Sedges

Out of sheer frustration trying to keep my fish pond/pot going, I intro’ed a couple of baby sedges after most of the so-called water plants died, and even the duckweed gave up.

Sedges will grow half in water, and in my past life, when I had a frog pond going for years, swamp plants were a strong feature. These often have their roots and soil substrate in the water, and their leaves above. s

I suspect they somehow condition the water, enabling other plants to grow. I certainly never had any problem keeping either Azolla water fern or duck weed alive and used to raise dozens of tadpoles to frog-dom.

If I knew anyone with karamat I’d go and beg a cutting but haven’t seen it since leaving the Byron Shire. Both these sedges are usually quite weedy though the little one at the back as far as I know is native to Australia.

‘Weeded’ them both from the local verges while out walking. One of them from the creek overflow. About ten days in their new position they don’t look like they’re dying.

The pebbles are to provide an island for bees and other insects to drink. (Though I need to top up the water.) And if I pour the water onto the pebbles there is hardly any disturbance in the water.

There’s one lone Pacific Blue Eye remaining of the seven fish I got for my birthday 10 months ago.

Insects at the ‘Patch’

Australian Cockroach/ unknown stinkbug

The jury is out on the bug’s ID. Just found a similar looking one in the Wildlife of Tropical North Queensland, a cockroach probably immigrating from Asia.

Or it could be a sap sucker related to the bronze stink bug. There is a sap sucking bug species, like this one on the Angophra sp, for all major tree species in Australia.

European honey bees very busy among the Tuckaroo flowers …

I had a little video clip here, but guess I need to negotiate with WP on that, and am on my mobile just now. Think of the above as a place holder.

A bunch of tiny blue butterflies skipped in amongst the grasses

Fast fliers that never sit still they are one of approx 63 similar little blue butterfly species in the region, according to Helen Schwenke in her Create More Butterflies. I saw them among the above grasses.

If they were the Common Pencilled-Blue variety, they would’ve had plenty of food for their caterpillars for the Tuckaroo is a common host plant.

Image nearly twice the size!