A MORNING IN THE GARDEN

Remember the miracles.

 Sheila Schuller

Rain was forecast for today and my gutter out the front of my house was full of leaves.

The problem is that when it rains these leaves wash down to a drain and then block it up.

In really heavy or prolonged rain, the drain blocks and then water backs up, eventually runs down my driveway and then dams up against my garage door. Sometimes if I have not been diligent sweeping up the leaves and heavy rain wakes me up, you will find me out in the gutter at 3 am, under an umbrella, water swirling around my ankles, clearing great mounds of leaves with my feet. Not fun.

Gardening and such is a bit of a problem for me. I have a back that can only take so much bending over. So I  work out a nice little rhythm. Fill 3 buckets with leaves;

 

tip them on the garden for mulch; then come in and work on my blog until my back settles down. Repeat the process until the leaves are all taken care of. This sort of system works quite well. Until the rain starts. I didn't quite finish but I think I will be OK if there is some heavy rain.

I love the subtle colours of the leaves. Look at the picture below taken straight from the gutter.

There are some subtle greens, reds, browns and oranges. I love looking at the combinations of colors that the leaves provide. I went over to the color palette generator and devised a color pallet but couldn't seem to transfer my results back here. I know it can be done because it has been done by Jane La Fazio in her blog JaneVille. I got quite an interesting  list of colors. They may be good for my color scheme for the front of my house. I will get some more computer help from Daughter R and perhaps I will be able to show you the completed pallet. Watch this space.

There was quite a bit going on in my garden this morning. While I was tipping leaves around the plants I heard a crunching sound. I knew it was cockatoos. It took a little bit of looking around me before I spotted them munching seed pods in my wattle tree.

The picture above has 2 cockatoos in it. You have to look quite closely to see them both, they are so well camouflaged.

These were the pods they were crunching below.

It wasn't until the birds flew away that I realized there was a 3rd cockatoo in the tree. It was just too well camouflaged to see. It is interesting that white feathers and a yellow crest makes these bird so difficult to see in the Australian native trees.

I spotted this little flower which had bloomed on a plant which had just popped up.

I don't know what it is or if it is native. It looks as if it could be. I hope it is . I am trying to make my front garden full of Australian natives.

I have been experimenting with larger photos. I would love some comments as to what you think. Daughter R thinks the smaller ones look neater, but I really think I prefer the larger ones. What do you think?

Interesting sites

1.

 Click here to have a look at some pretty Eco-flowers made from recycled plastic.

2.

  Click here to read about the world's lightest metal.

3.

This cute little house folds up tp face the weather. Click here to read more