New unusual mushrooms have appeared in my garden!

 

Yesterday dad called me to come quickly into the garden, with my camera, to see what he had discovered under the trees, near the shed. 

I was really surprised to see a clump of large white mushrooms, which are about 20 cm to 25 cm tall, surrounded by younger small ones. They were happily growing in the damp decomposed leaf litter. 

The weather here in Auckland has been very wet and warm this spring, quite often around 19 C to 21 C during the day, which must be ideal for these mushrooms to grow here.

The mushrooms are huge. I had no idea what kind they were. So after taking some photos I ran back inside to search the internet for a name.

I wasn't quite sure from my photos what the mushrooms were called because they hadn't opened up and I didn't know if these were fully mature or not.

Then early this morning, before it started to rain, I went back to the mushroom patch to discover that 2 had opened up at the bottom and had a lip of black curled up around the bottom of the cap.

After my search on the internet, I found that these mushrooms may be the commonly called shaggy ink caps, shaggy mane or lawyer's wigs (depending on which country you are in), with the scientific name of coprinus comatus. Though I may be wrong. (No matter what the these mushrooms are I will not be eating them!!!)

I wonder what surprises my garden will give me next month!

Do you have any idea if I am correct in my identification? 

I hope your weekend goes well and that you have some pleasant surprises too.

Hugs, Rose x

Moonrise over the camellias

Last Tuesday evening I looked out of the sitting room window to see the full moon rising in the sky, over my pink 'water lily' camellia bushes. 

The sky was full of soft pastel shades of purple, pink and blue, and the air was filled with the joyous sound of evening birdsong.

I opened the window to hear the birds more clearly and I could make out the songs of the blackbirds and skylarks. There was also a pheasant calling and I could hear the shrill, rattling sound of the spur-winged plovers cry.

I quickly ran for my camera and managed to capture the colours of the sky, just in time, before the pinks and purples faded away.

Then I sat and listened to the birds until their evening chorus stopped. It was such a lovely way to wind down at the end of the day.

The weather has been stormy since that time, with blustery gale-force winds and torrential rain until today. I ventured out at lunchtime to see if any damage had been done to my garden and found all my ixias and poppies flattened, and the petals of the purple babianas gone. Oh well, such is the spring weather I suppose.

Now I need to sit and watch another sunset and listen to the evening birdsong again. It won't be this evening because it is raining again. So I will snuggle up with a hot chocolate and do some more knitting instead.

I hope that you enjoy the new week and maybe manage to watch a sunset and listen to the evening bird song too.

See you again soon.

Hugs, Rose x

I made a paper automaton aeroplane - Warning! air pockets

 

I had a lot of fun making this moving automaton for my 11 year old nephew. It took me just over 2 weeks to make and it is made out of paper printed on my printer. 

The Warning! air pockets (WAP) automaton was designed by Giuseppe Civitarese and I found the free template for it on his website, together with the theory behind the mechanics and a YouTube clip showing how it moves.

There were 19 pages of instructions, with diagrams, and 52 pages with 165 parts to cut out! The printing used a very large amount of ink and different thicknesses of paper. The construction was quite complicated for me, being the first automaton that I have ever made, but I completed it and it works 😎 

The flying movements of the aeroplane mimic those of an aeroplane that is hitting air pockets. Quite a bit of turbulence!

To make the automation work, you turn the handle on the large wheel at the front. 

This makes:

- The waves rock up and down individually

- The aeroplane move up and down and rock from side to side as if it has hit air pockets

- The seagull's wings flap up and down

- The sun spin around

- The cog wheels at the back work as gears moving the pistons and crank shaft

It is quite complex and you can see all the workings as they control the automaton.

I had such a great time making this and even more fun playing with it. 

Really happy 😊

Hugs, Rose x

Another spring walk with my cat Otto

The sun came out at last, in between squally Spring showers, so I took the chance to go for a walk with my cat Otto, in the fresh air, while I could.

Otto is very much like my shadow, he likes to follow me wherever I go. He is now 2 and a half years old and acts like a kitten still, always leaping about and climbing up trees. 

You can see Otto in the photo above, near the top of a very tall eucalyptus tree. This is the highest that I have ever seen him climb. 

