Wild orchids in Manea Reserve, Bunbury, Western Australia

 Hi all, I hope you and yours are doing well. 

I just realised that I hadn't shared any wild orchids with you this year as I normally do during the spring months. So today is the day. 

We have a wonderful bush reserve, the Manea Reserve, about 15 minutes from our home, which we frequent during winter and spring, walking along the loop formed path. 

There are over 400 wild orchid varieties in the south west of Western Australia. These are not the flamboyant flashy Asian orchids - these are tiny delicate orchids - which often blend their colours into their surroundings. Or stun us with a colour so amazing - like the Blue Lady you will see as you scroll down. No I haven't adjusted the colour in post-processing. 

Here are some wild orchids from September - clockwise from top left - Reaching spider orchid, Donkey orchids, Bird orchid, Dancing orchid, donkey orchids, and the Jug orchid. Enlarged below one of the Donkey orchid varieties. 

October - clockwise from top left - Mignonette orchid, Blue lady orchid, Pink fairies, White spider orchid, White spider orchids, Forest Mantis, Enamel orchids, Cowslips, and in the centre the Blue Lady. Enlarged below the Blue Lady orchid. 

and November - really the end of the orchid season - but still a couple coming on - clockwise from top left - one of the blue sun orchids, Leopard orchid, Mignonette orchid, the leaves of the Slipper orchid (just starting to poke up their flower stems, Leopard orchid, and another blue sun orchid. Enlarged below the Leopard Orchid. 

Here is a photo of the Slipper Orchid - from a previous visit during the heat of December.

Just a short post from me today - if you would like to see some of my previous posts from Manea Reserve go here - I can assure you there is lots of colour! 

Manea - December 2021

Manea - July 2022

Manea - September 2012

Manea - December 2020

And Manea is not just about orchids - clockwise from top left -

one of the yellow pea flowers, Summer star flower, Star of Bethlehem, Holly leaved Banksia, Banjine, Orange stars, Wisteria, Pink Baronia, and in the middle Mangles red kangaroo paw. 

There are over 8,000 species of wildflowers in the south west of Western Australia! 

When you hear screeching look up - it is most likely a Forest Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, found in jarrah, marri and karri forests, it listed as Vulnerable in Western Australia. They love to eat hard seed pods of eucalypts, casuarinas and banksias, using its strong beak to tear them open. Their red/orange stripes on their tail are magnificent to see in flight - but hard to capture with a camera. From what I have read this is a female because of the yellow spots on its head and the yellow/orange stripes on its chest. 

More information at: Birdlife Australia 

You also might see some kangaroos if you walk quietly. Please keep dogs on a lead. 

And please stay on the paths and don't pick the wildflowers.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I hope you have enjoyed this little splash of spring colour in the Western Australian bush. 

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!

Next time I hope to be back with my continuation of our Coral Coast Western Australia tour. 

If you are looking for a translate button - it's there near the top on the right hand side. 
   

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My corner of the world through my camera 
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Thankful Thursday 

H2O Thursday
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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.

Until then, enjoy your day...Life only comes around once, so do what makes you happy, be kind, and be with people who make you smile. 

Lemons lemons lemons

 Hi everyone. I hope you and yours are all doing well. I thought spring had arrived but now we seem to be back into winter. 

I have loads of lemons on our backyard lemon tree, and it has started flowering again, so I picked a few yesterday to make Lemon Butter and a sweet French Marmalade. It didn't seem to make much difference to what was left on the tree. I need to start giving them away. It was a wet dreary day yesterday, perfect for a morning in the kitchen. 

I have blogged about the Lemon Butter making a couple of times before - if you click here you will find see more: Lemon butter

Here is the recipe: 

• Juice of 4 lemons and finely grated rind of three
• 500gm (1 lb) white sugar
• 250gm (1/2 lb) butter
• 4 eggs, well beaten together. Make sure they are well beaten so you don't get strands of white in your mixture. 
• 
  
• Place all in a large bowl stranding in a pan of boiling water on the stove. Stir constantly until the consistency of honey, but do not allow to boil. This takes about half an hour. 

