Visiting Victor Harbor

Last weekend I took a day off work and flew back to SA to spend time with friends and family.

I did the rounds on Saturday - breakfast at the markets with Megan and Troy, a visit to Casey and Andrew in their new place and Megan and Clint's housewarming party in the afternoon. I then went down to Victor to spend the rest of the weekend at Mum and Dad's.

They have new neighbours...

I think the black one looks like the evil pod racer from Star Wars: Episode 1.

 The agave is flowering and I think that also looks like an alien creature. The agave had fallen over at the weight of it's leaves and the flower is still growing upright. I think the flower is probably around 3.5 meters tall. It's huge.

This is what it looks like up close.

I hope Mum and Dad send me a photo of what it looks like when all the buds open up.

A few of the baby agaves that have sprouted out of the base of the main plant are also flowering. It's obviously agave breeding season.

Of course there are lots of other things in flower at Mum and Dad's. Here's the swirly-ness of a grevilia flower opening up.

And a flowering gum.

 

I didn't spend the whole time taking photos of the flowers in the garden. We also had a coffee with Granny and Kate on the Sunday and visited Ross and Sue at their new cottage, which is very cute. They had brought their cats down to spend time there and so I got to meet Brian and Henry, the Burmese Boys.

Brian:

 

Henry:

On Monday, the painters started work at Mum and Dad's house for the ultimate livingroom refurbishment, so we all had to spend time in the study. The boys (Marco and Oscar) were not amused. Marco spent time pacing and then eventually hid on top of a book case. Oscar also sought refuge up high and made sure that his disapproval was known.

Does anyone have a lolcats type phrase for this photo of Oscar??

As always the weekend went much too quickly, but it was great to spend some time relaxing with the family. I can't wait for Megs to visit us soon :)

Dogs, House and Garden

A brief update on some of the things that have been happening around our house.

We've had our French Roquefort posters framed and they're now hanging in the dining room.

We gave the dogs bones recently. We've held off doing this because of an allergy to red meat, but they really need them for their teeth. They've been a little itchy since the last bones, so we might have to make them less frequent and maybe supplement with antihistamines.

Myf, in true princess Myf style, didn't want to get her paws dirty.

Morgan, however, was happy to get stuck in with both paws.

We've had some success in our vegie patch. We've got some small beetroots and and baby leeks. 

That pretty much sums up all the basic around the house news. Stay tuned to read about Stephen's visit, the new car and other social events.

Progress in the Garden

Our garden is really taking shape. The plants are growing really quickly and we've had a couple of additions. We've been eating some of the products of our garden too. Using the herbs and tonight we had young beetroot and silverbeet leaves in a salad.

We repotted the succulents in slightly larger pots.

The Kaffir Lime has been flowering. I hope that we'll get some fruit.

Unfortunately we've had a caterpillar infestation, but we've since sprayed with citronella, so hopefully everything will recover.

The herb garden is looking great.

Because we've been loving the produce from the garden, we've added some extras. We've replaced the geraniums with basil and planted some mint in a pot - 3 varieties of each herb.

Storm

There was a hail storm in Melbourne this afternoon. We managed to get inside just in time to shelter from the hail stones. The rain flooded the back yard and the hailstones cracked the front window. We drove Casey and Kat down to St Kilda once the storm had subsided and there were loads of floods, fallen trees and branches and other signs of damage along the way. Here's a visual of the storm from our house.

This is the hail in the backyard. My poor geranium!!

Check out how big the hailstones are!

It formed a pile by the front door.

And here's the damage...

The Garden Through My Lens

Mum and Dad have a fabulous garden that they work hard maintaining. My second Adelaide post will be a view of their garden or at least what I see when I walk through it.


Much of Mum and Dad's garden is comprised of gum trees. They have lots of different types; short, tall, bushy, leggy, scented, flowering, old and young. Mum and Dad know the common and latin names of all of them (I think) but I struggle with even the common names, so you'll have to put up with my crude description of them and some guesswork instead. I'm hoping that none of my readers are avid botanists so it won't matter.

One of my favourites is this big old gum. He's a grand old gentleman sitting slap bang in the centre of the garden. His trunk is gnarled and full of character and birds roost in his craggy branches.



The gums were in different stages of flowering when I was there and here are some of them shown below.

This is the bud of the fuscia gum. Its flower, underneath the cap, is yellow and the gum is the same red colour of the bud.


Here are a couple of different types of gum nut. They're both so different in size and shape.



You can see flower, bud and nut in this picture


Another yellow flower but from a different tree. This might have been either a lemon scented or a lemon flowering gum, but that's just a big stab in the dark.


Yet another yellow flower. I have no idea which gum tree this is from. I like the shape of the cap which you can see just about to pop off the flower in the centre. It's rather phallic (teeheehee) but also very unusual.


And finally a pink one.


The bark is another awesome feature of gum trees and again can vary so much. This is a really cool white gum tree.


I'm pretty sure this one is the lemon scented gum.

The trunk is so tactile. You just want to run your hands over the smooth part and crunch the peeling bark between your fingers.


What does this knot remind you of?



Mum and Dad have a lovely rose garden in a sheltered spot in the garden. Usually I take lots of photos of the roses, but only a couple this time.

This is Samantha. A friend gave her to me as a housewarming gift once. I had her in a big pot, but when I moved again, she couldn't come with me to the flat with no balcony, so I sent her to the farm and Mum and Dad planted her out in their garden. She's flourished there.


This Agave is pretty old and fell over recently from the weight of the head. And now loads of babies are sprouting out of the stem. It's pretty amazing.


The foliage on this plant is a silvery colour and the new growth is purple. It's a very cool colour combination.


The Geraldton Wax was full of flowers.




Banksias are a really tactile flower. The flowers are so soft, like cotton buds and the leaves are so hard, crunchy and pointy.



This is a native hibiscus. It's very pretty and delicate and not the sort of flower you'd think of as a native.



These little purple flowers (of unknown name) were attracting quite a few bees. I only managed to get one in a photo though.



I have no idea what this bush is called, but it is seriously cool. The photo doesn't really do it justice at all, so I'll have to try and explain. All of the branches a curvy and they twist and turn in different directions. It's hard to describe, so you'll just have to trust me that it's a very cool looking bush.



Mum and Dad have recently planted some Yakkas. I hope they flower soon as they're very striking flowers.



There was a rainbow on one of the days I was down at Victor. It took me too long to get my camera, so it had just started to fade on one end before I could snap a photo.



I'm finishing with another of my favourite features of Mum and Dad's garden, the pond. Paul and I were married in front of this pond. It's changed so much since then. It looks more like a natural feature now as the pond weeds and grasses have established themselves and the lilies have multiplied.

The pond is home to plenty of wildlife; two turtles, one a murray river and the other a native long necked variety, many frogs and tadpoles, native fish, and a number of bugs and insects. It attracts wading birds and other wildlife. It's such a great feature.