Gardening happens

A few of the more obvious flowers in our garden are happening now.

The most obvious of these from the kitchen window are some Red-hot pokers.
 As they get more prolific they will attract a lot of honeyeaters so you can expect a post or two about that event.

From our study windows (ie the windows of our studies) the most obvious sight at the moment is a swathe of lilies.  There are currently two colours on offer: white ...
 .. and orange.
There is an adage that members of the onion family get planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest.  This article confirms the solstice was on December 21 which means I missed by three days, but I don't think the produce was fussed.  Here are the onions awaiting picking ...
 .. and subsequently on the deck drying out.
 We also had quite a bit of garlic.  No vampires round here thank you very much.
 They are drying in two clumps as the ones on the edge of the plot seemed to be very small.
An alert viewer will have noticed that there had been a fair bit of weed growth.  I took two bags of weeds to the compost from the onions and a nearby parsley bed.  The growth around the garlic was a tad more problematic so the bag of vetch and couch I pulled out of there went up to the pile: of which you'll hear/read more in about April.

Having put in some time on the garden I went to check the avifauna on the Plain.  On my way there I was listening to a radio program covering a broadcast of the Messiah.  They were burbling about "Sheep may safely graze" ...
.. or indeed lurk under a gum tree.  This old bloke 
... seemed to imply he'd do just what he wanted.

 A few interesting birds were seen and as I got back towards home some interesting clouds were evident.
 They mucked around for a couple of hours and then got a bit serious.
We ended up scoring 21mm of rain out of that: a nice Christmas present.

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