In the Heart of MtLawleyShire:Native flowers & Eucalypt blossom

These are flowers I took over the last couple of days.  The buds on the lemon scented gums and others mean there will be more flowers soon.

Grevillea – I love these.  They are such a beautiful colour (though there are colours other than scarlet.  I have posted one of yellow before, and I think a pale yellow as well) and occur in so many different places – waste ground, corners, neglected areas of gardens.  Birds love them.  If you have Grevillea in your garden, you will have many honeyeaters – & bees which will bring other types of birds as well.

   

 

a long bottlebrush flower:

And these, high up on a tree:

and these, on the tree next door:

and then, these:

The red were on a tree in someone’s garden so I couldn’t go in and get close ups:

 

And these yellow ones are out of story books (Australian: SnugglePot and CuddlePie, by May Gibbs).  The yellow is so beautiful, although the tree (in a later post) is twisted and old with rough bark and shape:

   

I hope you enjoyed these.  I enjoyed discovering them.

Keira 🙂

The Heart of MtLawleyShire: Lemon Scented Gums

Easter – it’s a busy time, a strange time.  No time for walking to Hyde Park 😦  But I did get to pay more attention to the 5 – 10 minute walk I take so frequently down to Beaufort Street and back.  I found the unexpected amidst the beauty.

It’s all houses and garden and – street trees 🙂  One one road, the council was shouted down when it wanted to remove the lemon scented gums.  They removed a few but not all, and though these trees are very old, they’re cropped so they don’t interfere with the power lines.  It has stunted their normally soaring grace, but the strength of them, their limbs, is accentuated.

The light was too bright, too harsh, to take as many photos of all the trees.  Just couldn’t get the angle right, but here they are:

 

 

And though they are cropped, though their limbs twist and bulge to contain their years within their restrictions, they are intensely valuable for wildlife.  Many Australian parrots like nesting in holes within trees and here (which is why many of them are now critically enfangered because logging decimates their environment), in the heart of urbia, 2 pink and grey galahs have found a suitable hole.  They were excavating as I took these.

And the branches, while distorted, are still beautiful:

And here is my favourite tree: the huge, uncropped lemon scented gum: the straight tall limbs.  I wish now I’d tried to take one of the main trunk, but there is one in an earlier post: March – A Short Walk.

     

I love it that there’s another tree type plant growing up where the trunk branches.  I’m now sure what type it is.  I hope it’s not a parasite & that other people have noticed.  This tree is heritage protected and is fully the largest tree for miles.

That’s it for the moment.  I hope you have enjoyed them.

Keira 🙂