little blogging break - or "wrist" break

 Hi everyone. I hope you and yours are well. 

I didn't expect to be having breakfast in bed on Sunday morning in hospital. I took a nasty tumble on Thursday and broke my wrist. i had an operation on Saturday where they screwed a plate into my wrist to stabilize the break. It could have been far worse. So I am grateful for that. 

So i am going to take a little blogging break. Typing one handed is slow and arduous. 

I intended starting to share some of the gorgeous wild orchids we saw in the Stirling Ranges National Park in Western Australia's south west, but they will have to wait for now. 

i hope to be back with you in a week or two. Till then take care and stay safe. Did you know photography is an extreme sport! 

Here is one - Joseph's spider orchid - caladenia polychroma - in the late afternoon light.

Take care everyone. 

Scarlet banksia - Banksia coccinea - Western Australia

 Hi everyone, just a short post from me today. We have been away this past week staying at the Mt Trio Bush Camp and Caravan Park adjacent to the Stirling Ranges National Park in the south of Western Australia.  I'm still sorting through my pics! 

The Stirling Ranges National Park was devastated by last summer's bushfires in Western Australia. More than 40,000 hectares was lost through the bushfire in the Park. The Park is a biodiversity hotspot containing more than 1,500 species of plants, at least 87 of which are found nowhere else in the world, and some of which may be lost forever. Conservationists say it may take centuries to recover.  

You can read more here: ABC.net-bushfires-cause-stirling-ranges-biodiversity-to-be-devastated

We enjoyed our stay exploring the Park, but when we visited the devastation was still very obvious and heartbreaking to see. Some areas had started to reshoot, but large swaths of land was still burnt earth with blackened sticks which was once lush bushland. 

Some of our native plants rely on bushfire to regenerate. Some of the orchids for instance, like the Red Beaks, just one of the nearly 30 wild orchid species we saw. But more on that in another post. 

One flower which we enjoyed seeing was the Scarlet Banksia - Banksia coccinea - which only grows in a small section of our state. A truly magnificent plant which grows 1-8 metres high. 

I had only seen them once before in the wild in the Fitzgerald River National Park on our south coast. 

We saw it in one location along a scenic drive which winds through the park. The gravel road must have acted as a fire break - as one side was still lush and the other burnt black. There were several Scarlet Banksias flowering on the lush side, and just one plant on the burnt side. 

We saw many blackened sticks and scorched plants like this. Heartbreaking. 

Learn more here: Australian Native Plants Society

That's it from me for today. I hope to bring you more from the Stirling Ranges National Park next week.

You might also like: Celebration of the Australian Banksia

I am sorry if I didn't answer your comments or visit your pages last week, but we were away and we discovered that internet was virtually impossible.  I hope you and your families are all safe and well. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week.  

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

All Seasons 
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf
Sharon's Sovenirs 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity

and Pieni Lintu
Thankful Thursday 
Der-Natur-Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit
 Month end link up @ Live love craft me

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

Catching up on my photo-a-day project - 9-31 August 2020

Hi everyone, I hope you are doing well. I saw this the other day, a friend had shared from the "Power of Positivity" facebook page. I thought so true, particularly these days if you are feeling weary of the Covid pandemic. I know I am. But reading this list I know I have much to be grateful for. 

I have been continuing with my photo-a-day project. And I am grateful for being able to recently get away for a couple of weeks to places along the Coral Coast in Western Australia.  Here is one or 2 photos from each of those days we were away. 

I am sorry if the collages are small...if you click on them you should be able to see them larger and read the captions. 

Sunday 9th to Tuesday 11 August 2020

Coral Bay is beautiful even on a cloudy day

Wednesday 12 to Friday 14 August 2020

Fish swimming around my feet where we went snorkelling at Turquoise Bay in the Cape Range National Park, North West Cape. 

A bower bird decorating his bower at Yardie Creek, Cape Range National Park 

Saturday 15 to Tuesday 18 August 2020

Can you see the nesting tawny frogmouth pretending to be a branch?

