Winter blooms

Kind of creepily flesh-like, with its pairs of pointy-toed pink ‘legs’ and that gaping orifice;  kind of disgustingly gooey, with those red wet lumps, which yet are almost like the secretions of raw wounds.

The pink fleshy stems add to the plant or animal dilemma (hence the ‘phalloid’ species). But the ‘yuck’ factor increases at this stage of its life, as its spore-slime glistens in the centres, like faecal flowers.

And indeed, from a distance, these fungi do look like red flowers scattered amongst the grass in the paddock. But flies, not bees, are attracted to that brown goo by the ‘rotting meat odour’ of this stinkhorn fungi, Asero? rubra,  commonly called Red Starfish, for obvious reasons. The flies obligingly carry away some spores on their feet to deposit elsewhere and spread the species.

Interestingly, this was the first fungus recorded for Australia, collected by Labillardière in 1792 beside Recherche Bay in Tasmania. He named it for its stellar shape, so why not Astero?? Typo?

The paddock is also blooming with lilac, or mauve if you prefer, in the brief beauty of this fungus before it fades to beige.

It is also plentiful.

My winter wildflower meadow is a wild fungi paddock.

Winter warmth

I am sorry to see the last of the Glory Vine’s red leaves preparing to drop and join the colourful drifts along the verandah edges.

But the little maple trees are taking up the Autumn baton from them.

At my last home, the Liquid Ambers were the light sources of dull winter days, but here does not seem cold enough for them to really glow.

Instead the Maples, not even as tall as me yet, are showing off vivid vermillion stems flushing into their buttery leaves.

And most welcome of all in winter are my citrus fruit trees, especially the perfect miniature, ornamentally shaped and coloured and deliciously sweet (skin) and tart (flesh) all at once, my Nagami cumquat.

Shading to infinity

My Glory Vine is wearing its Autumn garb; when the leaves turn red, right? They look red, as I come out to the verandah, with the morning light behind it.

But then I step outside and look back at it and the shade of the main leaves externally is so different that I have no name for it: but no ‘red’ I can think of will fit. I mentally go through my old paintbox tubes with all the evocative names of colours. As for the small ones, well, ‘salmon’ perhaps?

And yet, a few metres further along, they choose more burnished shades, with only red herringbone veins.

On the eastern side they are opting to hold on to green, to refuse to give in to one red shade, choose reds only in blotches, or restricted to edges.

Twining through the Glory Vine on this side is the Mandevilla Laxa, (right) whose slender pendulous leaves are showing gold and red shades for the first time, with clearly defined stages and veins. How odd that they are donning Autumn garb more here nearer the coast than they did not at 3,000 feet?

I miss the Wisteria’s golden contribution from those days so I am welcoming this… and all the subtle shades to infinity that Autumn can offer, even here in subtropical Australia.

Morning benediction

Most times I am awake and risen early. Some days it’s more worth it than others. Like today, as the sun rose in just the right spot over the escarpment to be split into morning glory rays of benediction by a perfectly placed tall tree.

Within minutes the sideways rays grew longer, the view brighter. The day was here.

All too soon it settled into the more usual lovely misty layers gently steaming skywards, with only a faint ‘hand of god’ ray visible.

Worth getting up before sunrise to catch that moment? Oh yes.

Watery wins

The delicately feathered lilac curls of the native Melaleuca thymifolia are a relief as well as a delight to see, as these swamp-loving small shrubs have only been in for about six months.

They will only grow to about 2 metres and will hide my shed from view for verandah sitters.

Willows love water and my little willow is now taller than me. I did plant it to help soak up a wet spot, and so it does. It will be a magnificent summer shade tree in years to come.

I had bought the cheapest ($30) little fountain I could find online, as a tester. I am amazed at how much it enhances my little pond, adding sparkles and ripples and splashes, varying its spray height with the strength of the sun. I have come to regard it as a little creature, part of the pond life, and I enjoy watching its varied moods. It even works in a sun shower.

The mosses are thick and glowing like furry jewels, with tiny golden fungi flowers bringing bursts of sunshine on a grey day.

While appreciating the bonuses it brings, I am as sick of the rain as this Willy Wagtail, who may not be able to see the watery wins as I do.

But of course with the sort of showers and sun roundabouts we’ve been getting, we are at least blessed with a rainbow now and then.

Post-deluge fungi

Wet, wet weather and just enough warmth still in the air to cause a whole new aspect of life to come forth and blossom … fungi.

This beauty unfurled out of the top of a palm stump that has sat there unadorned for two years.

Way down in the paddock, a smattering of white glimpsed from the house, demands investigation. Up close they are cinnamon coated narrow domes as babies, maturing to large cream umbrellas still carrying their cinnamon, as flakes.

Walking back up to the house level, a very large single white blob proves to be one that I know, the stunning parasol, Macrolepiota dolichaula.

Its pure delicacy and detail still amazes me, as does the charm of that faint toasted marshmallow blush on top.

On the soggy house lawn there are drifts of smaller lemony circlets that turn up their edges and flash their gills as they age.

I thank Nature for the unexpected flashes of fungi of whatever colour, size or quantity!