Bottle and keep in fridge. Delicious on scones! or slathered on a sponge with cream. 

I also made French marmalade out of my old Australian Country Women's Association Cookery Book and Household Hints. This marmalade is a sweet marmalade made from carrots, lemons and sugar, and is so easy to make. 

3 large carrots - I always find this a difficult measurement - how much is 3 large carrots?

2 1/2 kg (5 lb) white sugar

4 lemons

8 cups water. 

Grate the carrots. Cut the lemons into quarters and dig out the seeds. Put through a mincer, including the peel. Mix the carrots and lemons together and leave in a basin overnight with half the water - 4 cups. 

In the morning add the rest of the water, and boil for half an hour. Then add sugar and cook for about 2 1/2 hours. Bottle immediately in hot jars. 

Note: This marmalade still seems very liquid when it starts to set, so please test as you go so as not to overcook. I just spoon a small amount onto a saucer and put in the fridge for a few minutes. If it doesn't move around on the saucer when cold it is ready. 

My friend in Malta made this recipe with half lemons and half oranges. She said it was delicious too. 

This is an old favourite photo of mine I created for a special friend on the other side of the world one morning a few years ago. I couldn't resist sharing again. Sharing a cup of coffee or tea with a friend doesn't need to be complicated. 

While the French marmalade was bubbling away I also made a batch of muffins from a packet I bought when we were out in the wheatbelt recently. These are gluten free made from lupin flour. They were nice, but a bit heavier and grainer texture than the muffins we usually make with normal self-raising flour. 

My quince tree has an amazing number of flowers on it this year for such a small tree. I love quinces. Do you? So delicious. I am already looking forward to quince season - but I will have to wait till around March-April! We always net the tree to keep the birds off. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. Do you make jam? Do you have a favourite? 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 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!

ps: what else is yellow right now? Wattle is everywhere! 
   
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 Little bird - Pienilintu
Thankful Thursday 
Welcome to Nature Thursday
The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit

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.

October garden

Hi everyone, just a few photos from around my garden this week. It is spring here in Australia and it feels like, to me at least, that it has been a weird start to spring, cold and wet days, and then a burst of warm weather. But perhaps the change in seasons is always like this. We are into the last two weeks of October and tonight we have the fire on - it should be warming up by now. Though I know I shouldn't complain as I know the heat is coming. But I must say I think our garden is enjoying the rain, cooler days and sunshine.

In our back garden our apricot tree is rocketing away with new fruit - we've had to put the net up to keep the parrots off, we have blueberries ripening - so fantastic to eat straight off the bush, the lemon tree is flowering even though there is still some of last season's fruit on the tree, the tomatoes are putting out baby tomatoes, and the grape vine is forming grapes. 

 I made French Marmalade and Lemon Butter with some of those lemons. The marmalade has carrots in it and is delicious - not a sour marmalade like some of them can be.

My new quince tree has flowers! I adore quinces, so I am looking forward with anticipation to my first piece of fruit. I can even see the start of tiny quinces!

In my front garden there are flowers - the green kangaroo paws are reaching up their green heads on long stalks, the Bird of Paradise is putting out a couple of final flowers, the lavender is flowering, the pelargoniums are looking fantastic, new buds are bursting on my roses, and this yellow native is making a bright ground cover.

 The kangaroo paws are native to Western Australia.  The type I have is a tall green kangaroo paw - Anigozanthos flavidus 'Green' - which grows up to 2 metres tall. It flowers throughout the summer. 

Kangaroo paws belong to the genus Anigozanthos, which has 11 species. The closely related Black Kangaroo Paw is called Macropidia fulginosa. 
 Anigozanthos and Macropidia occur naturally only in the southwest of Western Australia. They occur in a variety of habitats and soil types    Australian National Herbarium

 
 My Port Wine Magnolia is looking beautiful, but the little birds haven't built there this year.

