The House(s) of Fran_mart

In the days of my youth I played Coarse Rugby in England.  A consequence of this was that I was occasionally forced to visit establishments which engaged in commerce, with particular reference to beer. As one of my team-mates (actually the vicar's son) said "You don't buy beer, you just rent it."  When visiting the return location (which in the case of a Watney House was possibly directly plumbed to the spigots) one was often regaled with witty ditties, many of which have been collected by the English broadcaster Nigel Rees .  One that has stuck in my mind was "A poets ambition must be small, to write his verse on an outhouse wall"  (or words to that effect). That reminiscence has been generated by a visit to the Glossodia site on our block today.  After looking at about 50 leaves I finally got my reward.  Two of the leaves in one area were accompanied by buds! To rephrase the admonitory doggerel above: A botanists life must be blighted If s...

Having given the wattles a run a couple of days ago I thought I'd put up some snaps of some of the plants flowering in ur garden at present.   Despite the almost total lack of rain and high winds. The daffodils (and relatives) have been giving good service for several weeks but are changing a bit as the varieties bloom at different times.  As was intended when Frances bought them). These are the relatives: two pale versions of jonquil.  Apart from looking quite attractive, if Perfumed Garden is your thing, these can be smelt for several metres (and if brought into the house can be overwhelming).. Grape Hyacinths Small blue bulbous flowers - looking back I find my friend Alison suggested in the past this is Triteleia . I'll note in passing that these flowers were being visited by hoverflies.  I saw my first butterfly for the season also (a Cabbage White, but they all count!) A couple of fruiting plum trees appear to have survived, in part at leas...

I didn't get out to take photos of the flowering wattles for the official Wattle Day so have decided that 16 September will be Acacia Day.  I have tried to find some photos of African What-used-to-be-Acacias (but following the taxonomic stoush of the Century (so far) have been renamed Vachellia and Senegalia ) but all my snaps from Tanzania are ungood.  So we'll stick with the victorious Ocker Wattles. To my surprise quite a few have survived the fire and are flowering nicely at the moment. As is nearly always the case this season it was blowing a gale outside but hopefully these images will give the idea.  I have usually done close up first then a shot of a larger area of shrub/tree. Acacia rubida : many of these bit the dust but this one is doing well.  Quite a number of Acacia dealbata survived well.  The most lurid survivors are Acacia mearnsii from the direct seeding.  At a distance the very bright flowers stand out well against...

I recently received a comment on my August Weather report (sorry, can't remember who) to which I replied that I would compile a summary of Winter in total.  I have finally got around to that. For reasons I have described in an earlier post I define Winter as being July and August.  (In this area June seems to have more in common, both meteorologically and through observed natural history, with March and April than July and August.) Rainfall  As would be expected it was a relatively dry year, being well below average rainfall.  However it wasn't extreme. Temperatures My data series is missing reports of temperatures for most Winter days in 2001 and 2004 so those years are omitted from the series.  I - or at least Excel - calculated trend lines for the two series but neither of them shown a significant trend.  (The minimum series was closer to significance than the maximums.) The maximum temperatures were very close to average.  The average...

An alternate title to this post was "Farewell to the bomb-site" as the house area looks so much better now. A crucial stage in our bushfire recovery happened today with the demolition contractors (Irwin and Hartshorn) turning up to clear the old sheds out of the way.  We got an indicator that serious activity was about to happen when a large grabber was parked at the top of our drive yesterday. While I was out early this morning it traveled up the drive as captured in these images by Frances. A few of the burnt out Acacia pravissima got grabbed en route to allow the monster truck to get in.  Frances saw that truck come across the ford and it just fitted.  That was also the case later in the operation when it backed down the drive. Waiting to start. The top shed got attended to first. The big truck is in the background here.  The approach seemed to be to get it loaded with metal and then it chugged off somewhere - a metal recycling facility I think ...

At the risk of using an official joke without the approval of the full Committee, the title refers to a comment made on marathon training runs when the Murrumbidgee Valley was full of fog.  Even though we were only about 9km into the run when this was observed some people thought it looked like snow. I am rabbitting on about snow as a weather report we heard on Tuesday mentioned snow on the ground at Nimmitabel.  This led me to forecast a temperature of 5 o C for our arrival there.  Frances noted it was 14 o C at Mallacoota so was more conservative going for 8 o C. The day started with a surprise in the animal department. We have been going to Mallacoota on and off for 6 years and this is the first time I have seen a kangaroo on the lawn.  Indeed, its the first time i have seen one within about 1km of the house so I have no idea where it came from. A Satin Bowerbird came a posed nicely on the top of the flagpole! There was no excitement on our dog walk ...