Welcome to Life Images by Jill

Welcome to Life Images by Jill.........Stepping into the light and bringing together the images and stories of our world. I am a photographer, writer and multi-media artist.
Focussing mainly on Western Australia and Australia, I am seeking to preserve images and memories of the beautiful world in which we live and the people in it.

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Monday, 31 August 2020

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!


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.
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Sunday, 23 August 2020

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. 


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Sunday, 16 August 2020

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!

 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.
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Saturday, 8 August 2020

27 July to 8 August 2020 - Catching up on my Covid Photo A Day Project

Hi everyone, I hope you and yours are going ok. It's already a week into August! Can you believe it! Here I am again catching up again with my Covid Photo-A-Day project. Honestly I didn't expect to still be doing this now when I started this project in March. Sadly however, the Covid Virus is still with us. 

I am sure you want to look at more pleasant things. i know right now that family and simple things in life are far more important than money and possessions. 

So here we go
Monday 27 July to Sunday 2 August  


 Monday 27 July 2020 - a quick trip to see our "finance man" in our capital city, Perth, gave us the opportunity to visit our botanical gardens, Kings Park, which overlooks Perth.
You can read more about our visit here if you misssed it last week: Eucalypt-macrocarpa-or-rose-mallee?


 Tuesday 28 July 2020 - cows and blue tree by the railway crossing on the way into town. Do you have "Beyond Blue" trees for mental health where you live? They are popping up here and there in fact there are over 500 in Australia. Trees that are already dead of course. 

Someone asked about the blue trees -  there is a website - Blue Tree Project
Their mission - Our mission is to help spark difficult conversations and encourage people to speak up when battling mental health concerns. 

By spreading the paint and spreading the message that "it’s OK to not be OK", we can help break down the stigma that’s still largely attached to mental health.



Wednesday 29 July 2020 - I took a photo in the corridor of the Art Gallery and then played around in post processing after
 

Thursday 30 July 2020 - I loved the effect of this native wisteria clambering over a gate along one of our walks


 Friday 31 July 2020 - only one photo today! A new pair of fun socks....do you like the flamingos?

 Saturday 1 August 2020 -  beautiful Hebertia in the little bush block near where we live


 Sunday 2 August 2020 - We went out to Manea Park to see if there are any native orchids flowering yet. But the rain came down, so we had to dash back to the car after we hadn't been there long. I did find these tiny Pink Fairy orchids though.


Monday 3 August - Saturday 8 August 2020
Looking back over this past week, we haven't gone far from home. I had a "bit" of a cold for a few days, but it cleared up by the end of the week.

Monday 3 August 2020 - baking biscuits

 
Tuesday 4 August 2020 - a young lady was dressing models in the window at the shopping centre
 
 
Wednesday 5 August 2020 - some colour in my winter garden
 
 
Thursday - 6 August 2020 - do you feel sometimes like you are going around in circles? We saw these marks on the paving when we went walking
 
 
Friday - 7 August 2020 - lavender in my garden

 
Saturday - 8 August 2020 - some winter weather blowing in 
 

So there you have it - a little look at the last two weeks. I hope you are yours are doing ok. Stay safe and enjoy the simple pleasures of your week ahead.

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!

 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.

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Saturday, 1 August 2020

Is it a Eucalypt Macrocarpa or a Eucalyptus Rose Mallee?

Hi everyone, I hope you and yours are doing ok in these troubling times. We in Western Australia are battling to keep our internal borders closed from the rest of Australia, particularly as there continues to be a worrying upsurge in Covid cases in Victoria on the east coast. 

 But this post is not about Covid, it is about Eucalypts.

There are around 900 species of eucalypts in Australia - in fact there are 550 species in Western Australia alone. It is therefore not surprising that it gets a little confusing when out in the bush trying to identify species when many look so similar. 

Last year I blogged about one of my favourites -  The Mottlecah - Eucalyptus macrocarpa.
I even said it was easily identified in the bush - but is it really? I've seen them quite often in the wheatbelt, but did I know what I was looking at?  Now looking at my new guide book, Eucalypts of Western Australia's wheatbelt by Malcolm French - I can see there are different varieties which grow in different areas, so I hope this will help me in future. 

