BOOTS OFF MONDAY! – Tawny Frogmouth Bird

G’day everyone,

Here are the top 5 highlights from the past week in my garden!

This past week has gone by so fast and Christmas is only 17 days away. In the last few days I have had a lot of great things happen. My first ever magazine article got published, and I have had a few interesting discoveries in my garden. In the next few days I will have a few Christmas gift ideas to share with you.

1. The flowers on my Leonotis leonurus plant are starting to emerge just in time for the summer season. The brilliant orange flowers are a great eye-catcher in the garden.

2. I was taking a few photos of my flowering roses and I came across this unusual spider that was nestled among the foliage. I have never seen a spider like this before and I was quite intrigued as to what species it might be. So I got out my trusty book called ‘Spiderwatch’ by Brent Brunet (1997), and I discovered that this is the St Andrew’s Cross, Argiope keyserlingi, spider! The females have red, yellow and black stripes on their abdomen and are usually 12-15mm long. When the spider appears to have only four legs, she is relaxed, but when she is alert or threatened the colour vibrancy is increased because of the raised hairs on the spiders body. I was glad to know that these spiders are harmless and are not poisonous.

3. My Bird’s Nest fern, Asplenium australasicum, has put on a lot of fresh new growth in the last few weeks! These are such a beautiful plant and are a great contrast against so many other plants.

4. This Tawny Frogmouth was asleep when I stumbled across him, but as I was sneaking up on him to get a photo he woke. As I got closer he would stretch out, a form of camouflage to try and make himself appear like one of the branches.

5. This is the first time that I have seen the flowers on this Salvia. Unfortunately I was given the wrong variety name, therefore I am currently working on identifying this species.