Ranunculus

Once the Ranunculus start flowering, we know spring really is here. 

COVID ups and downs

My blog has had few posts since Covid  made travel difficult but I just read my post from November last year and realised that I should be post a bit more often, if just to help remember our  progress through this pandemic. Also, Musk has just bought twitter, so who knows what happens to that site if he fires as many people as he has threatened to do. We may all return to blogging.

Australia is at the end of a Covid wave but as the epidemiologist Prof Crab points out, the baseline prevalence of virus is still high. There is a lot out there so I am not the only one with friends suddenly sick. 

In the meantime people are adapting. I bought an air purifier when a trip to the dentist became unavoidable but the reaction of the dental assistant (not the dentist) was to mock me. I went back for a second appointment this week and there was no hint of mocking, so either they have decided they will lose customers if they mock them or they have become better informed. I imagine it is the former because you have to seek out Covid information if you want to know it's prevalence. 

It is extraordinary how we have adapted to a high and continuing death rate and long Covid is not yet getting the attention it deserves. Australia is not dodging it though so one day we will be forced to pay attention to the increasing numbers of Australians who are now too sick to work. Maybe after the coming NSW and Victorian State elections? 

In the meantime spring has sprung and since I have replaced almost all the small lawn patch with flowers, my garden is even more colourful than last year.

Spring garden colour

Spring has sprung and the garden is a riot of flowers, at least as much as a garden can be that is on slowly-improving soil. Thankfully the builder here put a layer of earth over the clay ground many years ago when the place was built, but it has previously only hosted grass and needs a bit more compost to be really friable. 

 

Spring has sprung (at my place)

Azaleas

What a difference 5 days make in Sydney. Last week it was still cold enough to need a heater and warm jumpers then over the weekend spring arrived.  Flowers seemed to spring up overnight and bushes burst into blossom.

Every year people plant pansies and other spring flowers when it is wintry cold, then all at once the weather turns. Suddenly it is hot and the pansies wilt in the sun.

Last week there was barely a flower on my azalea hedge, but now it is overflowing with blossoms. Don't blink or you'll miss them.

Azalea hedge

Twelve ducklings

A month in the northern hemisphere has thrown my seasons instinct out of whack. Yesterday I saw these ducklings and part of my head was saying to itself 'ducklings in autumn?' Of course, here it is spring, as this brood attests.

Ducks are my favorite bird, but they are notoriously bad mothers. This one and her twelve little ducklings were splashing delightedly in a puddle on the side of the road. Lets  hope at least some of them survive the traffic and the cats.

Springtime in my Mother's garden

Irises on the day of my Mother's farewell

At the end of September winter gardens begin to stir in Taihape. The first daffodils flower but leaves are still furled and the dominant colour is still green/brown. Then in October gardens burst into flower with an unexpected abundance. I had been in my mother's garden in October when it was showing the first signs of life; the very first daffodil was out and the tulips were growing. Three weeks later I was there again to bid my Mother farewell (previous post) and the change in her garden was astonishing. Huge irises, luscious cherry blossom, flowers of all shapes and sizes. Suddenly I realised I had not been there in spring before.

Springtime in my Mother's garden, 1 November 2013.

Cherry blossom on the day of my Mother's farewell

New Zealand early spring

Japonica

Fly across the Tasman from Sydney to Wellington in September and suddenly you are in a different season. Early spring. The willows are covered in catkins, the Japonica is flowering and in the warmer valleys the first leaves of spring are unfolding. 

There is still a bitter wind blowing down from the mountains which have just had a new coating of snow; 25 cm says the Bureau of Meteorology.

Catkins on a willow tree

Azaleas not music

My predecessors in this house must have had a particular liking for azaleas as there are a lot of them in my garden, each one different and although I have lived here for some time  this is the first time I have seen them flower.

In fact this is the first time in five years that I have not been on my way to the Maribor Music Festival (Slovenia) in August. I am sorry to miss Maribor and the music this year but I am very pleased to be at home this August and able to see the azaleas bloom.

There are also irises, originally from previous gardens, given to friends during my nomadic years then transplanted again into this garden.

Spring flowers don't last long in Sydney because the weather has a tendency to change from winter to summer in a single day. You have to be here in August!

Spring flowers in NSW

It is spring on this side of the globe.  It has been a dry September and the grass on  the road side verges is brown but all the trees are flowering. The red and yellow Bottle Brushes are particularly bright.

Yellow  Bottle Brush

Red Bottle Brush

Dry ground, red flowers

 But not only bottle brushes, a whole lot of other trees are in flower. These ones look like flowering cherry, but only from a distance.

Pink flowers blue sky

Hot and windy (and cold)

Far out! It was 29C today (after long weeks of cold weather) and so windy that anything not tied down was blown away. There are a lot of power outages and my lawn is covered with Eucalyptus branchs and twigs.  I picked the lone remaining daffodil (see below) and put it in a vase inside where it revived.
Addendum: (26 Aug) today at 10am it is 13.6C outside and not muuch warmer indoors. The heat pump seems to think winter is over - probaby needs a service.

Daffodils need springtime weather

Sydney doesn't do spring. Sydney has winter (and yes, often much cooler than people expect) and then summer. Between winter and summer there is a short period when you are not sure whether the day will be winter cold or really warm. I am reminded of this looking at my daffodils. 

In most places daffodils last long enough to enjoy them, but in Sydney you watch them poke through the soil in cold July but by mid August when they finally flower the season has changed. Today there is a hot wind blowing from the north and the few daffodils the birds didn't decapitate will only last a day or two. It's wiser to stick to hybiscus I suppose.

Etchings: spring

This was the first etching I made when I started school here. It reflects the feeling I had wandering through the beech woods in April as the leaves opened.


Later I added an aquatint (the black) and watercolour (green).

Chestnut trees

Chestnut trees are particularly amazing in spring.
One week these huge trees are bare and gray; the next week they are a mass of foliage. Their large floppy leaves are topped by equally large and intricate flowers.