Charles Knife Canyon, Cape Range National Park looking towards the Exmouth Gulf

Tuesday 18 to Thursday 20 August 2020

There will always be wildflowers. These are Swan River Daisies thriving on the bank of the dry river bed, Wooramel River at Wooramel Station Stay. 

Thursday 20 to Saturday 22 August 2020

Tailflower - Anthocercis - seen along the coastal walks in Kalbarri

Stunning carpets of pink everlastings inland between Northhampton and Mullewa 

Saturday 22 to Tuesday 25 August 2020

And the unique Wreath Leschenaultia just starting to flower

Wednesday 26 to Saturday 29 August 2020

Do you have a vision for your future?

Saturday 29 to Monday 31 August 2020

And the first of the spring wild orchids - the Reaching Spider Orchid

My home computer crashed when we returned home, plus my current photos drive. Thankfully I had backed up the photo drive, and the computer man recovered our documents from our main drive, but not our programs. It has been very stressful but I've managed to reinstall the programs with the help of some very helpful companies, and I think I have just about got everything sorted again. Though I have lost all the "google"tabs I had. 

The message here is BACK UP and BACK UP again. It is not "if it might happen" but "when". This is the second time in a few years for me. I am seriously considering "the cloud". How do you save your images? Perhaps you might like to tell us in your comments. 

I also shared a few photos from our trip here:

The green bird flower

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week.  

A little blogging break this week

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

   

All Seasons 
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf
Sharon's Sovenirs 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity.
Thankful Thursday 
Der-Natur-Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit
 Month end link up @ Live love craft me

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

The Green Bird Flower - Western Australia

Can you see the birds? 

We really do have the most amazing wildflowers here in Western Australia. I feel blessed to be able to see them. 

The Green Bird flower - Crotalaria cunninghammii - are one of those Western Australia wildflowers that always excite me when I see them. Listed as "uncommon" in my wildflower book - I have been lucky now to have seen them 4 times in the wild. 

The first time was in July 2014 in Booroothunty Creek between Mount Augustus and the Kennedy Ranges in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. It was growing in the dry river bed, and even though a rather poor scraggly specimen I was excited to see it. Here it is below here. 

Then in August 2016 I saw them again in the sand dunes of the Cape Keraudren Coastal Reserve, located on the coast in from Pardoo Roadhouse on the Great Northern Highway between Port Hedland and Broome. Eureka! 

Last year in July 2019 on the first leg of our half lap of Australia we saw them again on the side of the road north of Carnarvon. Well my husband spotted them and stopped the car. I have no idea how he sees these things while he is driving at 110km/hour!  He has very good long distance eyesight. The plant is quite distinctive with grey-green leaves and bright green flowers. 

The Green Birdflower is a short-lived perennial shrub 0.6-4 metres high with grey velvety stem. It is a member of the pea family and the flowers are yellow-green 20-50 mm long in a spike 50-250mm long and 50-70mm wide. The leaves are velvety, grey-green, and the seed pod is egg-shaped with a sharp point and contains about 20 seeds. It generates rapidly after fire and is pollinated by large bees and honeyeaters.

The Green Birdflower is a plant of the legume family Fabaceae, and is named for the shape of its flowers.  Its scientific name came from early 19th century botanist Allan Cunningham who collected it in 1822 from Cygnet Bay north of Broome. The Bardi aboriginal name for this plant is oorlgoo, and the Yawuru call it minmin.

Evidently you can eat the top part of the flower, drink the nectar, and the sap from the leaves was used by Aboriginal people to treat eye infections. Atlas of Living Australia

You can also read more about it here:

Botanic Garden & Parks Authority, Western Australia

ABC - Gardening Australia  - including a video

Flora Base

We have just returned from a trip to Coral Bay, Exmouth and Kalbarri on Western Australia's Coral Coast, and true to form, my husband spotted the Green Bird Flower on the side of the road when we were driving into Coral Bay. In this collage below you can see the bud, the flowers and the pods. They really are beautiful. 

Now that we knew that we were in the flowering time - March to December - we were on the lookout for it and we weren't disappointed, finding it at the Potshot and Krait Memorial on the road into Exmouth. 

Although listed as "uncommon" it seems it has a wide distribution across Australia, mainly in dryer areas. 