In this photo you can see the many stages all together - the unopened buds, an opening bud, an opened bud, and two nuts. 


Recently we visited Kings Park in our capital city, Perth, as I heard the Mottlecah (the indigenous name for Macrocarpa) and its close relation the Rose Mallee were flowering, so I hoped to see them side by side and see for myself what is the difference.

If you are in Perth, particularly in spring, Kings Park Botanic Gardens is the place to visit. But really any time of year is beautiful with its views over Perth.

Kings Park is home to the spectacular Western Australian Botanic Garden, which displays over 3,000 species of the State’s unique flora. Two thirds of the 400 hectare park is protected as bushland and provides a haven for native biological diversity.

To find your way around, park in the main car park and visit the Visitor Information Centre located near the restaurant and gallery shop. 

Armed with a map and information and my camera we set off towards the "Roe gardens" where plants from the northern sandplain regions are displayed. There is a carpark nearby if you want a shorter walk, but it was lovely walking through the gardens. Though a little early for the spring wildflowers, there were however many plants starting to flower. 

I thought I had the Mottlecahs sorted in my mind, but the first Mottlecah we found (see below) was the Small-Leaved Mottlecah - Eucalyptus macrocarpa subsp elachantha 

The name relates to the smaller buds and flowers. Unfortunately this plant it wasn't flowering when we saw it. They have big bell shaped fruits.

 At this point I really suggest when you are doing this sort of walk to take photos of the name labels to help you later.
  Below is the Eucalyptus Macrocarpa - also known by the Aboriginal name Mottlecah. It has the largest flower of all the eucalypts. Superbly adapted to bird and animal pollination, its large waxy grey leaves help it survive in the dry climate.

The nuts and flowers are held very close to the branch


 I am now questioning whether this plant seen here below, which I photographed a couple of years ago at Western Flora near Eneabba is actually the small-leaved mottlecah subsp elachantha..... when you look at the size of the leaves as compared to the plant above, photographed in Kings Park.  Both Eucalyptus Macrocarpa - but slightly different.
 I love the way they burst from their cups


 This one below here is the Rose Mallee - Eucalyptus rhodantha - which is declared threatened and rare flora and only found in the wild in a couple of places. So it was wonderful to be able to see them in Kings Park - just part of the amazing work the Park staff do.

I think the main distinguishing feature of the Rose Mallee, is the way the buds, flowers and nuts are held on a long pendulous stalk away from the branch, whereas the macrocarpa or mottlecah are held close to the branch.
Just to be even more confusing this one below here is Eucalyptus carnabyi which we also saw in Kings Park. Evidently it is known from only a few plants in the Calingiri and Dandaragan area, and recognised as a hybrid between Euc dummondii (Drummonds mallee) and Euc macrocarpa.

To be even more confusing Macrocarpa is also related to Euc pyriformis (pear-fruited mallee) and and Euc impensa (Eneabba mallee). But there are a lot of mallees......

I learnt a lot from our short visit to Kings Park and my further research after we returned home. I hope to visit Kings Park again during their Flower Festival in September when more than 25,000 plants and hundreds of wildflower varieties burst into bloom, heralding the start of spring in the South West of WA. As well as seeing many wildflowers there is a month of activities.  

 As well as enjoying the wildflowers in Kings Park you can learn something about indigenous culture and foods

Along the Federation Walkway through the tree tops you can enjoy views of Perth. There are also children's playgrounds, cafes and parkland for picnics or for just sitting.


and you can take a moment of silent contemplation at our State War Memorial and Eternal Flame which is the site of our Anzac Day Dawn Service on 25th April every year.


We enjoyed our revisit to Kings Park, and I learnt a lot in the short time we were there. I hope to visit again in spring. 

For more information: KIngs Park Botanic Gardens
Wildflower Society of Western Australia 
Eddy Wajon's wildflower identification books 

Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you and yours are doing ok. 
Do you have a favourite park? Perhaps you would like to tell us about it in your comments. I value your comments and look forward to hearing from you. I will try to visit your blogs in return. Stay safe and enjoy your week ahead.

  You might also like:
The wildflowers are blooming in the Kimberley, Western Australia
Hunting for wild orchids

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!

 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.
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