Rich blues

I love a good before and after shot. Ive been waiting a good month or more for those berries to form. The plant is a Dianella and unfortunately after you plant a couple of thousand of the buggers, you tend to lose your liking for them. They are an extremely hardy plant and are commonly used in median strips and counsel verges that arent reticulated. As you can see from the photos, they get very small, delicate flowers on these wiry stems. I think it looks rather nice, artistic even. my leading hand hates them with a passion, thinks they look messy until these lovely berries come along. I like the wiry look of them, with or without the berries. I think if the berries were a red they wouldnt be as appealing. My only fear with them is little kids thinking that the berries may be edible  I have no idea if they are/arent poisonous and we fortunately dont grow them near playgrounds. So yeah, Dianellas. Nice plant, easy to grow, berries may or may not be poisonous, spreads quick (be warned) and looks quite artistic when it flowers.

New Growth

I love it when its new growth time on the cycads. Spring you magnificent thing! Putting on displays like this, its brilliant. We have a heap of cycads at work and I have a bad habit of forgetting the name of them. Makes it interesting when I try to talk to my coworkers about them and Im trying to jog my memory, Im sure I look and sound like Im trying to get caramel off my teeth. Cycads are an australian native, for some reason this really blew my mind when I found out. They are very slow growing and extremely hardy. We have them growing in some of the unreticulated areas of the parks and they bluntly refuse to die. The one in this picture is growing in one of the staff gardens at work, its the biggest and healthiest of the several dozen that are growing. Quite magnificent really.

Always The Bridemaid

I remember reading a gardening magazine once and one of the feature articles was on Agapanthus. The catch cry for it was 'Always the bridesmaid, never the bride' and its so very true. Aggys (as we shorten the name to) are what I call, one of the great unkillables. In other words, they are very hardy plants once established and will reward the gardener handsomely with beautiful displays of lush green foliage and bright flowers that can be blue, white or varying shades there of. However we tend to use aggys as an edging plant or a filler. They are always there to enhance something else, never the main feature (ie, the bride). As a result, I tend to feel a bit sorry for them. One day little Aggys, you will have your chance to shine in the spotlight! one day!

Someone Else's Garden

We have annual beds at work. I actually love the annual beds, they put on lovely displays and its nice to change the scenery every 4-6 months. The colour you get out of them is magnificent and as they are planted en masse, it really stands out and looks amazing. They make the parks in my eyes. We dont have alot of annual beds, so its not that bad when we have to replant them. The flowers in this picture are a trial for this year, they are called Portulaca, we wanted to have something other then petunias and vincas that we put in for every summer display. The colours in them are quite varied with pinks, reds, oranges, whites and yellows. They seem quite promising. Biggest frustration right now, they keep getting stolen. In this past month we have had over 250 annual plants stolen right out of the bed. Every morning we come in and another patch of about 20-30 plants have been taken. Its not just annuals either, 10 rose plants have been dug up and taken too. I cant begin to tell you how disheartening this is. We have no hope of catching who ever is doing this as, in the words of my boss, "its only $1000 worth of plants, the police have better things to do with their time". With an attitude like that, one wonders why they sometimes get a 'whats the point' attitude at work.

