Big herbivore, small carnivore

A katydid dines on the bruised pink petals of rose Mrs Doreen Pike.  The long antennae assist navigation at night.  Because they are often nocturnal and usually well hidden, I don't often see katydids.  This one was easily seen perched on its pink meal but the bright green colour and vaguely leaf-like appearance made it pretty difficult to spot when it moved back under the rose leaves. 

Another beastie spied on a rose was less camouflaged, but much smaller and harder to spot for that reason...

It seems to me similar in shape to so-called square ended crab spiders.  This tiny white spider perches on a rosebud -  probably waiting for tiny prey.   The rose is safe - no veggies for this meat-eater!

Sunbeams at sunrise - it's a new day

A beautiful beginning to the day...

Looking across Island Bay to the Orongorongos - one end of Taputeranga can be seen on the right side of the image.  The golden orange colour is intensified by particles in the atmosphere carried here on the wind from the bushfires in Australia.

Weather! - wet and/or windy

Never boring, although a bit repetitive - the weather keeps changing.  Really wet days help to keep things green, although these flower plumes of toetoe (Austroderia sp), a tall native New Zealand grass, are sodden and darkened with the rain and no longer their usual fluffy cream-coloured selves.  Normally they have an elegant droop, but when this wet they are clumped and heavy.  The streaks of rain are just visible against the backdrop of shrubs and treeferns at the edge of the stream where the toetoe grow. 

It stops raining and starts blowing - drat, says the gardener - the wind hampers growth as plants hunker down, closing their leaf stomata to protect against the drying out that wind causes - reducing photosynthesis and thus growth as well.  So much for the benefits of that rain.  But the wind is quite something.  Really windy days stir up the water along the rocky shore...

Flurries of seaspray, the surface of the water rippled and churned and the mist and whitecaps in the distance obscuring the line between sea and sky - this is turbulence caused by northerly gales.  It is very difficult to convey how strong the wind is in photographs!  The foreground is the intertidal zone on Wellington's south coast at high tide.  Imagine being a little seaweed, churned by the water, then exposed at low tide - not an easy life.

Tiny mushrooms

Appearing on the surface of some used potting soil, a mix of homemade compost and commercial potting mix - tiny (about 3 cm tall) transient fungal fruiting bodies, exquisitely delicate and lasting only a few hours from opening to collapse.  Careful study of various fungus identification sites told me that this is a mushroom in form being soft and fleshy with gills under the cap, but yielded no clear idea of its name.  Anonymous but beautiful, and reminding me of a world about which I know little...  

I do know that fungi are very important to our survival - they are involved in recycling organic matter and assisting plants to get the nutrients they need from the soil, are the source of medicines like penicillin, and are used for biological pest control.  They also provide us with tasty nutritious meals, but not without some risk - there are very poisonous ones, so there is an element of adventure for those bold enough to gather them for consumption - how good is my identification?  Given what little I know, I'm sticking with eating the cultivated ones!

It's an ill wind...

It's a new day, sunny but still ferociously windy.  And as the saying goes, it's an ill wind that brings no good.  The strong northerlies sculpt some interesting cloud shapes and we have enjoyed the phenomenon of lenticular clouds...

Lenticular (lens or lentil shaped) clouds can be really weird looking - sometimes very like "flying saucers", or thought to be UFOs.  These ones, seen when looking across Island Bay, are stretched out and layered.  It is late afternoon, the light is bright and there is a very strong northerly wind - you can't tell, but it was hard for me to stand steady when I was photographing this sight.  Lenticular clouds are stationary although the winds around them tend to be strong, a feature appreciated by glider pilots.  These clouds appear to hover over the water, echoing the distant Orongorongo ranges and drawing the eye to Taputeranga.   

Bright relief - Coleus colours

Let there be brightness!  On a grey windy day it is a great relief to retreat to the warmth of the Begonia House in the Wellington Botanic Garden.  Ahhh - to have a moment in the soft moist warmth of the tropics.  Coleus is a tropical plant from Southeast Asia often grown for its brilliant - some would say strident - display of multicoloured leaves.  This one is Solenostemon scutellarioides - there are other plants also called coleus.  The leaves can be very decorative in shape - these have scalloped edges to a varying degree - I think they would be described as having crenate margins in botanical terms.  

It may sound fanciful, but to my eyes we have:

the golden yellow and lime green of sunshine, 

burnt sienna, pink and lime green of a warm day

and a sunset of brilliant pink, lilac and purples.