Fleeting fungi

You have to be quick to capture some fungi at their best. This beautiful, delicately stippled and pleated limey-yellow trio appeared one morning in my mint pot at the back door. The next day they had wilted to an unimpressive brown.

About a metre away these little Chinese-hatted soldiers had popped up in another pot.

In the manure/mulch fill around the pot a sprinkling of small milk coffee domes briefly ‘bloomed’.

Above them, several generations were making good use of a dead stump, frilling and flaring in stages, but remaining as they dried, unlike their more ephemeral ground-dwelling cousins.

Welcome Greenie

This gorgeous Green Tree Frog is probably the best known frog in Australia, but no less special for that. He’s the source of the very deep and monotonous ‘wark-wark-wark’  that I hear at the bottom of a nearby downpipe, presumably when he reckons rain is coming.

This one was quiet, post-rain and dozing on a rhubarb leaf, for which he was really too heavy as he’d bent it almost to the ground. They can grow up to 15 cm long, so this one is a relative lightweight.

Such a baleful look he gave me as I went closer to take his photo. These plump green beauties are also known as White’s Tree Frogs. I was more familiar with the much smaller Eastern Dwarf Tree Frog, also a green gem of a creature. I welcome all frogs!

Diamonds for breakfast

As I’ve never been one for expensive jewellery, the ephemeral gems that nature offers now and then are quite enough to send me into raptures. They are only visible when the night dew has been caught by them, the sun’s light catches them in turn, and I awake in time to catch the sight of the fleeting treat of strings of tiny diamonds.

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They are especially welcome because they appear to decorate the wintry bare of twigs and vines, to interlink the sticks about to be pruned and set wheels of wonder amongst them. This triple display demonstrates that they’re available in a range of sizes.

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Set amongst the lichened arms, while the sun is behind them, the intricacy of the night’s work in these webs is clear for the moment. Stunning engineering and art.

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And then there’s the slings, the hammocks of gossamer, stronger, more layers, to catch…?

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But if I miss the diamonds, as the sun’s heat intensifies I am given the spectacle of the ground steaming as if I have hot springs just over my garden edge.

Never a dull moment when you live with nature on even a small scale — so long as you take the time to notice it.

Water for birds

I had treated myself to a plain terracotta bird bath for my 2015 birthday; then I was given a green glazed one for this year’s birthday.

I couldn’t resist adding some bling with these iridescent stick-on glass beads. They didn’t all stick but nevertheless look pretty.

Not sure yet whether the birds like their bathing Bollywood-style…

The bird baths are for little birds, and lots of those come to drink and splash. But I want to attract waterbirds nearer to the house than the creek.

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So a few ponds joined by a moat have been dug. We pumped from the creek to fill them at first, to see if they hold water.

Sadly, as you can see by the dropping water level, they don’t. I’ll need to add Bentonite and see if that helps the obvious clay particles to merge and seal.

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Then I’ll add rocks to the edges and plant or stand pots on the ledges that ought to be under water.

This will give some cover for shy ducks and water hens.

I’m sure frogs and water bugs will find it very quickly. 

I can’t wait — I’m already imagining a solar fountain, a waterfall…

Weavers

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the dearth of blog posts lately. The website has been in process of transferring servers and this has been more of a prolonged nightmare than imagined, with many unexpected side effects and hiccups.

Hopefully we can now get back into a routine of weekly posts, where I snap and rabbit on about my wildlife and webmaster Fred turns them into web language.

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On a bushwalk I noticed this odd swathing at the base of a tree.

A bug-savvy friend tells me this is probably the home of one of the ‘bag moth caterpillars’ — family Ochrogaster, also called procession caterpillars. Apparently they feed at night on the tree and ‘hide’ in their web during daylight.

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Then I found a smaller swathing. Having harvested the Kangaroo Apple bushes which were about at the end of their season, I’d put the oldest fruit in a dish, prior to planting them.

I’d left it overnight on a table on the verandah.

In the morning, I found they were neatly and thoroughly enmeshed by the web of a tiny, hard-working spider.

What amazed me was how it had formed anchor points on the smooth sides of the stainless steel dish. Some superglue!

Transplants of the heart

Back in my old Mountain home, the verandah grew a living green blind each summer, blazed red and pink in autumn, and leaflessly let in the sunshine all winter.

Naturally, I took cuttings of this Ornamental Grape to bring with me.

They survived the trip and the transplant and here they are flagging their first autumn on their new verandah home.

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The other decoration on this verandah are the intricate spiderwebs between the uprights, only visible when delineated by a fine morning mist.

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The spiders do other useful work, such as binding the leaves of the little Nagami Cumquat into a neat parcel.

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With great difficulty I also brought with me my Dad’s Place. It was built by me and my sisters to house his ashes.

Not having been designed to be mobile, it weighed a ton.

But here it is, resettled, its lavender and wormwood plant settings fast making it look less newly transplanted. My grandkids have decorated the steps and verandah for him.

Fittingly, behind it is a terracotta chimneypot from my childhood farm, Dad’s orchard venture. I never saw it on a chimney, but I always loved it and I have carted it about for over 50 years. It lived in the rockery at the Mountain for the last 35.

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Here the southern face of its ferro-cement roof has grown a velvety green moss. I consider this makes up for the ridgeline crack it suffered in the move.