Disgruntled

Meet the friendly mudlark that inhabits the parks. I have a habit of calling them peewees, my nanna calls them butcher birds (which is WRONG! I have told her many times but shes stubborn), their correct name is a mudlark. I say this guy is friendly, in reality he just looks out for us gardeners and flies down to join us as it usually means an easy meal, as we turn the grubs out of the ground and make them easier to spot. This one is a boy. I know this as he has 'eyebrows'. Male mudlarks have a patch of white feathers above their eyes that look like eyebrows, the females dont have this trait at all. I think he looks pretty peeved in this photo as he was putting on a show for me and I wasnt paying attention. He must have a lovely lady up in a tree near to where I was working and was afraid I was after his nest, so he was acting all injured. He spread his wings, puffed himself up and spread out on the ground. He then proceeded to flop himself along the ground, trying to encourage me to chase him or at least come closer (ie, further from the nest). When I ignored him and just kept weeding, he fixed me with this look, got up and walked away. Seemed to me he was quite disgusted that I didnt acknowledge his acting skills. Drama Queen.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Right next to the parks that I work in is a large shopping complex. Its rather convenient actually, I usually walk over there during smoko or lunch to buy lunch foods for the week or pick up anything that I may have forgotten. To say that it is handy is an understatement. One flaw with this shop, it has a faulty alarm system. Its constantly sounding the alarm! At least once a week the entire complex gets evacuated, complete with lights, ringing bells, buzzers and sexy firemen, all for no good reason. There is never a fire, chemical spill, hell, not even a kitten stuck up a tree! Today when I heard the alarm go off, I didnt think anything of it and leaving the garden I was working in to get a glimpse of the firemen just wasnt worth the walk at the time. Then my leading hand comes up and informs me that there genuinely *is* a fire and the fire alarm isnt being all faulty and stuff. So we promptly leave the garden and go have a sticky beak like everyone else. Turns out somebody set fire to the industrial cardboard recycling bins under the side of the shop near Muzz Buzz. It seemed a little anticlimactic, it wasnt a particularly big fire, just very smokey. I dont know why, but I was expecting to see half the building on fire. Probably not a good thing to wish for, but there was alot of smoke, in my defence. On the plus side, I got to look at firemen. Always a win.

Go Forth And Live!

Never underestimate how determined somethings are to live! One of my missions for the day was to wash the work ute. Its amazing how quickly the inside fills with dust and dirt. I got the surprise of my life to see these little guys growing inside the car door! Yes, they are jsut weeds. I would like to point out though, they are growing in less then 1cm of dirt in the crevice of the passenger door, where the only sunlight they would receive would be when the door is opened or closed. I left them there, they are doing a good job of surviving, I certainly didnt want to get in the way of that.

Heartbreaking Decisions

One on my pet hates is people who dont take responsibility for their pets. These little guys we found at the bunker. Somebody has dumped the mother cat in the park while she was pregnant and she has had a litter of 5 kittens. They are incredibly cute and playful. They are also rather wild and will run if you try to approach them, which makes them difficult to catch. My coworker told the rangers about them, so some traps have been set to catch them. Now, I am not a cat lover, Im a dog person through and through. Im not going to go out and tell everyone why they shouldnt own a cat, each to their own really, but if given the choice I would rather hug a puppy then a kitty. My dilemma here is when the rangers catch them, they have to put them all down, as there is no cat shelter this side of town and we can not have feral cats running round the park killing the ducklings and bandicoots. This is the reason I get very angry at irresponsible pet owners. If they had sterilised their cat or kept it (rather then dumping it in the park), we wouldnt be in this situation. The mother cat was caught on Friday, but she moved the kittens somewhere that we cant find. If we manage to find the kittens, Im toying with the idea of keeping one as the idea of killing 5 kittens really doesnt sit right with me at all. I still dont feel right only being able to save one out of 6 (including the mother cat) of them. So I guess cross your fingers that we find at least one of the kittens, as I doubt they will survive long without their mother.

My Favouite Spider

Meet my first Christmas Spider of the season. They are my favourite type of spider, I think because the colour of them remind me alot of tiny Skulltulas from The Legend Of Zelda. They are just so bright and colourful. They are called Christmas Spiders for good reason. You only really see them at this time of year, in the months leading up to Christmas and shortly afterwards. They are also really tiny. THis guy wouldnt have even been the size of a mini M&M. they dont really get much bigger then that. He also isnt actually floating in air, you can just see the strands of his little web. Phone isnt the best at making them visible.

Just Hanging

No real story with this guy. I found him hanging out, munching away happily on the vine next to the door to the bunker. I have no idea what species of caterpillar he is or what type of butterfly/moth he will turn into. I just hope he will be pretty. I dont like squishing interesting looking caterpillars, for some reason I hold the belief that interesting caterpillars mean interesting butterflies. This is not based on fact, so please dont quote me on it. I also have the believe that if you want butterflies in your life, you're going to have to share your garden with the caterpillars.

Common Misconception

Contrary to popular belief, this is not a crow. It is actually a Raven. There are no crows in the Perth metropolitan area, only ravens. And the question on everyone's lips Im sure is, what do we call them when there is a group of them. Obviously you cant call them a murder of crows, as they arent crows. I now introduce you to one of my favourite collective terms, you call them an unkindness of ravens! pretty cool huh? Love it! These are also frightfully smart birds. It has taken me ages to get a picture of one, as every time they see me with my phone in my hand, they think Im going to throw something at them so they fly away. I seriously cant believe its taken me 2 months to get a decent photo of one.