On Friday I was invited to photograph a beautiful garden in the Ferguson Valley for the coming Ferguson Valley Open Gardens weekend - 10-11th November. More on that in the next couple of weeks. 

And I met a baby lamb only 10 days old, one of a set of triplets kicked out by the other two, and still learning to suck. It was good to hear yesterday that she is now doing well.

Just a short post from me today - life has been hectic this last week and I need to catch up. But 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.  

Next week I will be back to share another photography project I've been working on. See you then! 
 
You might also like -
Oranges and lemons
Go away winter 
Wet weather street photography 

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
Mosaic Monday 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global
Travel Photo Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit and 50 Shades of Age
Little Things Thursday

Life in Reflection

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.

An InLinkz Link-up

Wildflower hunting - and taking time out

Hi everyone, as I mentioned last week I took a short break from social media, blogging and internet for a couple of weeks, but I am now back home and back to my computer.  My post a couple of weeks ago would have given you a hint - Gather Around the Campfire - that I went camping.

We travelled up through the Western Australian midwest to some of the old gold mining regions and towns, across some country new to us, and other places we have visited before and enjoy returning to. We travelled on outback roads, watched amazing sunsets, visited old towns with interesting history and fascinating stories, camped under the stars, climbed huge granite outcrops and at the end of the day baked damper and toasted marshmallows over the campfire. 

The added bonus and the reason we chose early September is because spring has sprung in Western Australia and September is the perfect time to travel, particularly to our mid-west region, to see the wildflowers. Before we left reports had been coming in about the amazing wildflower season Western Australia was having, so I was keen to get out on the road to see some of them.   

And we were ankle deep in everlasting wildflowers, by late afternoon on our first day. The carpets of everlastings sprawling through the seemingly dry bushland is amazing to see. 

Boasting up to 12,000 known species, the Western Australian wildflower season spreads over several months starting from July in the far north till November in the south and I feel blessed to be able to travel over parts of our state during wildflower season to photograph some of them. Over the next couple of weeks I will bring you more images and stories from our trip. 

But more than this, one of the things I enjoyed most about our trip was getting away from our everyday life in suburbia, and away from phones, internet, social media and, dare I whisper, blogging.  The peace and calm I feel walking through the bush with my camera is wonderful and food for the soul. 

The new spring season for me is a good time to slow down and celebrate the beauty around us and to feel grateful.  

 I took several opportunities when the sky was clear, to get up early and go walking with my camera. A lot is written about "mindfulness" these days, and I guess this is what I was doing - being immersed in the environment, looking at the light and seeing where and how it fell, observing the shapes and colours. Feeling the breeze on my cheeks and the feel of the gravel under my boots. Hearing the early morning bird song. Being alone to wander at will and absorb all the gifts around me.

 You might even see a kangaroo or two. Sadly I can't claim credit for this photo. It was taken by my husband.

  One last thing - bocce is a great game to take bush camping! ....  or is it boules? Either way, this set only cost us $10 and gave us lots of fun in camp in the late afternoon and will be a must on our camping list from now on.

It is difficult to return to life after this, but return we must. But I have my photos to look back on, and many stories to share with you over the next few weeks. I hope you will join me.

Until then, I hope you have enjoyed this little introduction.  How do you celebrate the change in seasons? Perhaps you'd like to tell us in your comments. 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.  

You might also enjoy:
Photographing wildflowers 
The wildflower hunter 

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
Mosaic Monday 

Our World Tuesday

Pictorial Tuesday 

ThroughMy Lens 

Image-in-ing
Wednesday Around the World at Communal Global
Travel Photo Thursday 

The Lovin' Life Team over at: Deep Fried Fruit and 50 Shades of Age
Little Things Thursday

Life in Reflection

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.

An InLinkz Link-up