Signs of the Time

Just a few photos from around the garden yesterday.

The African Tulip Tree is a tree that has provided children all over the world with hours of fun, from using the flower buds as water pistols and boat races with the open seed pods. I was reminded of all this as the tree up the street has just finished flowering and the seed pods have started to make their journey away from the mother tree. You often find them in gutters as the summer rains have carried them like the boats they resemble down the streets. This fellow however must have grown a pair of wings to end up in our backyard as he would have had to fly over a couple of houses. Whichever way he went to reach our backyard, I welcomed him with reminiscing hands as I picked him up and turned him over inspecting for any structural damage he might have obtained in his journey. His boat load of passengers had long flown away on the breeze searching for some fertile soil and he was left to slowly decompose on our lawn.

Look at how the lines in the dead Agapanthus flower head match up with the dividing line between the cement and the grass. As a child and even now I like to pull out the dead stalks and swing them round pretending to be I guess a swashbuckling pirate or perhaps a club.

This is the sign of the drought and water restrictions in our garden. The hand fork lays in the garden bed begging to be used but until the rains return (if ever) the garden is left to run wild and survive on what rain does fall. The days of planting new plants in the front garden beds are left to our memories and we have all forgotten what it is like to actually go to a nursery and pick out new plants.