer is for a bit of maintenance on a drain which is doing an excellent job of leading water away from our vegetable garden..  When the rain is heavy it is tending to erode the walls and floor of the drain and I am hoping that a bit of rock in the bottom will solve that problem. Here is the source of the rock. ...

As we haven't fired up the camper for a few weeks we decided that a visit to the Murray River would be good, before it gets too hot.  Here is approximately the area we visited. Indeed, heat was not a problem.  It was surprisingly cold, possibly mainly due to the quite strong wind.  As we set off it was a tad showery, but nothing dramatic.  (We found out at Berrigan on the second day that they had scored 23.5 mm out of this front which was very welcome to the cockies.)  This did mean water was lying about all over the place and some of the dirt tracks seemed very sticky when walked on - and would have been 'interesting' to drive on! On the subject of cockies the paddocks were often yellow with canola flowers, as has become common at this time of year/  We passed through Lockhart where a bit of art was photographed !  The cut-out farm animals made of corrugated iron are quite a common sight decorating front yards, but this was a very large accumu...

This post seems to have got a bit long - so many interesting things and they're in flower.  Good riddance to Winter - with apologies to any skiers. Before getting to the pretties I might have a bit of a rant.  Scroll down a screen if you wish to skip that.  After several goes the NSW Parks Service found a gate that has defeated the efforts of trail-biking bogans to break it. Unfortunately a gate that isn't locked just doesn't work very well and the chains and padlocks on this one were, in the words of an old Rugby song ".. hanging low, swinging free ...".  Possibly as a result of this, the fire trails showed many signs of having been carved up by said asocial twits. I have reported the open-ness to the Ranger responsible for the area.  Hopefully she is nearby and will fix it pdq, as well as administering a good serve of her Blundstones (or Doc Martens - the action is more important than the brand) to whoever left it unlocked. The bottom line is that fr...