Africanaussie

I love these little birds called honeyeaters, and we have plenty of them now - they are attracted to the passionfruit flower and the cats whiskers and the bottlebrush. All of which is flowering at the moment. I know they like to start their nests on hanging things, and I have tied a few bits of string at strategic places, but these have all been ignored. Yesterday after bringing in the washing we discoverd the start of a nest on the end of a piece of underwear! My hubby carefully disentangled it and attached it straight to the washing line which is under the eaves just outside our office window. Amazingly the bird has come back and is adding to the nest, how exciting and what a good vantage point we have. He keeps hopping back to gather bits and pieces from my compost pile. We just recently got a leaf mulcher and he seems to like the small pieces of leaves! The photos are all taken through glass so not the best quality, but just wanted to share!

I have always loved chimneas , but in the hot humid tropics any extra form of heat seems superfluous and in fact downright silly. We do however have mosquitoes, and at this time of the year always have mosquito coils burning....... along with a couple of citronella candles,....... along with personal insect repellent on really bad evenings. So.. I was eying these palm fronds that just lie around the bases of palm trees and end up in the landfill. I nabbed this one from a friend and voila - a tropical chimnea :) This is what it looked like in the raw... I cut the bottom end straight and glued it to a pot base. My hubby very kindly spray painted it with a terracotta colour spray paint. It puts out a lovely glowing light, the candle is protected from t he wind and best of all the outlay was a can of spray paint!

Variegated leaves like this add some "depth" to the dark foresty area of the garden. they are also lovely in flower arrangements. These ground orchids are lovely - they appreciate a shady moist spot and continue to multipy and happily bloom all through the year. The ginger family is quite large - a lot of plants are in the ginger family, but most of them are grown for their flowers, as this one is. The flower forms on long leafed branches and eventually the flower will begin to grow new leaves. It can be pegged down onto the ground at that stage where it will form a new plant. I believe this form of propogation is called layering In most areas of the world this is a houseplant, commonly called a cupboard lilly. I have one inside, but this one is very happy out in the shade fo the lychee tree amongst the bromeliads, orchids and other shady loving plants. My weeping bottlebrush, otherwise known as calistemon is flowering at last. I dont know why it took so long. Maybe it neede

A slice of hot pink in the garden alerts me to the fact that another heleconia is beginning. This is such a striking flower and I love the fact that each flower is in my garden for more than a month!

Are people who keep a gratitude journal more blessed or just more likely to notice their blessings? I am always amazed at how like a gratitude journal this blog is. Once I start peering around the garden looking for new things to photograph I discover so many things that might have just slid by without being noticed. Driving in from work on Friday afternoon I glanced up to see LYCHEES ! Admittedly there are only about two dozen on the whole forty foot tree, but there is a lovely pink bunch about twenty foot high! Now how do we get them down, and what will I do with them. I once had a lovely salad with soft butter lettuce, lychees , and avocado. Magic combination. Now on to the reason that I named this blog post spicy weekend: It just took a little bit of rain for the turmeric to decide that the wet season has started. Lots of little green shoots coming up around last years rhizomes, which I got from a neighbour, and then toward the end of the wet they will start to form new turmeri

I have had this orchid tied to the branch of my lychee tree, and occasionally remember to water it, and suddenly this morning I glanced at at it to find that it has a lovely spray of orchids. This is such a very delicate orchid in colour and in the fragility of the petals - they seem almost translucent. My favourite heleconia the pink and orange one is flowering again - in fact two flowers now - one still a slender bud. It is a spreading one so I will have to be vigilant to stop them spreading all over the garden. You get clumping and spreading heleconias , and sometimes just have to put up with the spreading type in order to get one you like. At the end of my path into the center of the garden is a beehive ginger, and these are the developing flowers - they shoot up out of the ground next to the branches. They are very long lived, start out like this and slowly develop more unfolding petals. These are not actually the flowers - the flowers then eventually grow out of the pockets. H

Well here it is - the path into the centre of the garden . It makes it easier to get in and weed and pick flowers. Obviously I like to the do the picking flowers way more than the weeding! My grandson likes to wander in there and hide away behind the plants, and that is just what I wanted to achieve - a sense of adventure --- mmm ... what does that path leads to. :) There are some interesting flowers forming just at the end of the path - called beehive ginger. And of course my lovely anthiriums. photos coming soon. The path is made with crusher dust and a few flat stones from the local beach - still collecting stones everytime we go - I love the different colours they show, especially when wet. In other news - the sweet potato vine is going gangbusters - I must really cut some of the shoots and stir fry them - they are supposed to taste delicious. Unlike white potato shoots which are poisonous! My arch is as I predicted it would be - dripping with passionfruit ! I think it l