Native Clematis

We planted a native clematis about eight weeks ago.  For weeks and weeks it has just sat there, not doing much of anything other than hanging on to the two wee leaves it was planted with.  Imagine my surprise when I checked it a few days to go to find this:

Almost overnight (it seems) it has put on a heap of new growth and is looking for something to climb.  Hopefully it will find the tree we planted it next to. I'm guessing it's definitely found its' feet. 

One day, it will look like this.  All being well.

I'm almost as excited about seeing that as I am about trying our first apricots. Which are not ripe yet.  

Foxgloves and Roses

Over the last couple of months we've spent a lot of time in the garden just outside of our kitchen (the  cottage garden).  Sadly we lost a lot of plants last Summer as we didn't have enough water to keep them happy and we had some intensely hot weather very early in the season. Which gave we humans and our plants a bit of a shock!!  So we've been putting new plants in and and moving others about.  Some of the plants we moved were a number of foxgloves that were planted under the Meyer lemon tree.   Those are growing okay but are not showing any signs of flowering.   But check out this foxglove that appeared in a completely different part of the garden all by itself.  What a corker!!  Hopefully one day the other plants will flower just as spectacularly. 

 

This is a close up of Digitalis purpurea  - to give the blossom it's official name, which I will never remember - so you can see how truly impressive it is.  

I couldn't resist googling to find out how the foxglove got its name.  The image of foxes wearing gloves that I have in my wee brain does not look anything like the flower.  According to the Woodland Trust in the UK the origins of the name can be traced back to Anglo-saxon times but aren't clear.  Apparently the flowers look like the fingers of gloves.  I buy that. They kinda do.  The theories about the connections to foxes are less plausible though. One is that the foxes wore the flowers on their paws so they could move about quietly. Now I like the idea of floral clad foxes prancing daintily about the place and I'd love that to be true. It fits with the image I already had.  But, a more likely thought is that the flowers grow close to the earths where foxes raise their young.  Oh, and I didn't know this about foxgloves, they are both poisonous and curative. Or, as they say on the Woodland Trust site, "they can raise the dead and kill the living".  Not a plant to be messed with. I hope it doesn't uproot itself and invade our house during the night and start licking its lips and singing.  Like Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors!! 

This year we have an abundance of amazing roses. I think we have about 15 or 20 plants and M and J, who previously owned this place, said they took loads out.  There must have been dozens and dozens.  I don't normally pick the roses, or any other flowers come to think of it.  It kind of feels like I'm stealing from the birds and the bees.  But as my lovely mother-in-law and sister-in-law were coming to stay for the weekend I thought I'd pick some to put in a vase in the centre of the table.  They certainly cheered the place up and filled it with a beautiful hint of scent.  And the birds and bees didn't line up and tell me off for stealing their flowers.  So I guess it's okay. 

I have got some more photos of the garden somewhere.  When I get a bit more time I'll post them on another blog.

Oh, we are waiting for our apricots to ripen.  They're supposed to be early apricots and we're supposed to be picking them by now.  No such luck. I am getting impatient. I check them every day and still not a single one is ready to be devoured.  And no amount of finger tapping and foot stomping is making the slightest bit of difference.   Bother, as Pooh would say. 

What is it with steers and plastic?

Our former neighbour is keeping his steers in our paddock, along with a number of sheep.   This works out great for everyone, steers and sheep included.  Our neighbour gets the grazing land in exchange for maintaining the fences, the cows and sheep get plenty of grass and fresh water, the grass is kept down to an acceptable level and we get to enjoy the antics of the animals.  It's kinda nice having animals around without the responsibility of caring for them.   But what is it with steers and plastic?

My lovely husband was picking thistles in the paddocks.  We're trying not to use sprays for all the obvious reasons but digging thistles out is a nasty job. And there are a lot of thistles.  So many in fact that the wheelbarrow filled up in no time at all. So lovely husband decided to get out the ride-on-mower and the large trailer it has behind to throw the thistles into. But as he was throwing the thistles in, he noticed the two steers, which he has named Sirloin and T-bone, inching closer and closer to the mower.  He kept shooing them away but they just wouldn't be shooed.  Turns out they like munching on plastic, even though they're surrounded by luscious green grass.  And, being a modern mower, it's covered in plastic.  They were like kids in a candy store.  Or my husband in an ice-cream parlour.  The solution?  Lovely husband draped the thistles all over the mower. That kept Sirloin and T-bone away until he could finish picking the thistles.

They are such curious creatures though and we love having their company.  Although, it is a little bit disconcerting when they stand in the paddock and stare in through the lounge window at us.  It reminded my husband of the Far Side cartoons.  What are those steers plotting!! 

Do they look like they're plotting?  Only time will tell. 

Out and About

One of the things we love to do, when we've some spare time, is to take some day trips to see what there is to see.   We're generally happy just to find a nice piece of bush somewhere for a picnic and a walk.  Or to wander around a small town somewhere.  Of course, if there happens to be an antique fair on the weekend we visit, well that's just a bonus.  Pemberton, coincidentally, just happened to have one of those on the weekend we went.   What a happy coincidence.

