New World

A Stroll around the Autumn Garden

After a very busy summer working at art in one form or another, our garden has received virtually no attention but that given by my prodigal son, who has cut back some bamboo, lots of tree ferns, and mowed the lawns.

This morning, after a wet weekend, I found myself wandering around outside in my dressing-gown. The first thing to catch my eye was a little cluster of edible ear fungus Auricularia auricula, at the base of a pittosporum tree.

The sprinkling of wood-dust confirms that the cause of the tree's deterioration is probably some kind of borer beetle, probably the lemon tree borer (Oemona hirta), that I have posted about before.

The vegetation is quite thick in that vicinity so its loss will hardly be noticed, and in the meantime, it is providing a source of food for two interesting species, at least. (Just so long as it doesn't get into our mandarins and lemon!)

Something's been chewing on the orchids too...

The bromeliad flowers are out. Such a eye-catching contrast of colours placed together; red, green and blue.

The first camellia. I like the tiny serrations around the edge of the petals of this variety. They show up well against the dark green glossy leaves.

This autumn has been slow to arrive, and there is still lovely colour on the Japanese maples:

And something's also been munching on the sage. Imagine eating sage! It must have been very hungry.

A toppling bamboo cane broke off a large part of the tibouchina but it grows very quickly and there's still plenty of the bright purple flowers left. I always think they look very tropical.

Eye Candy Day 34

Rose and Weevil.

No, not the name of a be-beamed and be-horse brassed Olde English Pub. Just something I found in my garden. The last rose ('Graham Thomas' if you are interested in such details) of autumn, wafted its heavenly scent towards my nose. As I bent down to partake in its fragrant delights I noticed it was being vigorously munched upon by a single weevil.

This is one of the broad-nosed weevils. It chewed away with a slightly self-concious air while I took these photos. As I've mentioned before, I rather like weevils. They have an ungainly look to them, and their big noses make them appear diffident and unassuming. Of course that's falling into that homo-centric trap of anthropomorphising. In fact weevils are the largest animal family in the world, (about half of all the beetles), and many of them eat a great deal of the food we consider 'ours'.

In the end she became nervous of me and hid, but peeked out occasionally to see if I'd gone yet.

Beautiful

Looks like it's going to be a wettish week.

Oh Well. Never mind. Plenty of firewood, plenty of inside work to do. And thank goodness we cleaned out the gutters last week. Clearly that's why that couple have decided to wait until the weather improves for The Honeymoon.

Eye Candy Day 33