Some recent photos: the first flower on one of my carefully-nurtured snow pea plants. The first flower on one of my not-so-carefully nurtured bean plants -I'm not sure what kind of bean, as the seeds were given to me by my dad and I forgot what they were. It's a miracle they grew at all.
The snow peas, shortly after they started producing delicious sweet pods, came down with some horrid powdery fungus, which has all but killed them and prevented them producing more pods. Bloody fungus, stealing my vegetables... The beans were tasty and didn't get any diseases. Until I find out how to deal with that fungus I won't be growing snow peas again. I hate using pesticides and fungicides, and I thought I might be able to manage without doing so. Grrr.
I keep some grass growing for Feifei in the big pot I planted the beans and peas in. Grass is not just a condiment for Feifei, it's an important part of his diet. Never mind that he looks utterly ridiculous stretching up to eat it from the pot; the grass is evenly clipped, but with ragged edges because his canines aren't built for chomping grass.
More Feifei photos.
The parrots I spotted by accident when we stopped to have a look at all the bees on a palm flower in someone's yard while walking to Indooroopilly. The parrots were pretty much hidden inside the flower, and then out popped a little green head! I've always found palm flowers particularly striking, but I never knew they attracted parrots. Gam took the photos because he's tall and has long arms, so he could get the camera closer to the parrots. Thanks Gam :)
The lorikeets were in a tree we walked past on our way to Coles in St Lucia. It's a very pretty tree when it's in flower, and unusual in that all the flowers sprout along the branches rather than at the tips of the foliage. The lories were very wary of the camera and kept edging away, so it was difficult to obtain an in-focus photograph.
5 comments:
Our snowpeas also developed a rust which quickly spread to our sugarsnap peas and purplepodded peas. They still managed to have heaps of peas, but I imagine they would have done better without it! The impression I got about rust was that it's almost impossible to effectively treat. The parrot in the palm flowers looks a lot like a scaly-breasted lorikeet to me (although it's hard to see as only it's head is popping out) but it looked very cute and they are very cool photos! Do all cats eat grass like that? It seems strange.
I think all cats eat grass, but I've never known a cat to eat as much grass as Feifei- he actually enjoys it!
Oh, and it appears you're right on about the green parrots being scaly-breasted lorikeets, I should have bothered to look it up!
I did see a pair of birds being sold as 'scaly-breasted lorikeets' at Westside Pets in Taringa a couple of weeks ago, and they were olive green and of a size and shape more closely resembling rainbow lorikeets... interesting that they should appear so different.
You're lucky you still got peas from your plannts- our pea-fungus was white and powdery, and mostly the plants are just pale beige-coloured, dried shells only a few weeks after it first appeared! I did look at a couple of fungicides in k-mart today, but none mentioned peas as something that they might be used on.
The fungicides tend to be quite nasty and say stuff like "if you use it on this plant don't eat anything from it for 1 week, if you use it on this plant don't eat anything for 2 weeks etc". And they say you have to treat it, then treat it again in like 10 days or something. When I talked to the man at bunnings, he pretty much seemed to be saying that even with all that nasty anti-fungals, my chances were slim. The problem is that we have such a small space we had to replant in similar positions so our new plants have it too. However it's different to what you have, and it just means the stem looks small and wasted, but the rest of the plant looks like it's okay (so it only affects the leaves closest to the ground). I imagine our plants got it because our garden is a no dig one with layers of pea straw, lucerne and chook poo - maybe the pea straw had the disease. So there's not much chance we're going to fix it. Maybe you'll be able to do better at erradicating it if you can start over in a completely different area or pot.
As for the bird - I happen to be a bird fanatic, that's why I knew the name. I'm the kind of person that takes my massive readers digest bird guide camping with me when we go to the beach and I get mocked a lot (especially when we have a "1 bag per person policy" and I run out of clothes).
I have a cousin who's nuts about birds as well. I take an interest, but I probably wouldn't take a massive bird book camping with me (if I wasn't too much of a wuss to go camping anywhere that doesn't have hot showers, I mean!).
Kewl bird photos!
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