Hoo boy.  I’ve just sat down for what feels like the first time all day, and I thought I’d better start typing on my laptop before I fall asleep and start drooling on it instead.

I had a bad night’s sleep.  SO had to go in to work in the middle of the night, so I woke up just after 2am and didn’t get back to sleep until just before 6.  I woke up at 9am and started running around doing stuff – amongst other things, I got some keys cut for one of our tenants.  By the time I got home, it was 1pm, and I was tired.  I could’ve so easily gone to sleep.  But I kept looking over at the kitchen, where there was a container full of scraps from the week that needed to be buried.  Stuff like vegie scrapings, offcuts, dead mushrooms, that kind of thing.  So I thought, okay, I’ll just bury that in the garden, then I’ll have a sleep.

Well.  So much for good intentions.  I buried the scraps, then weeded the front garden beds.  Then I decided I’d plant out our last remaining empty bed.  This required digging up a bird of paradise from our backyard which is over six foot tall, and dragging it out to the front, then planting it.  This took a while – it probably took me about half an hour to dig it up, let alone the rest.

After this, I divided a diete plant into eight (yes, it needed to be divided some time ago) and planted the eight babies into the garden bed around the bird of paradise.  Finally, I watered everything in, mulched with cow poo, and watered everything again.  It looks good, I have to admit.  But man, I’m tired now.

For those of you not familiar with birds of paradise, here’s an example:

I have to admit that they’re not really my favourite plants.  However, it does look nice in the garden bed out the front.  Maybe it’ll grow on me.  And the dietes it’s surrounded by look like this:

dietes

I like these more than the bird of paradise.  I prefer the colours, and the foliage.

But the absolute best thing about both the bird of paradise and the dietes, is that they could grow in the Sahara.  They’re low maintenance, which at our place, is an essential criterion.  (It drives SO’s stepmum nuts.  She’s an avid gardener and keeps telling me I need to buy this or that plant.  I just say, ‘Does it need water? Does it need fertiliser? If it does, it’s not going to survive at our place’.)  A great example is the bougainvillea we have growing over one of our side fences.  Give it mulch, fertiliser and lots of water, and it sulks.  Put it in dry sand, no water, no fertiliser, no nothing, and it flowers like the masochist it is.

An example of a bougainvillea:

In fact this is pretty similar to how ours looks, coming over the fence, and menacing passersby.  (The thorns on it are an inch long, and if you get scratched by one you get an infection. I love a plant that fights back.)

Anyhow, enough of horticulture.  I’m going to hit the sack.

With the ever-increasing cost of diesel fuel, I decided to bus From Perth to Coral Bay.

An eighteen hour trip which did become tedious, despite comfortable seats and well spaced comfort stops.

At one stop, the coastal port city of Geraldton, I spotted, back-light by a convenient evening sun, a colourful Strelitzia or “Bird of Paradise” flower.

Then my critical facilities were completely destroyed and I just had to photograph this shining, sparkling, wonderful bit of bling-on-wheels!

We moved on into the gathering gloom (Why is gloom always gathering?) and at just after three am, shortly after moonset, I set up my tent in the dark.

When I woke I began taking photographs. And I didn’t stop.

Standing in knee-deep water, I was quickly surrounded by travelling schools of minnows, whitebait and garfish.

Just by pointing my camera downwards I was able to immortalise this foot-long blue garfish, greened by the angle of the sun and the refraction of the water.

Lots more photographs will follow in the next week or two.