Orchids and Wildflowers of Eneabba

This month the orchids and wildflowers around Eneabba have been putting on a full show for us.  These are some of them spotted the past week!

We’ve spent a bit of time looking for Orchids in the area and found a few already we’ve never seen before which is so cool.  Wesley is my enthusiastic hiking partner and will follow me into even the thickest of bushes!  I’m loving that he’s agreeable (for now) to come out and see the flowers with me.

The past week we went out to a friends house for wine and woodfired pizza, which was such a nice evening.  Wesley played with the kids and we hung out chatting into the darker hours.

Here are a few items pictured here in no particular order:

• Daddy Long Legs Spider Orchid
• Hybrid
• Crimson Spider Orchid (quite small compared to the others)
• Bee Orchid
• Blue Leschenaultia
• Pea Flowers
• Drosera flowers
• Banksias
• Bearded Dragon
• Some kind of pink smoke bush – which is soooo pretty!
• One monkey jumping on the bed
• The Coorow Greenhead Road which takes us to the ocean
• The front porch of the house which is going to be getting a lil makeover soon

We also bogged our ute while we were out looking at some of these flowers.  Oops!

Orchids in Eneabba

This past week has been very nature filled.  It’s been really glorious spotting the orchids now that the rains have really set in.  The winter appears to finally be here as this week we actually had the heat on!  Before Mike arrived I was wearing a tank top and shorts most days and wondered if it was going to stay in the mid 20’s for a long time.  Nope!

Wesley was not feeling the huge change in weather last night.  The tin roof of the house sort of amplifies the sound of the rain falling so it’s pretty loud.  To him the noise along with the wind and lightning were just a bit too much!  He had his mum and dad with him to cuddle to sleep.  I snuck off into his bedroom to sleep alone and woke to see Mike and our wee lamb cuddling asleep at 6.30am.  It was such a sweet moment to savour.

It’s been exciting out in the bush, as we’ve spotted 3 new species to us.  The hairy stemmed orchid, the coastal banded orchid and a Queen of Sheba (not flowering but soon to be – pictured above).  Most of the species were found in a Wandoo forest not far from the farm.

See that ant in the photos above, how unusual does it look?  I’ve never seen one with its colouring before.

Wesley has been joining Mike and I together in the bush, and Tessa and I have also spent a bit of time together looking at orchids too.

Nature here is just astoundingly diverse and surprising.  You never know what you’re going to see!

Pictured in this post:

• Bluebeard Orchid
• Greenbanded Orchid
• Wandoo Forest
• Strange Ant
• Hairy Stemmed Snail Orchid
• Mike hand building his new beehive boxes (he’s expanding our 5 to 20!)
• Queen of Sheba
• Multiple unopened mystery flowers/orchids
• My shoes and a large fungus nestled between them

The wildflowers of Warradarge

This past week while Mike was home, I was able to take some time and wander through some native bush about a 10 minute drive from the farm.  At one location there were some very large gumtrees that I’d been observing as we travelled around and decided there must be some orchids sprouting at their feet.

As I carefully searched the forest floor, I was greeted by several kookaburra cackling in the trees above and even a small euro kangaroo – which took off from her resting place only about 10 feet from where I was walking.  The roo particularly was of interest as you don’t really see many euro’s in the area.  It’s had a more red colour to it’s fur and was more broad in it’s features.

Wandering the bush I felt this sense of excitement and that joy, that comes from looking at beautiful colours and observing the bugs and birds.  We were all moving through the lazy pace of the day, enjoying the warmth of the sunshine.  There were at least 4 species of orchids out – though I’m having trouble confidently identifying the green hooded orchids.  They all look so similar!

I was only away a couple of hours, and when I came home Wesley greeted me with this big beautiful hug.  It was so nice!

While I am here I may as well report that camera has since been smashed.  The lens is in 4 pieces – and I’m not 100% sure my camera body works – as I’ve not got a lens to attach to it.  I had run outside quickly to capture some bees for Mike as he wanted some for a hive.  They had swarmed so I ran out quickly – thinking Wesley was safely playing in the house.  I came back to my camera on the floor…and the discovered that it was a goner.  What a silly mistake!  Thankfully wee man was not hurt at all…the body and lens together are very heavy and could have badly injured him.  Phew!!

We also had about 500k beetles swarm the farm yesterday.  The air was very still and at first all the noise I thought we were being swarmed by the hive I had caught the night before.  The trees were dropping leaves, and the sound of the things hitting the house was almost comical.  The devastation to the bottlebrush trees is incredible – these little beetles sure know what they want to eat!  The were around for about 2 hours – and if I had my camera I’d love to have shown you all the madness.

I’ve been prepping our living room for a bit of a makeover.  Over the past three evenings I’ve been taping, touching up the trim and starting to put up a prime coat in the shade that would replace the current medium green shade.  I was hoping to brighten up the space and make the room feel more open.  I’m now second guessing my colour choice.  It’s this really pale yellow – which I thought would make sense with the 50’s style of the house but it’s not quite right.  We had previously painted several of the rooms various shades of soft grey and I have a feeling that might be the route we take for the living room too.  In a few weeks our shipping container should arrive from NZ so hoping I have finished this before our furniture arrives.

Have you ever painted a wall and immediately regretted the choice of colour?  

A Forgotten Spider Orchid

I’ve been looking at some photos in my archives today and came across this orchid (just popping out) from our trip to Stirling Range National Park last September.  It struck me, that I’d not noticed this photograph properly when I first reviewed the images.

It’s a stunner of an orchid, and in admiring it…I suddenly had the thought to look up the orchid season here in New Zealand.

As luck would have it – there is a fantastic site that shows the locations and flowering times for the native orchids throughout the country.  There are some even blooming this month.

It looks like the season is heaviest during the spring/summer period (Oct-Jan) which is awesome.  I’ll hopefully be able to make it out and hike some rugged tracks and be able to bend down for long periods of time by that point!

http://www.nativeorchids.co.nz/index.html

I’ve also been meaning to get some photos of the spectacular jumping spiders here – but each time I’ve been out with my camera they seem to go into hiding.  We’ve spotted at least 10 different species around our home and Mike’s mums.  I’ll have to keep trying.

Lately, I’m mostly resting, meditating, doing prenatal yoga, reading and taking Tess for little short walks.  The link to the prenatal yoga video was provided to me by a good friend (thanks Emily!) recently and has helped me stretch out muscles that have been – lets say mildly dormant the past few months.  The videography is beautiful (as is the music) and even for someone who might not have a lot of experience (if any) with yoga the narration is gentle and encourages safe practice.  If you’re limited in movement this is a great place to start.

We also did a two day antenatal class this past weekend, and also took a tour of the local hospital.  It was so nice to be around other people who were at the same stage of pregnancy, and could laugh together about all the crazy changes we’ve been going through.

This provided a great place for the partners to ask questions and have open discussions about all the things we were unsure of.  I also loved watching Mike dress a baby and wear a pregnancy suit, it was really a great intro to parenthood for us.  If you do get the chance to sign up for a class I’d highly recommend it.

 

Wildflowers of Western Australia – Stirling Range National Park

These are some of the images that were taken during our trip last week, I don’t know the names of everything for certain at this point.

It’s the long weekend here in Western Australia.  I hope you’re all out and about enjoying the sunshine too!

I’ll be catching up with friends and soaking up some sun – my alabaster body needs some vitamin d stat!

What will you be doing with all this free time?

-Holly