Africanaussie

Wow! today there was a bit of sunshine.  I felt a change in my spirit as I drove to work (camera-less) chasing a beautiful colourful rainbow that always seemed illusively just ahead of me.  Could all this dreary rainy weather be coming to an end?  Gosh I hope so! Then my hubby sent me some photos of the butterfly activity going on in my garden.  Ulysses butterflies are SO hard to photograph as they tend to close their  wings when they feed.  Maybe these were drunk on sunshine after all the rain.  Spreading open their wings to catch every last drop of it!  Here there is just a glimpse of the iridescent blue.  There was a whole colony of them in these bushes alongside the pool. Greedily sucking up the nectar.  Showing off their lovely colours.  Look at the dangly ends to the wings - so beautiful :) Gosh I sure hope they have found my Uodia tree to deposit some eggs, and we can once again witness butterfly birth in my garden. I have started some slips of this plant in

Just like winter is never ending over in Europe and America, so our rainy season is dragging on, well beyond its welcome.  We had the remains of a cyclone head onshore over the weekend, and on Saturday alone had 66mm of rain.  Too much for our already soaked ground!!!  My little seedlings that I planted would like some sunshine and their long leggy growth is not making for very strong plants.  I might have to rig up a light for them - can you believe that?  In the tropics? I looked out on Sunday morning to see that my tree fern had become uprooted.   The ground too soggy to support its shallow root base. I took that as an opportunity to re-think that section of the garden, and it is now planted further back alongside the fence.  That spaces the curry tree, the fan palm, the fluted fan palm and the tree fern all along the fence nicely.  I did not have the path around the tree when first planning this section and so had it as a rainforest clump, rather than a long bed against the fe

Catherine from  Knotted Cotton  has this lovely snail badge on her blog, and I couldn't resist partaking and I think rather than slow,  I am a bit of an erratic blogger, but I do like the idea of just blogging when I have something to say - certainly not on any type of schedule.  I clicked on a  couple of links when looking at this slow blogger idea and came across a lovely little design on a mini quilt.  I have a project I want to start working on, and need to try a few stitches and ideas, so this little cushion sounded like the perfect place to start.  I wish I could find the original design so that I could give credit where it is due. I am not a perfectionist, and will go to great lengths so that I don't have to unpick anything, so excuse the imperfection. I also took part in a  craft swap and I sent a bag like this all the way to Scotland.  It folds up into its own little pocket which I find rather clever. They make great little gifts, useful and pretty.  

After our week in Brisbane admiring the amazing gardens everywhere, I came back with lots of ideas.  Gardening, crafts, food, my gosh I am going to be busy :) On Sunday I started out in the back, weeding and once again cutting back the mandevilla. I love that plant - it never seems to stop flowering, but it is very big and the branches can get quite heavy.  I dragged out some of the remains of our gazebo frame and managed to create quite a nice sturdy support. I have moved the orchids over here as well - they really don't get noticed over in the other corner behind the gate.  I have two branches of flowers on the white one, an orange orchid and then another one is in bud that I don't know what it is going to be.  This white one flowered a couple of months ago.  :)   My franzipani has not flowered for some reason - it looks rather healthy, but I think the mandevilla might have been shading it too much.  It was flopping right over onto the herb spiral but is now be