08/11/2025 by Anne

I VENTURED OUT …

… into my garden sans crutches and with only my cell phone in hand. It might not have been the wisest move, but it was time to move the bird feeders to the front garden:

A fork-tailed drongo was the first to visit and was soon followed by a black-headed oriole that found something on the ground to eat:

I looked down while I was drinking my tea and studied the seedhead of a dandelion:

Our lawns definitely need mowing! Feeling both brave and reckless, I wandered (very slowly and rather haltingly) to look at a fungus growing on an aloe stem. The bright colour had caught my eye:

Then, I looked up at our home from behind the crassula ovata hedge (known to many of you as the jade plant):

A pretty pelargonium asked to be photographed before I limped my way indoors once more:

… I am on the mend!

17/03/2025 by Anne

A DAY IN MY GARDEN

Yesterday was a beautiful day in my garden: the sun was shining brightly, picking out the different hues of green as well as highlighting the yellowing leaves of the Cape Chestnut as well as some of the leaves falling from the Kei Apple. This picture was taken before the lawn was mowed:

As I was going up the garden steps near that green water storage tank you can see in the distance, I noticed that there were several Crocosmia plants threading their way through a tangle of weeds, Canary Creeper and wild grass that has grown up since my last attempt to keep the jungle at bay in December. These must have arrived courtesy of the birds, for I have not planted them there – and they are just coming into bloom. As you will soon see, it is fortunate that I weeded around them when I did:

Why was I fortunate? Well, while the gardener was trimming the hedge outside the kitchen, he disturbed a Night Adder (Causus rhombeatus) entwined in the Tecoma capensis. The snake moved off rapidly and disappeared in a pile of junk in the back garden. Photo opportunity lost. Oh well. He called us later as the adder had now moved from there and was about to disappear between the Crocosmia into the aforementioned tangle! Night Adders (actually more active during the day) are known to eat frogs. Their venom is cytotoxic and so (for adults at least) their bite is not necessarily that serious, apart from causing pain and swelling. That may be so, but it is going to be a while before I again tackle the weeds in that part of the garden:

Much more benign is the brightly coloured orange bracket fungi that caught my attention growing out of the stem of an aloe elsewhere in the garden:

As I rounded the corner to enter the kitchen from those steps I mentioned, I noticed this hornet’s nest built under the outer window sill of the downstairs bathroom. It was a case of look, snap and move on:

03/03/2025 by Anne

FRESH FUNGI FOUND

I was going to use the title Fresh Fungi Found in the Fall, but omitted the last part because, although fall makes a degree of sense in places where trees lose their leaves in abundance, here we experience autumn. This is a beautiful time of the year, when there is still plenty of sunlight and the days remain warm – even hot – and the nights begin to take on a slght chill. Our autumn lasts from March through to May – a truly glorious time of the year. With the arrival of autumn (no brilliant leaf changing colours here) comes the more regular sight of fungi in my garden. I photographed these over the weekend and, not being able to identify them, I turned to https://allpoetry.com/poems/about/fungi to find some poems to augment my pictures. The first picture is what I found growing next to our front steps:

Near the bottom left, you might be able to make out the shape of a very large black ant. I have selected Glem Mergerming’s haiku, O Mascomycetes to accompany it:

Germinating spore
Hyphae to mycelium.
Ascomycota.

I nearly stepped on this next fungus growing on our lawn – from a distance it looked akin to a leaf:

Fungi were milking rocks of their
digestible minerals long before
we were aware of soil’s roots and
during that endless quest they made
space ..where plants could unfurl
new shoots and, just like algae,
more leaves could freshen the air. By Jhe

These ones were growing near our back gate:

The Monolith calls
silently to its kin
spread like sentinels
across the ordovician… by Snail Songs.

This last one caught my eye as I was walking up our garden path:

Socializing mushrooms are “gregarious“
who spread out in the group
but those who gather in closer
are referred to as a “troop” … by MLee Dickens’son

21/05/2024 by Anne

PHENOMENAL FUNGI

I am used to finding small – or even medium-sized – mushrooms springing up around the garden after a soaking rain. In December last year though I was taken aback to find these ones growing on a grassy pavement under a Tipuana tree (which provides the yellow blossoms in the background):

The size of saucers, these mushrooms were clearly visible from the car as I drove past. Of course I had to stop and look at them more closely:

They were scattered over a fairly wide area. Some had been knocked over – possibly by people or animals in passing:

This gives a clear view of the under side:

Others had been nibbled:While others were growing almost on top of each other:

Even though I know nothing about mushrooms, I couldn’t help wondering if these were safe for humans to eat. They looked ‘meaty’ and I could imagine frying them gently in butter.