My heart was in my mouth when I saw him rush up the tree trunk at lightning speed. He has only just learnt to climb down backwards, instead of just leaping down from any height, or trying to run down the tree trunk head first! 

The ground was very wet and muddy and the grass was long, so I had to wear my gumboots to keep my feet dry. We are waiting for the land to dry out before we can mow the grass. It is quite overgrown at the moment.

This cabbage tree (cordyline australis) is Otto's favourite tree to climb at the beginning and end of each walk. He also uses it as a scratching post, then rushes up the trunk until his head is in the leaves which he plays with. 

Occasionally Otto will bring long cabbage tree leaves into the house as presents for me, or to play with. 😄

The blue wisteria is in full flower now and smells wonderful. This one grows just outside my bedroom window, so I can enjoy the scent when I have the window open.

Above is the view through our orchard and across one of our fields to the nature reserve. 

You can see the lemons, which are ready to pick, on the small tree at the bottom right of the photo. The buds on the rest of the fruit trees are just starting to open.

Our pond has filled up with water now, after all the rain that we have had. The pond is frequently visited by Mallard ducks, Canada geese and Paradise ducks. Although there were none to be seen on this walk. 

I love the Canada geese with their honking call, but they are very shy here and fly away as soon as they see us.

In the middle of the photo above is where the daffodil patch is. The daffodils finished flowering a month ago and we are waiting for the leaves to die off before we can mow over that area again.

The bright green tree on the left is our persimmon tree. It puts on a lovely show of fresh green leaves in the Spring. Then in Autumn the leaves turn a bright rusty orange colour and the tree is then full of bright orange persimmons.

Otto and I very much enjoyed our walk 😊

It is time now for me to have my afternoon tea. Twining's English breakfast tea, no milk, 2 sugars and a slice of lemon with a couple of shortbread biscuits today. Yummy.

I hope that you are having an enjoyable week.

See you again soon.

Hugs, Rose x

A Springtime ramble in my garden

The rain has finally stopped, for the moment, so I jumped at the chance of going for a stroll in my garden with Otto and my camera. I love being outside during Spring, seeing the new flowers opening and the leaves on the trees unfurling. 

The purple Babiana flowers are abundant in my garden this year. They grow from corms which I spread about each year to form new clumps. The flowers also form seeds which I collect and sprinkle around wherever I want them to grow.

Once established, the Babiana clumps grow quite quickly. I love the contrast between the purple of the Babiana with the gold of the Arctotis.

We spread the golden Arctotis by taking cuttings, at any time during the year, and planting them directly into the ground. We tried growing different colours of Arctotis, but for some reason gold is the only colour that will survive in our gaden. I have no idea why.

If the Arctotis flowers are regularly deadheaded, they are supposed to flower from Spring right through to Autumn. But it is backbreaking work, we have so many of them. I tried one year and had to give up. There were too many flowers and each flower only lasts 2 days. Maybe this year I will try deadheading just one clump and see what happens.

Below is a view across the Ixia wild flower bed towards the native New Zealand Ponga trees (tree ferns). The Pongas grew themselves there, we didn't need to plant them. 😊                                                                                                                            

And another view, in the opposite direction, of the Ixia. The wind was blowing quite strongly so the flowers were bobbing around making it hard to take a clear photo.  

                                     

This is my favourite garden seat, overlooking the Ixias to the pond. Behind the seat are Kniphofia, Agapanthus and Clivia plants. The Clivia didn't flower this year. It tried to, but snails ate all the flower buds off them 😕

I still haven't managed to find the name of our frothy, pink-flowered succulents. Please let me know, in the comments, if you have the name for them. It has been puzzling me for years.

Here is Otto, walking alongside the orange Sparaxis. This clump has been growing steadily in size over many years. You can see how big they are compared to Otto!

The Sparaxis have also naturalised into the wildflower bed near the Ixias. 

This year the pheasants have left the Sparaxis alone. Usually they peck all the flowers off. I don't know if they actually eat them, or just like picking at them. Hopefully they will form large clumps like in the photo above. But it will take many years.  

