Category: Earth versus World

Tree: Small Eucalyptus

One of the half dozen or so red flowering, out of 800 +/- Eucalyptus species, native to Australia. This specimen in the grounds of Carinya at Carindale.

This one reminds me of a mallee. It’s about two metres talll but may have been pruned to keep the flowers accessable.

Its leaves are unusual to me, in that they’re not hanging edgeward to the sun, which I thought was a feature of Eucalypts. But which could’ve been hybridised out of them.

I have an inkling that the red-flowering mallee has been hybrised to the nth, it being so suitable for small suburban gardens on account of its dwarfish growth habit.

[In the usual way, I may expand and edit after I have already posted, to be able to have something to put up. if you’ve got something to add, let me know in the comments? This is a one-fingered typing job, and I’ve mislaid the reference to Brisbane Eucalyptus trees]

Screen Saver

Today I learned how to ‘play’ my screen saver. It’s the kelp forest and the diver, drone, or camera moves slowly through it. This is the few seconds before I start the day.

Then I hit ENTER on my password and I have to live with whatever area it stops at. For a while all I could see all day was huge swags of kelp behind all my directories.

Got sick of the boring view. Went through all the other available screen savers, didn’t like any of them. Re installed the kelp forest.

This morning I thought to view the whole loop. Duh, people will be saying. I hit ENTER at a place I liked and hey presto … a whole new and different wallpaper. I’ve got fish now, swimming between the folders.

One thing about this weather report app that irritates me every day that I take notice is Visibility.

So we can see 24 kilometres, but only if we’re looking into the sky, at clouds. Or if you yourself are in space.

If you stand at sealevel, looking out over the sea, the horizon is about 4.8 kilometres away, and this is for a man of average height which is 5’ 10” or 1.75 metres.

If you look inland and you’re not standing on a mountain, it’d be a lot less, what with the lumps and bumps of most of the Earth.

Hibiscus, the Magnificent

Oh hail this magnificent hibiscus flower on this gloomy day …

Yesterday a friend staying at Carinya temporarily, walked me through the almost abandoned buildings and overgrown gardens.

This is one of the most vibrantly colored flowers I have seen. Without its flowers the shrub is insignificant, no more than a meter tall, with every millimetre of its bark covered with lichen.

I know people will tell me lichen doesn’t hurt tree bark. That may be so. But the lichen by creating little pockets, draws water to itself and that allows other, unfriendly, organisms a foothold. Rot is the next step.

When I see a shrub or tree bedizened with lichen, I see a tree in trouble, planted in the wrong place and or climate.

Nimbostratus

I’ve been waiting all day for this cloud to produce the rain that is its primary feature. Rain, that is, that falls as far as the ground.

Nimbostratus

All cloud names are derived from Latin. ‘Nimbus’ means rain cloud. ‘Stratus’ I think means spread out. This one blankets the southern sky and hangs out in the middle cloud levels, between five and ten kilometres above sealevel.

Nimbostratus rains and rains and rains, so we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Unlike cumulonimbus, the anvil in the sky thunderclouds, nimbostratus begins its weeping without fanfare. It just starts to rain.

Which has always felt wrong to me, since most of my life I’ve lived in places that attracted thunder and lightning, hail and rain bucketing down. Storms, you know? It’s only since I’ve lived in Brisbane that I’ve experienced nimbostratus rain events.

Cosmos

I’m pretty sure I have the name right this time. This cheery overgrowth of wild colour would’ve been a weed in most other places, but here and now in the wilderness of abandoned gardens, it’s a joy to see.

Interestingly, its seeding habit reminds me of the seed habit of the plant all bush-walkers and probably most farmers love to hate. I’m talking of the Australian weed, Farmers’ Friends.

It only needs one knee high plant to catch on your clothes, and you’re picking clingy seeds off for the next three weeks.

One old farmer I once knew, used to have to spend quite a bit of time picking seeds off his socks, since he nearly always forgot to wear his ‘shock absorbers’.

I’ve forgotten the punchline of the joke or pun this name referred to, but they are the little elasticized “skirts” people wear around their ankles, over their socks and tops of their boots. Let me know why they are called shock absorbers?

The old man, when he’d collected a 1 litre yoghurt container full of Farmers’ Friends seeds would throw them in the stove fire. The seeds hang together like velcro, so its easy to pick them up in one bunch.

However, these are Cosmos seeds heads. But if you know what Farmers Friends look like, you’ll see the likeness.

PS, that’s a shockingly bad photo, so out of focus it’s not funny. That’s one problem with composing a post on the mobile, with the photo merely being edited with the Apple editing software. I don’t like it. Probably I’ll go through the whole rigmarole of emailing the photo to myself, editing it using decent software and re-posting it.