The shape of things to come.

We had a dry warm day yesterday so I wandered around the garden a bit, noticing a few things in flower or bud.  Most were pleasant in their current state, but promise more down the track.

The first are some strawberry flowers.  Although the vegetative growth isn't great there is a lot of blossom so I hope they'll deliver a good lot of fruit.
 Some Granny Smith (I think) apples.
 The one bit of blossom on our pear trees: I must read a little more about pruning as I think my technique has been óff' the past couple of years.
Our broad bean planting has been whupped somewhat by the very wet season, with quite a few plants giving up the struggle.  However, the survivors are demonstrating that in close up the flowers are very pretty.
The asparagus is hitting its straps.  It hasn't quite got the demography sorted yet as the there is a definite sex bias towards female spears this year.  This male was very tasty!
 In the flower department a horde of Dutch Iris are about to burst.
With a little help from being put in a vase, some of these have now arrived.
Several Flag Iris are in heavy bud and I think this one will be the first to erupt.
To save cluttering things up with a separate post I have added a few more photos  from 17 October in here.  The first few come from turning over a few rocks.

This beetle was most interesting as it seemed quite keen on getting underground. From the appearance of its jaws it is a predator of some type, which seems to make it fit into the ground beetle group (Carabidae).  However its elytra looks very smooth and most members of that family have striated elytra.
 A hairy huntsman was lurking nearby!
 The centipede was under another rock.
 The most surprising thing of the day was noticing a large gum tree in heavy flower.  I think it is red box (E. polyanthemos).
 Zooming in the blossom is very obvious.
 A much small tree of the same species allowed me to get a close up.
 As I got back home I tracked down Mama Frogmouth, who was very much into broken branch emulation.  She was about 20m from the nest, in a less frequently used roost so finding her took a bit of searching.  Her relatively Tawny coloration is reasonably clear.

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