I didn't take any photos of the fair.  The stall holders probably wouldn't like it and we didn't want to get kicked out.  I kinda suspect shots of antique stalls wouldn't be all that interesting. Even for those of us who are into the old stuff.   Luckily (or not) we had a picnic afternoon tea at Big Brook Dam, which is just a short drive out of Pemberton.   I love magpies (especially when they get together and sing) and I don't mind them having out with me when I'm having a picnic.  They can be kind of cute when they tilt their head to one side and make polite, cheeping requests for tit bits.  But these magpies were downright demanding!! They'd landed on the table and had started strutting about and demanding treats in loud song before we've even opened the thermos let alone the tin of homemade Anzac biscuits.  Based on the boldness of their performance alone we should have given them our entire picnic and left them to to it.  But those Anzacs are just too good to share. And we all know feeding wildlife human food is not a good thing.  Bad luck to the magpies.  

As usual, I took some pics. Again, these are just with the phone so they're not the greatest. I keep forgetting to take my camera. Darn it all.   It was latish in the afternoon when we were there and the light was just sublime.  The reflections were magical and even with a poor camera they make a nice shot.  The picnic area is on the edge of a sandy beach and surrounded by beautiful tall timber.   It would be a great spot to go in the Summer I suspect. 

Oh, here are the maggies setting up for their picnic. 

Eyeballing the picnic hamper. 

Moving in on and the hamper is still closed. 

It's hard to show how tall and majestic trees are I find.  This is my attempt. 

We recently stopped in King Jarrah Valley to have to enjoy the beautiful trees.  They're amazingly tall and majestic and there is a lovely walk you can take through them.  Their size is almost overwhelming.  They don't look very big in this picture.  But if you look right in the centre, down near the bottom you'll see a person dressed all in black. That's our good friend G who, along with us, definitely felt tiny!

Our most recent trip was to Hoffman Mill.  It's not an operating mill anymore but there is a bit of a walking trail that follows the old route the mill train took.  I only took the one photo here as my battery was getting flat (no camera again).  You can see there is a lovely picnic area to enjoy.  With facilities.  I think you can camp there too.  And it seems like a stop off point for cyclists and hikers doing the Bibblmum.  

We've been having a fabulous time doing lots of bush walks of late.  Here's to more to come and sharing them with friends.  

Meelup

We took a wee trip down to Meelup while we were on holidays recently.  My lovely husband had discovered that there are some great walks to do down there.  We didn't find the particular walk he read about but found another that wound along the beach front.  It was a gloriously warm day, we had a lovely walk and the views were ridiculously beautiful.  So I decided to take some pics on my phone.  All well and good but the sun was so bright I couldn't see what I was photographing at all.  Some of the photos turned out okay though. Ish.  Here are the best of the bunch.    Although, they looked way better on the phone than they do on this blog.  

 

I think this one is my favourite:

I like the clouds in this one. 

If you're thinking of doing a walk along the coast, this one comes highly recommended. It's a pretty easy walk and the views, as you can see are stunning.  The track winds through lovely bush and there was plenty still in flower when we wandered through.

Enjoy!

The Demise of Scary Shed

I know, I know.  I promised I would post regular up dates of what we've been doing in our little slice of peace and tranquility in the valley.  Frankly, it has been far too cold in the office to even contemplate coming down to this end of the house.  And so, seven months have passed since my last post and I'm staring with a post about a shed.  What the proverbial you know what (I don't want to swear on my blog)!!  Surely a topic better suited to that lovely husband of mine.  Turns out he doesn't like writing blogs.

Those of you who visited our home may recall an old shed (and I use the term shed very loosely) in our back (side???) yard.  We named it, amongst other less flattering names, the Scary Shed.  Mostly because it was very dark, even on a bright day, and kind of looked like the place where someone would stash something they ought not to, like a dead body. We did find some dead bodies in it. But they were rats. Not the kind of dead body one would secret away to a dark and gloomy place. 

I actually didn't mind the scary shed. It had a certain charm about it.  Although, well, it was still scary.  Here are some pics of Scary Shed which might give you an idea of what it was like. It was cobbled together from bits and pieces and literally held together in some places by clamps!  In fairness to Scary Shed, I did take the pics on a gloomy day and I am no photographer. 

Much to my lovely husband's delight we managed to get Scary Shed replaced with a new, shiny model. One that has a proper cement pad that is all one level.  One that has a window that opens to let the fresh air in. And a big roller door.  And lots of room for shelves and equipment and all the bits and bobs that men like to stash into sheds.   We have named this shed, New Shed.

Here are some pics of New Shed being constructed.  It took one guy three days to put New Shed up. 

New Shed is lovely and light and spacious, although the power is yet to be connected.  This is New Shed shining behind the Silver Birch trees. 

This is Scary Shed behind the trees.

New Shed is definitely shinier and brighter and nicer to work in than Scary Shed. Although New Shed lacks charm and character.  Given we found the remains of a dead rabbit in New Shed though, with absolutely no idea of how it got there, I suspect the ghost of Scary Shed lives on, Long live Scary Shed!!