little christmas visitors

These two little guys came to visit on Monday, it was rather hot and they flew into our undercover area.

 

 One landed on our freezer and the kids were worried that it was injured.

The other stayed up high in the rafters. 

The one on the freezer was panting and just sat there, it even allowed B3 to stroke it.

I managed a couple of photos then when I went to pat it, it flew off so it wasn't injured at all.

I thought they were a type of finch but when I checked out the bird book they are mistletoe birds, just visiting in time for Christmas, or maybe they were just after some of the mistletoe that like to get into our trees.

insect mania

Here are a couple of close ups of some insects found in our garden

I took these photos with my camera when it was new and we were doing a nature study in the garden.

A few weeks ago Karen had a photo of a dragonfly that she taken, I said how amazing and how I had never been able to do it- how wrong was I -I had already done it! 

I found these photos when I was going back through my files looking for stuff for our home education registration.

Here is a ladybird also in the same patch, I love how you can see the furry bits on the leaf as well.

growing fast

 Remember these baby birds from last week?

Well this is them a week on.

I had no idea that they could grow so fast!

 Here you can only see two in the nest and they hardly fit, number 3 is tucked in behind.

(Sorry the photo is a bit funny at the bottom, it uploaded that way  and as it took so long to load 1st time round I am not going back to do it again)

This photo was taken a little later in the day and the other chick is out on the ledge.

Photos 2 and 3 are by B4

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new life

The other day I was up in our entertaining area when I happened to look up and three little heads poking out of the nest that the Willie Wagtails have made there for the second year.

I hadn't realised that the babies had hatched.

You can only see two little naked heads in the photo.

Then their mother or father would arrive to feed them, both were going back and forth from the callistemon (bottle brush) tree nearby.

So special to see these little babies!

furry find

 Early one morning last week, VCH was about to leave for work when I heard him calling, come quick and bring the camera.

So I came quick bringing the camera and here on our driveway was this little fellow, he had been hit by a car during the night.

 He is a bandicoot, a native Australian marsupial.

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Unfortunately he was badly injured with both legs broken on his right side and needed to be euthanased.

To find out more information about one of Australia's unique animals go here

our creek

For some reason we seem to be running out of our internet usage each month, I am sure every time you increase the amount of gigabytes the quicker it runs out, we are on satellite because we live out in the bush.

Anyway on Wednesday last week the internet was so slow I knew there was no point in the little ones even trying to do any of their schoolwork online.
They have a maths and reading program that they do.
The day before it took B5 an hour and a half to do something that should have taken 20 minutes because it was so slow in loading.
So I thought we should have an alternate school day and took them out for a nature ramble.

After a walk around our paddocks to see what was growing they requested to go over to the creek, which is just across the road from our house, so off we went.

 Looking to the right

Looking to the left

Close up of the rocks you can see in the distance

B4 went for an explore up to the rocks

then came back and got the others to go with him.

I was a little reluctant about letting my baby go when I remembered that some of the older ones would have been her age when they first went up there.

 They discovered a little cave in the rocks and B5 climbed in

exploring the banks

 A cute group shot

 The Girl

 B5 has discovered something in the water

We used to spend quite a bit of time over at the creek when the older ones were younger but haven't gone over much in recent years. 

It has rained so consistently in the last couple of years that the creek is always muddy and not suitable for swimming and as you can see from the browness all around the banks still haven't recovered from the January floods.

how does your garden grow?

Here in Australia we are on the verge of spring.

Friday was a beautiful warm sunny spring day.

Saturday it rained constantly,.

Today it is sunny again with a few clouds in the sky.

The other day I ventured up to the veggie patch to pick some lettuce for my lunch, I took my camera to record what was happening.

 Some Cos lettuce.

 Some Minuet lettuce, great to pick just a few leaves at a time.

 The peas are flowering.

 Strawberries are planted.

 Beetroot growing in the ground.

This is on the other side of our fence, these are some peach trees growing wild, obviously seeded off one of the old peaches growing on our property.

Notice how green they are now with not many flowers left, how different from just two weeks ago.

We are blessed to live in an area of the world (we live in the sub tropics) where we can grow and harvest vegetables all year long if we choose, although in the heat of summer it gets too hot for a lot of things to grow and be able to keep the water up to them.

I have to admit, I don't do anything in the veggie garden that's VCH's domain.

I attend to the herbs and other plants around the place, there is nothing better than eating your own produce. 

We are wanting to get into more fruit and vegetable gardening and have been researching a good Australian garden book to buy, so have borrowed a stack from the local library and we are pouring through each one to decide which we like best and then buy that one, we have narrowed it down to three.

I like components of all three of these books, so it is proving tricky to narrow down.

If you have any recommendations I would appreciate them.

snakes alive!

Living in rural Australia means living with snakes.

Some are very dangerous like the brown snake we sometimes see, because we live in sandstone country- you want to stay well clear of them because unlike most snakes who run, these will attack if provoked!

This little fellow however is quite harmless, a green tree snake.

I took these photos some time ago when I sitting on my veranda on the phone to a friend, I saw this snake took the photos and continued talking to my friend who was none the wiser- talk about multitasking!

 

 

spring has sprung

Yesterday afternoon when I was out at the clothes line a couple of galahs landed on the fence near by, B4 raced inside to get the camera but before I could get a shot of them some other resident birds chased them away, I was quite annoyed as these other birds are nowhere near a pretty as the galah, just before this happened I had set B4 the task of gathering some peach blossom stems to grace our table so I wandered over to the peach tree with the camera and took some shots.

Isn't God's Creation wonderful!

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