succulent thoughts

The end of summer is a funny thing. The garden starts changing, mornings are darker, the birds get up later (a good thing as we have some noisy ones around here), even the cat sleeps in :) And the season of serious chai drinking begins!

I rescued these succulent blossoms as they were beginning to wither and dry out on their plants a few days ago. When they're fresh they have a beautiful orange colour, but when dry as you can see here, quite pink. Am I a bit of crazy woman for having dried out succulent blossoms, old seed pods, and driftwood all over the house? Other people have fresh flowers, me the deader and more dried out the better. I love the way their stems go a boney-white, a bit like Georgia Okeefe's paintings of cow bones dried out in the New Mexico desert sun. I just love that washed out look.

Cow's Skull with Calico Roses, Georgia O'Keefe

I quite like pressed leaves and flowers too. Here's a quick wikihow link to flower pressing in case you're keen.

Are you a fresh or dried flower person? And are you a collector of things?

pretty paws

My neighbours were trimming the flowers off their gorgeous kangaroo paw plants last night so that more can grow. I stopped them in the street and asked if I could take flowers from their bin. They laughed and snipped me a beautiful branch full of perfect flowers to take home. I can't stop looking at them - they're just so sunny and furry and lovely and uniquely Australian. I mean just look at those gorgeous furry paws! Aren't they beautiful?

These neighbours don't know how much I covert their front garden. They have lots of healthy clumps of red and yellow kangaroo paw and a lovely weeping gum tree too. Top all this off with a stylish black wrought iron fence and you have one pretty special inner city front garden.

Will it ever stop raining? Everything is so damp inside and out. And we haven't even been flooded like our poor fellow Aussies up north.

movement

This morning's sunrise through the bare branches of our neighbour's crazy old wisteria vine.Bright sunny yellow wattle flower. I just love this time of year. The early signs of spring are popping up everywhere. I saw a magnolia tree beginning to flower in my street a couple of days ago. Who doesn't love a magnolia in flower? So sculptural to look at.
Even the camelias (not my favourite plant) are looking good.

garden surprise

Can you believe this garden marvel? A small round green not overly pretty succulent plant that can produce such an enormous and utterly lovely white flower. That stem is about 12 cm in length! I've been watching it grow over the last week or so. This plant only blossoms about every 1-2 years so finding it in full bloom this morning just made my heart sing.

pink

A teeny tiny flower from a succulent plant in the garden. Well, ok yes, I did tweak this one which is why it's so fluro-like. Is it just too weird? I must confess to liking this kind of hot pink colour in a flower. (by the way, the natural colour is a softer pink).

summer

The succulent in one of my big pots is flowering again. I love the gentle orange colour of these flowers.
How can things that survive in such dry conditions produce such loveliness?

Puss still isn't home (see previous blog) but I'm trying to be a bit buddhist about it and accept that we can never really possess an animal and that their time with us is sometimes very fleeting. You know, the non-attachment stuff....but I swear it's harder to do than to say.

I've got to share some beauty from the Grampians National Park. We went there for my birthday just before we moved. This area is just stunning. The wildflowers were out because it was early summer. Check out that Kangaroo Tail (the plant with the tall, black stem). If you want to get a better look at the view and a sense of how high up we were click on the image to zoom in closer. It's pretty amazing.

snake bean

This incredible-looking curly flower belongs to a beautiful vine growing across the entrance of our front veranda. I've heard someone say it's a snake bean vine but I don't know if that's true or even the botanical name for it. At this time of year it's heavy with flowers like these, so curly and smooth and very sweet smelling. I've been asked many many times about this vine and the flowers by people passing on our street. One woman even asked me for a cutting so she could try growing it in her garden. I don't know if she ever succeeded. Very soon, as autumn decends on us the vine will drop everything - leaves and flowers - and will look half dead and very scraggy when winter comes. Each year in winter I look at it in its sad state and wonder if it will regrow. And each summer, without fail, it does. This year we've let it grow and grow and there were days when I arrived home and parts of the vine had reached out and extended its arms to the house walls, the front doors and windows. Like "The Day of the Triffids". It hides and protects the front of the house from the world like in the wonderful children's book "The Secret Garden". It rained last night (a rare but wonderful thing) and today the flowers on the vine are damp with droplets of water.

cactus flower one day wonder

When I woke up a few days ago, I noticed that one of my succulents just outside the back door had overnight produced this amazing looking flower. If you look closely you'll see why this is a wild and beautiful accomplishment of the natural world. That huge white flower came out of the small, round, green succulent on the left (the one with the small white spikey dots all over it). And the most incredible thing is the flower only blossomed for one day and then it collapsed, suggesting the force of pushing it out into the world for that short time, was all it could muster. It was a wonderful thing to have witnessed. I'm always impressed by the gorgeous and unusual range of flowers that succulents produce from their spikey and sometimes rubbery bodies. I have another in my kitchen that is quite ugly to look at, yet when it flowers, pushes out bright pink little buds all over it's round prickly base. I think I might even make a print with some of the flower images someday.