And another day is around the corner...

Wind - give us a break!

Living here means accepting that we will experience frequent harsh winds, but after a gentle spell of sun and calm the gales we are getting again are particularly unwelcome, to me at least.  The lily flowers are bruised and battered, sigh, but the buds will provide another beautiful display when the gales have passed.  Doing their remarkably effective wind-baffling in the meantime are two NZ native plants...

Muehlenbeckia astonii and Brachyglottis greyi, together making an informal hedge and windbreak. 

The divaricating form of the Muehlenbeckia with its dense tangle of zig-zagging wiry red branchlets protects the tiny bright green heart-shaped leaves and little white flowers, and it disrupts and slows the wind flow.

In bright contrast is the Brachyglottis with its profusion of daisy-like yellow flowers.  It has more substantial branches and makes a dense and wind resistant bush.  The bright silvery hairs on the branches and leaves protect them from dessication, and have a lively brilliance no matter how dull the sky.

The sunny silver and gold and the tangle of red and green - together a formidable team.  Not by blocking  the wind - dense barriers actually make things worse by increasing turbulence downstream - but by diffusing it, slowing it down, and still letting the light get through. 

Glorious lilies

We are having a patch of lovely warm days - sunny without much wind.  Glorious!  And my lilies have begun to bloom.  They are a form of Lilium longiflorum - called Easter Lily in the northern hemisphere as it can be induced to flower at the right time for Easter celebrations there.  From islands off Japan and Taiwan, its Japanese name is teppouyuri, I understand. It is a coastal plant, growing on woodland edges.  This may explain my success - I find it remarkably easy to grow in my windy coastal location.  But I do take care to grow it in a very big pot well sheltered from the wind.  It multiplies happily, new plants arising from the numerous bulblets separating from the bulb. 

The beautiful lily flower has been used to convey a variety of ideas and spiritual messages, and for some people it is also associated with grief and death.  I appreciate these associations which come to mind when I enjoy the lilies - life, death, love, simplicity, peace, the gift of life and nature, beauty and abundance, appreciation of what is.  

What a gift!

Pretty special peas

Even if you don't have a garden it is possible to enjoy eating vegetables that you have grown in containers - some are just extra tasty when fresh. 

Sugar snap peas are edible podded, or mangetout, peas - meaning you can eat the peas in their pod rather than shelling them out.  I think of them as a crisp sweet treat picked fresh from the plant, and if you have good self-control they are great added raw to salads or cooked in stir fries (but why cook them, I wonder, when they are so nice fresh?).

 

Instructions for growing peas are readily available, but my approach to growing them is determined by two features of where I live - WIND and precious little  topsoil.  Pea plants are climbing plants - described as having a "vining habit," their tendrils are amazing in their capacity to cling on to anything that helps them reach up to the sun.  However, there is a bush form of the sugar snap pea, and that is what I use - I don't want them growing too high because the wind will just wreck them, and they are ok with being grown in pots. 

Pea plants don't like really hot weather and so are best planted early in the season, with the aim of having lots of production before high summer.  But I plant them when I remember, confident that we will not get too hot in the summer - there is an upside to our less than perfect weather! 

You have to be careful not to disturb their roots when transplanting but I prefer to plant the seeds in starter pots to protect the little plants from snails and wind till they are reasonably robust.  Then I transplant them in groups of 3 or 4 into reasonable sized pots - at least 30cm diameter and around that in depth to give a decent root zone, in a mixture of home-made compost with some commercial potting mixture and a bit of fine pumice added to help with drainage.  While they are more tightly packed together than recommended, they protect and support each other this way.

I can move the pots to keep them in enough sunshine and enough shelter - it's a pay off. 

They will often have less than the recommended minimum six or so hours of sunshine, but still they thrive.  I do have to remember to keep them from drying out - pots and raised beds are much more vulnerable to this.

I think that these pea plants are very attractive with the fresh green leaves and pods and the creamy coloured flowers. The peas are produced in reasonable abundance - you just have to remember to keep watering the plants and picking and enjoying the peas.   Growing for substantial food production is a really different business from my casual approach - but what I do is realistic for me.  While I have managed to improve the soil in some parts of our section, the wind exposure limits what I can plant in those areas, and I am learning to be realistic about what I can hope for, and to enjoy what I can grow. 

And to me these peas are, indeed, pretty special - I recommend them!