A Strange Thing

R did a wee tour of the pens (as we call them) to see if our newly planted natives were still surviving the rabbit and kangaroo attacks (they are, yay) and he noticed a few of these on some of the plants.

We emailed the pic to our good friends at My Pest Guide.  If you've not heard of My Pest Guide it's a great app that helps you to identify good and bad bugs in your garden. There's real, live scientific type people who answer queries via the app.  They even give advice on what to do with the insects you've found.  They identified this as a Spittle Bug, or Bathyllus albicinctus (Hemiptera: Cercopidae) to use it's official name.  Apparently, to protect themselves from predators, the nymphs produce a little glob of spittle around themselves while they're sucking the sap on the plant. Hence it's common name.

Cool huh. 

Blooming Art

One of the things we like to do, if we happen to find ourselves in Bunbury with a bit of spare time up our sleeves, is to pop into the Bubury Regional Art Gallery.  It's in a fabulous building, a pink former convent that was built in the late 1890s that is worth visiting even without any exhibitions to entice you in.  And if that wasn't enough to tempt you, BRAG change their exhibitions regularly, they're always really great art and they're free.  What more could one ask for.  

The last time we popped in to the BRAG they had an exhibition of flower arrangements in the Chapel Gallery.  These were definitely not your average flower arrangements and I think it's fair that they found themselves being exhibited in an art gallery.  The photos really don't do the arrangements justice, but I hope they at least give you an idea of what can be achieved by someone talented who has a bunch of flowers to work with. 

 I really do need to improve my photography skills.  I guess you'll just have to trust me when I say the arrangements were superb.  I had no idea flower arranging could be such a stylised art form.  They have this exhibition every year.  If you happen to be in Bunbury when it's on, it's worth checking out.