The white flowering buddleja is in flower despite, or perhaps because of, my neglecting to water it. Well - the idea is that the plants here are drought tolerant and shouldn't need any watering once established (must admit I have caved on occasion). The purple-flowering (B. davidii) one is much older and quite tall, as is the orange ball buddleja (B.globosa) .The white ones - also B. davidii - (8 of them) started their lives here as tiny tubestock about 5 years ago and have struggled to nearly two metres. The 'soil' they're in is nutritionally poor, I'd dare say.
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It's 48C on front verandah as I write - about 120F - and not many creatures are stirring, apart from the blue wrens who are chattering away in the shade. I did wonder how these 10 gram feathered creature - and other wild birds - cope with extreme temperatures, so I did a bit of reading and discovered they have quite a few strategies for keeping their cool, which you can see here, but the average birdy body temperature is higher than ours at 40C, so they have a 4 degree head start.
Black Locust - Robinia pseudoacacia Black Locust is a fast-growing deciduous tree that can grow up to 17 metres tall. It's native to the USA but has been naturalised in many of the world's continents and is extensively naturalised in Australia, where it is regarded as an environmental weed in Victoria, the ACT, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia.
Sitting on the front verandah after Christmas, New Year's, visitors all finished I noticed something was different. The usual persistent chirping, trilling and calling was absent. No birds were chasing other birds or fighting. Breeding season over. A group of Crimson Rosellas are enjoying the grass seeds, while the ringnecks are partial to both seeds and gumnuts. While the birdlife might have settled down for a relaxing summer, it seems that, everywhere I look, the insect population are inspired by the hotter temperatures -
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December 2020
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