Archive for March, 2009

Naked Ladies In the Garden

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

The other day as I was driving down one of our local streets on the way to an appointment, a bright splash of pink entered my peripheral vision. Now this appears to happen to me quite often…I can be just driving along, minding my own business when the plant kingdom seems to shout out at me to stop. I am often quickly glancing into my rear-view mirror, indicating and screeching to a halt on the side of the road somewhere!

On this particular day the beautiful tall and shapely flowers of the Naked Ladies or Belladonna Lily’s (Amaryllis belladonna) had caught my eye.

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This particular one was such an intense bright pink when most of the time I have seen very pale pink ones. The plant grows from a bulb and the thick, purple stems appear first above the ground. They are about 50cm high or so and then the stunning, trumpet shaped, fragrant flowers appear. It is because of the stalk appearing with no leaves that the plant gets its name ‘Naked Ladies.’

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Another great thing about this plant is how drought hardy they are. They seem to require very little attention and I have seen their beauty bursting forth from the most hostile places and conditions.

I really don’t mind my day being interrupted by all these gorgeous flowering plants that I stop top visit. Even my kids don’t mind anymore… except when we do the eight hour journey to Melbourne during wildflower season!

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A Close Encounter With A Red Bellied Black Snake

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

This morning I was taking a walk around our property, enjoying the glorious sunshine. I had my son with me and the dogs, including the garden terrorist.

We have a dam on our land that we use to water the garden. It was here that I was marvelling at the dragonflies flitting over the water, when one of the dogs had a close encounter with a Red Bellied Black Snake.

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Image taken from the Museum of Victoria.

He was sunbaking only a few meters from us and I watched him as he rose up his body in a position ready to strike. Quickly I growled at the dog to immediately come to me, which she did thankfully and the snake slithered off into the scrub near the dam. This particular species of snake is usually not very aggressive, but is considered docile and will try to escape a situation at the first opportunity.

I was relieved that it wasn’t my son who discovered it. He has walked by one on a different occasion and came close to just about trodding on it’s head!

The red bellied black snake is probably one of Australia’s most well known snakes. They really are quite beautiful ( if you like snakes!) with a glossy black body and intense red belly. They are venomous which means that if they happen to bite you, they can kill you, although these snakes are not as poisonous as many other Australian snakes. Some people say they are a good snake to have around as they actually eat the baby snakes of the more venomous species like the Eastern Brown’s and Tiger snakes.

We are right in the middle of their breeding season and apparently each mother snake can give birth to up to 40 young live snakes!

I am usually very conscientious about walking around in the bush during the Summer. I have encountered around 5 snakes in the few years we have lived here. In fact one was right up in the house when we were building! It is actually quite late in the season to be seeing them and in fact this is the first one I have seen on the property all Summer.

I am not much of a snake lover, lol, and I would be happy actually not to encounter him again for a while :)

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Superb Tropical Grevilleas

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

One of the most spectacular flowering plants in my garden would have to be the native Grevillea ‘Superb’.

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It is a fairly common Grevillea and many people have it in their gardens because of it’s wonderful hardiness. It can tolerate light frosts and very open exposed conditions on tough, gravelly soil.

It also flowers just about all year round and the nectar feeding birds just love it! Sometimes the flowers really do droop down quite heavily as they are so laden with nectar.

The bush grows to around 1.5 metres in height and also about the same in width. It is classified as a ‘tropical’ Grevillea, although I am not really sure why. It may be because it looks like a tropical kind of plant or because it actually originates from the more tropical regions of our country.

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There are now just heaps of these fantastic tropical type Grevilleas being bred. All with amazing flowers and colours ranging from brilliant red, pink, intense yellow, lemon all the way to white. Some of them have amazing names like ‘Gypsy Moon’,'Majestic’, and ‘Honey Gem’.

One of my personal favourites that is also one of the foremost cultivars is ‘Ned Kelly’. Named after Australia’s notorious bush ranger.

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