Read my previous post about the Green Bird Flower here - Finding the Green Bird Flower and Cape Keraudren

I hope you and yours are doing ok in these troubling times, and that you have had a chance for some relief and time out in nature. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 
 

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

All Seasons 
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf
Sharon's Sovenirs 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity.
Thankful Thursday 
Der-Natur-Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit
 Month end link up @ Live love craft me

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.

Little blogging break this week - travelling north

 Hi all, I hope you have all being ok these last couple of weeks during these stressful times. We have been away travelling north from where we live in Western Australia these last two weeks, trying to escape the southern winter, which is why I haven't been able to visit your blogs. To give myself time to catch back up on life I have decided to take a blogging break this week, but I will be back next week with some stories from our trip. 

There will be:

Rain..... not fun to drive in all the first day of our trip

Beaches...this is Coral Bay

Cruising in gorges....in Exmouth...

Unique wildlife...black-flanked rock wallaby

Amazing views... the new Skywalk in Kalbarri 

Gorgeous wildflowers... the Kalbarri spider orchid...

Stunning sunsets...

and lots more....

so till then, thank you for stopping by, take care, stay well and safe, do whatever makes you happy, hug someone, and enjoy the rest of your week. 

Sunflowers in Grandmother's Garden

Something a little different for you this week, a fictional little piece, but some of which has some basis in fact. It is a little story I wrote for a writer's group prompt a couple of years ago. 

 There is a forest of sunflowers at the bottom of my grandmother’s garden, up against the back picket fence between the chook pen and the outhouse under the weeping trees.  

The sunflowers are so tall that when we stand among them we can only just see over the top. We crouch down on the dusty dry red dirt among their stiff scratchy stalks. The sunflower heads are so big they form a canopy shading us from the hot sun and casting a yellow glow over us. Sometimes we take a book with us and read it sitting among the sunflowers. It’s our secret world where anything is possible.  As we doze in the sun the world of the Faraway Tree comes to life under the sunflowers.

Beyond the sunflowers is grandma’s big vegetable garden stretching all the way from the back veranda to the chook pen. It seems like every vegetable you can imagine is growing there.  Every day grandma collects vegetables from the garden for our dinner, pulling up potatoes, onions and carrots with the dirt still clinging to their bulbs. Dirt pathways run between the beds and after our bath and on washing day we scoop the water out of the bath or the laundry trough with a can and water the garden.    

It’s fun to help grandma dig in the garden beds and push the seeds into the damp earth that we have watered with our bath water.  But our favourite place is the sunflower patch.

It’s a mystery how the sunflowers came to grow there. Grandma says she didn’t plant the seeds. Perhaps old Mr Rosini who lives in the little cottage over the back lane threw the seeds over the fence one day when he was cleaning out his budgie’s cage.  When we sit among the sunflowers we can hear him talking in Italian to his budgie, and Bluey talks back to him.

Sometimes we go with our Aunt to Mr Rosini's house, taking with us fresh warm bread that Grandma has just taken out of her big black oven.  He turns on his radio so we can listen to the “children’s hour” and he pulls off chunks of the soft bread for us and slathers it with jam.

My Aunt says Mr Rosini has lived there since the war. Perhaps the sunflowers are how he repays Grandma for her kindness.

This story is a piece of fiction...but my grandmother did have a long back yard where she grew vegetables, and the outhouse was under weeping trees way down the back (a scary place to visit in the dark!). And there was a man who lived in a little cottage along the laneway that ran along the back of the yard.  

Here is a pic of Gramdma's house taken in 1948. She lived in Corrigin in the Western Australian wheatbelt.

I hope you enjoyed my story today.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Have a wonderful week. 

I am linking up to the link-ups below. Please click on the links to see fabulous contributions from around the world - virtual touring at its best!

   
All Seasons
MosaicMonday at Letting Go of the Bay Leaf
Sharon's Sovenirs 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
My corner of the world through my camera 
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global hosted by Randomosity.
Thankful Thursday 
Der-Natur-Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit
 Month end link up @ Live love craft me

Hello there! I love reading your comments. If you scroll down to the bottom you can comment too! I would love to hear from you.