Black Flowers

As a hobby I do floristry and flower arranging. To find *any* form of plant material (leaves, stem or flower) that is black, and isnt dead, is a mission and a half. I find violas frustrating in this regard. They commonly grow in all the hard to get colours your crave in floristry, blues, purples and blacks. They are also very delicate and small, so are usually unsuitable for any form of arrangement other then small wedding bouquets. This little specimen is the only black one that slipped through the annual planting. It must have been a stray seed while the nursery was growing them. Regardless, it is my favorite.

Nakey!

Ok, I call these Naked Mushrooms. I have no idea what the real name of them are at all, and I am also more then aware that they are toadstools, not mushrooms. I call them naked mushrooms as they look like they have grown without a nice smooth top. I like these ones, as in the right light they go somewhat transparent, so Im thinking the top must be very thin tissue. They tend to pop up in lawn areas and are in groups of 1-3. Tiny little things and fragile to boot.

Hakea's and Bees

This is another old photo and it was an absolute cow of a thing to take. My poor phone had no idea what to focus on and the bees are never bloody still. I have a soft spot for hakea's, because lets face it, theyre an ugly looking tree. They look emaciated, scrawny and dull until these small flowers emerge. THey are about the size of golfballs and look like little fire works all over the tree. Talk about celebrate, the tree provides its own fireworks! The bees absolutely love them too.

The Bunker!

A wet and miserable day, as you can tell from the rain, but this is the bunker. Our shed and where we have smoko. Its solid and concrete, its not very pretty, but incase of zombie attack Im going here. Solid, lockable (from the outside, will have to work on that one) and full of power tools! The public aren't aloud in our little compound but you can see it when you walk past the gate. Its not that exciting I know, but I still think its pretty cool that I work out of a bunker!

Monster Fungus

In winter we have the luxury of being able to cancel the mowing. For a gardener who hates mowing and has to mow anything up to twice a week, this is a god send. So when contract mowing got cancelled one fortnight, I thought it was christmas! Turns out not mowing for 4 weeks results in this, monsterly massive fungus growing int he lawns. They smell like mushrooms and the 'flesh' didnt turn brown when exposed to the air, like most toadstools do, it leads me to believe they are closer related to mushrooms then toadstools ..... still not going to try cooking them.

First Decent Photo

This is quite an old photo. I took it about this time last year, took me ages to figure out how to get the phone to focus on the flower instead of the bush. So this is actually my first decent photo of a flower. This is a flame pea.I use to call them Egg and Bacon Plants when I was younger, turns out that is a different (but simmilar species) plant. These are also one of my favourite natives, only thing is the bush looks thin so to speak. Its quite bushy for an perennial, but the stems are always really thin and flimsy so to speak, so it has this delicate, un-matured look about it. As a mass planting they look spectacular when in bloom.

Buzzing From The Annuals

I had actually spent a week or two looking for dragonflies to take a picture of for a friend of mine. She was going through a rough patch and a picture of a dragonfly tends to cheer her up. It was high hopes as it was a bit early in the season for dragonflies, then when I was foliar feeding the annuals I could hear this strange buzzing noise. I figured I had peeved off a bunch of bees or something til I looked behind one of the lobelias. This little guy I had managed to soak in seasol, for which I apologized profusely. Poor little bugger must have been freezing. It was rather cool when this was taken, not to mention he would have stank after I got him, as seasol is made from seaweed/kelp and isnt the most pleasant smelling products about. I still had to finish the bed and he was quite content for me to pick him up and put him on another plant well out of the way from my fertilizing.