The Smell

You can smell these everywhere at present. It is a Star Jasmine, or Trachelospermum jasminoides. Its not actually a 'true' jasmine, as this particular plant is part of the milkweed family Apocynaceae, not the olive family Oleaceae (where true jasmines belong). Star Jasmines have a very strongly perfumed flower, you can scent them from a good couple of meters away at least. If the plant is particularly large, the smell can give people headaches although Ive never come across anyone who has suffered this (think my tafe lecturer might have been trying to scare us with that one). I love the plant personally, its quite hardy and very rewarding. The one in this photo is pretty much growing in yellow sand with a little bit of blood and bone and its an absolute mass of white flowers. We use them as groundcovers at work, but they are avid climbers. If you grow one be prepared to have lots of trellis room for it, because if its happy it will get bushy and thick in no time at all.

Grow This Paperbark

This is the flower of a swamp paperbark growing in one of the parks. This type of paperbark is less invasive then the broad leafed paperbark. So I personally prefer this one. The difference is quite obvious between the two. The swamp paperbark has small needle like leaves, the broad leafed paperbark has .... wait for it .... broad leaves. Well, broad in comparison to needles like leaves. Broad leaved paperbarks tend to be rather straight and upright trees, they arent the greatest shade tree. Swamp paperbarks tend to have a broader canopy (which is a mass of white bottle brush like flowers around November) so in my opinion are a nicer tree. Swamp bottlebrush are also a native to Western Australia, another feather in its little cap.

I Hate Plumbago

This week has not been enjoyable so far. Given that the week has just started, this does not bode well. Today we were hedge trimming the massive plumbago hedge next to the highway. On the plus side it wasnt a hot day like it was the last time we pruned it, but it did rain a bit in the morning. Now, bit of back story, I am the tallest person at he bunker. Please dont think of me as a giant, I just work with small people. So, being the tallest Im put on the pole hedgetrimmer as I can reach further while the other two did the outside of the hedge. Now even though the hedgetrimmer Im using is on the end of a big stick, I still have to stromp through the hedge to reach places of it. When the hedge is wet from all the rain, I was soaked from belly button to big toe in a couple of minutes. My socks felt like sponges. Not a particularly pleasant feeling on a cool day. In the middle of my mental grumblings about how generally unfair life is at present, I spy this little guy sitting quietly in an area I had just pruned! He made me smile. Im chalking that up as a win.

Overload

*twitch* too many annuals to plant *twitch*

We needed about 1000 annuals to plant up so the beds look all beautiful for christmas and new years .... the boss ordered about 1500. This photo was taken on day 2 of the 3 days it took to plant them all. We mostly had petunias, but there were some portulaca, dianthus and celosia to mix it up a bit. I normally quite enjoy planting the annuals, its something different in our routine jobs. This time there were just too many. We were struggling for places to plant them. I ended up planting them inbetween the older annuals up in the staff garden. *twitch* just too many annuals.

Photo Bombed!

An explanation to the top photo, I spent ages trying to get a really good photo of a willy wag tail with no success, now the buggers are photo bombing me out of spite! The bottom photo was the decent shot of the pretty rose at work. The smell of it is devine! Its a little standard rose we planted last year. To be very honest Im very surprised it didnt get stolen, we've had a heap of plants taken of late. Its nice to see that some are growing and thriving, with or without the willy wag tails.

Obvious Questions

He has no name and he is the only fish in the lake at work (excluding the minos). He is a koi and he is about a meter or so long. He could also be a she, my knowledge on the gender identification of koi is nonexistent  There have been many days where I will get people come running up to me while Im working and ask me if I was aware that there is a giant fish swimming round in the lake. If it is an adult asking me this question, in my head I question that persons sanity. I mean really, I work in the park on a daily basis, I see that lake 5 days a week. However good customer relations dictates my response, a simple nod or 'yes'. The person will then question me the length of time that the fish has been there. Well, I know that he has been there for at least 8 years, but it takes alot longer for koi to get that large. I once read that they can live for 20-30 years, perhaps longer if conditions are favorable. So my politically correct response is always 'a long time'. Yay for safe answers.