               

I feel refreshed after walking outside. I find the garden calming and soothing, and Otto is quite hilarious as he follows me around, then runs up trees all excited that I am outside with him.

Now I am back inside trying to sort out some technical problems. My mum's iPad has stopped being able to download library books. I phoned the library to see if it was an internet/library problem, only to be told that their eBook application had been updated and that many people are having the same problem. The libraries are all closed to the public in Auckland, due to lockdown, so there is no other way for mum to borrow books.

It turns out that the operating system on the iPad is too outdated, even after doing an update for it. Sigh. Mum was beside herself with despair. I phoned my brother for help and he said there is nothing we can do apart from by a new iPad....But shortly after, he phoned back and said to expect a new iPad mini in the post! Thanks big brother, mum is now over the moon with delight.

My next technical glitch happened after I downloaded the latest update for my Android cellphone. Included in the update was a change to how the phone's camera operated, to speed up the time it takes to take a photo. My photos now are not as clear. I will have to investigate the settings and see if I can do anything about it. Plus there are other changes that I haven't tried yet...a job for this afternoon.

My last technical problem was with this blog post. Not being able to align my photos and text properly. Not sure why it is happening, but please excuse the messy bits.

They do say horrible things come in threes, so fingers crossed that that is all, for a while at least! I am off now to have a play with the camera function on my cellphone, while the weather is still fine.

Looking forward to seeing you here again soon.

Hugs, Rose x

Spring has arrived in my veggie patch

My vegetable patch is looking colourful with self-seeded cineraria coming into flower just now. The cineraria are so pretty that I am going to leave them growing in-amongst the silverbeet (Swiss chard). They will attract beneficial insects, which is always a good thing. 

I also discovered that some evening primroses have seeded themselves in this spot too, together with echiums. I can't wait until they are all flowering.

The edible sage has started to flower too. I am going to leave the flowers for the bees, then trim them down once the flowers have faded. Hopefully the sage will grow back, I think it is a perennial? This is the first time that my sage has survived through the Winter.

The oregano has put on a strong growth spurt after the flower stems were trimmed down to the ground a month ago.

All of the parsley has bolted in the warmer weather. However it can still be used as a cooking ingredient at this stage. I am going to leave it to flower and set seed, so we will have plenty more parsley later in the year. 

In this photo you can see the Winter vegetables which are now ready to harvest (swedes, red cabbages, broccoli and cavolo nero kale). 

The potatoes, planted a few weeks ago, now have leaves on and should be ready to harvest at Christmas. I love new potatoes 😊

I am hoping that the danger of frosts has passed by now. Although it is still possible for frosts to happen at this time of year, we had an exceptionally mild winter, so fingers crossed. We have cloches, made from large plastic water bottles, ready to use just in case.

Dad planted this garlic in May and it is looking really healthy. It should be ready to harvest 6 months from planting, as long as nothing goes wrong. There is no sign of the dreaded rust yet, touch wood. We are hoping that, having planted the garlic earlier this year, it will have a good chance of forming bulbs before the rust arrives.

Some of the vegetable seedlings are coming up well in the cloche on the deck. The courgettes are ready to be planted out and the tomatoes, capsicums, pumpkin and purple sprouting broccoli seedlings are looking good.

We sowed the Blue Lake runner beans and Goliath snow peas directly into the veggie patch where the soil has been rejuvenated with homemade compost.

The soil preparation for the rest of the new seedlings and seeds is almost complete, with the help of my cat Otto of course!  Otto loves to inspect anything new that is happening, especially in the veggie patch.

Silverbeet grows all through the year here in Auckland and I pick fresh leaves for dinner whenever it is needed. 

These plants self-seeded themselves here and now that the weather has warmed up, they are bolting. I will leave them to set seed again and let them grow wherever they want. 

The swedes are ready to dig up now. It is a new vegetable crop for us and we quite like it. We had one as a side-dish for dinner yesterday, boiled for 20 minutes in salted water, then drained and mashed with cream, butter and a large pinch of nutmeg. It was surprisingly tasty!

On the topic of food, I am now off to plan the meal menus for the week and the grocery list.

I hope that you are having a great week.

See you again soon.

Hugs Rose x