May Photo Challenge – May 07

I will admit from the beginning that I was rather lazy about taking photos today. I took my G11 camera out into our garden with hopes of using its macro function and took only a few photos. The pickings were rather meager for this set.

We have a grevillea bush next to our laundry door that has gone a bit wild. Some of its branches are attempting to move across to where our shed is located so I will have to get out there and do what I call bushwhacking. Even though it’s the middle of autumn, the bush has flowers popping up all over. This is one of the features of living in Perth that I like. Many shrubs and trees have blooms through the year, even in winter.

This orange honeysuckle flower is one of our many plants that have taken root and is difficult to remove. I remember my family moving into our house in North Carolina when I was eleven and having honeysuckle choking trees along the creek that ran behind it. I have no idea what I was thinking when we got the original plants, knowing what my parents went through to get rid of it all those years ago.

This is a pin-cushion flower from a hakea laurina tree that is growing next to our driveway. We planted one of these the first year or two we lived here. That plant grew tall and beautiful over a couple years. Then it suddenly died and we removed it. This tree grew from seeds that were dropped by the one we originally planted. Unfortunately it is growing mostly at an angle and I fear it will meet its end during one of our nasty winter storms. This particular tree blooms mainly in the winter but flowers have been emerging for a few weeks now. The “pins” normally have a cream color to them with a pink tip at the end but some will change color further along in their flowering cycle.

This is another emerging grevillea flower, from our sprawling bush in the front yard. This was one of the first shrubs we planted, a gift from my brother-in-law and his then girlfriend.

I have forgotten what this is called but we planted this and three other seedlings in hopes of starting some ground-cover plants. Two of the seedlings didn’t last the week as it was just too hot. They were all very small and we obviously needed to water a bit more often than usual until they were a bit more established. The other survivor is still alive but only just hanging in there.

After taking my photos, I went outside our fence with the large pruners and hacked off branches from a bottlebrush tree that is growing onto the fence. With winter coming I can just imagine tree limbs coming down and parts of the fence with it.