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Lilies from the garden

4/2/2022

 
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Photo du Jour: R's nice butterfly pics

20/4/2019

 
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​He spends all day taking and fucking around with them, then posts them in his blog and doesn't tell me.
See more here

Crazy plant lady shit

7/3/2019

 
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The best things in life get the fuck out of hand before you even know it.
 R got a new fish eye and popped this as a test.

​​It looks worse than it is.

Photos du Jour: Chaffinch chick

11/1/2019

 
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So cute it makes my teeth ache.  Thanks Lovely R

Happy New Year feat. Pygmaeocereus akersii KK1124 flowering for the first time motherfuckers

2/1/2019

 
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My delightful nascent colony.  Opens in the later afternoon for nocturnal moth pollination.  Looks like a maternal bohemian darlek.  Smells like boiled-down jungle honey, gingery vodka and alien varnish.

A pleasant ​MMXIX to you all.  Yes I had to google the numerals.  I am wasted.  what do you want from me

Season's Greetings from New Zealand

21/12/2018

 
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Rose Fragrant Cloud

It really is, too.

Photo du Jour: Black Backed Gulls

18/12/2018

 
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​They're in finest early breeding feather at the moment.  
Courtesy of the Lovely R

Photoessay: Orange

30/10/2018

 
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homegrown canary / LA hybrid lilies 
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port otago / european wasp on banksia
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dinghies / arctotis daisies
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spider and streetlight down a macro lens / geum
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pet shop goldfish / osteospermum
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See more of our photography   *   Photoessays   *   The Lovely R


Photos du Jour: White Faced Heron chicks, Egretta novaehollandiae

3/9/2018

 
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If you've never heard a heron speak, imagine a demon or Katy Perry being dragged backwards over a cheese grater and you're probably close.  It's the abject opposite of the sound you would expect from such an elegant bird.
A couple of young White Faced Herons (the sole local species) have been flapping around the cliffside cyprus in front of the house for a while now, crahhhhking and harassing their long-suffering parents. 
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In virtually every culture that has encountered them you will hear stories about how herons were historically duped out of their previously mellifluous voices.

​Fledglings are easy to identify: generally, their proportions are a wee bit stumpy, their feathers retain that vaguely downy look, their beaks are shorter and their behaviour is distinctly teenage. Though they're fairly common, this is the first pair of chicks we've noticed in our time here so it's nice to know they're breeding successfully in this urban-ish area.

It's officially Spring down here from Sept. 1, but really we've been in the latter season for at least a month now after a fucking balmy, frost-less winter that seems like several worlds away from the brutal ones we experienced upon arrival in Dunedin 20 years ago.  The climates, they are a changing.  Thanks Shell, BP et al.
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   The Lovely R's Blog   *   More local photography   *   Photoessays


Photos du Jour: Dahlias

15/6/2018

 
It was a bad summer in that Felix's illness and the building project coincided, so we had no time for the poor old plants.  The garden has gone to shit in autumn and now lies, unsightly and betrayed, awaiting a pretty nuclear winter cleanup that I am not looking forward to.  Armfuls of mouldy and worm-squirming mush dripping into your shoes as you dump them on the compost heap, etc. etc; fuuuuuuck.   

R managed to get a few nice shots regardless, so I thought I'd share as part of warming up to regular posting in the near future.  Jesus christ I am a lazy bitch these days.  Well, lazy and depressive; I might as well use the old mental illness shit as a crutch and get some fucking value out of it.
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Photo du Jour: Waxeye, Zosterops lateralis & Canary Island Foxglove Isoplexis canariensis

27/5/2018

 
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R made this nice little triptych after catching the bird feeding on this, one of my favourite plants.  Bellbirds and Tuis also visit the blooms.  Waxeyes are not my favourite birds because the little fuckers tend to ruin a lot of fruit with their incessant pecking, but they do make pretty cool pets when hand raised.  

If you dont get too much frost, I highly recommend the Canary Foxglove; it flowers almost year-round here in NZ and is fairly unfussy as to soil as long as the drainage is good.  I have three or four plants now and would happily install 20 if I had the room.

Photo du Jour: Echinops ritro + Bumblebee

28/4/2018

 
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I love this Globe Thistle for its obnoxious singularity.  It really does follow its own star, as much as any plant can.
​Must get the white version.

Photo du Jour:  Copper Butterfly

25/1/2018

 
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Courtesy of the Lovely R.

We haven't posted much recently because we've been both in the midst of building, and nursing Felix, who has a very debilitating neck injury and needs round the clock care.  We're hoping it's a pinched nerve and not anything malignant, but the level of supervision required to stop him doing injurious stuff is pretty draining, so I just don't feel like writing.

I'll try to post a new excerpt tomorrow.  Thanks for your patience.

Photo du Jour: Clematis ' Warszawska Nike' aka 'Warsaw Nike'

6/12/2017

 
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On one of the new pieces I've scattered around the lower garden.

This is our most prolific clematis as far as producing vegetable material is concerned.  Warsaw Nike has morphed into a protean lateral monster despite the numerous unceremonious moves I've subjected it to.  In fact, dragging its arse around the garden has seen it boil outward at the base to provide a shit tonne of splittable pieces; since these plants retail at around fifty fucking dollars, I'm not complaining.  The new, thinned starts produce longer, more adventurous vines while the mother plant sits stubbornly at about 1.5m, generating root cuttings like it has nothing better to do.  

W Nike is a really beautiful, non-bouffant variety for the kind of nastily hot situations that would crisp the shit out of other dark flowers.  I've never seen it suffer clematis wilt and that dreaded fuckery can be a problem here with our hot summers, funky soil and high humidity.  This pic is pretty accurate on my monitor if you've been baffled by the mad-looking blown-out shots floating around the internet.  The interior stripe is a deep cardinal red and the margins of the petals graduate to velvety red-violet.  Overall, the impression is quite a bit more red than purple.  I have a Clematis Etoile Violette on the same fence and that's a true deep purple; the contrast is quite marked.
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​Very plush and luxe and no hint of frou.

Photo du Jour: Tern, Careys Bay

11/9/2017

 
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​courtesy the Lovely R


Photoessay: New Zealand Bellbird (Anthornis melanura) & Wild Currant

9/8/2017

 
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R's got himself a couple of old telephotos recently and had set himself the unenviable task of trying to capture the local bellbirds seeking honey in one of the earliest spring blossoms around here- the wild currant, Ribes sanguineum.  It's a feral species from North America.  Bellbirds are native but they will exploit most exotic nectar sources.

These currants are certainly beautiful, glowing violet pink in the slanting light of afternoon and heralding the end of winter so we adore them too, but I have to say they smell like a hundred elderly tomcats and I shudder to think what sort of contribution they make to honey.

Bellbirds vacillate between being relatively confiding and flicking off at the slightest suspicion of your intrusion so they can be difficult to capture.  These images are highly characteristic of their undisturbed behaviour; hats off to R for having the patience to observe them effectively.
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*   R's Photography   *   Photoessays   *   Port Chalmers NZ   *


Photos du Jour: Bengalese Finches

6/7/2017

 
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A couple of portraits of our birds by R.  They are such a charming species.

Photos du Jour: Rhododendrons, Angel Trumpets & Poppies

28/6/2017

 
Occasionally I make a sweep through one of R's annoyingly numerous photo dumps, give him a hard look and ask what the fuck is this?  Inevitably, some of his best images are sitting with their thumbs up their arses, utterly unshared with the wider world.  

Think some of the rhododendron pics are mine- you can probably tell by the shitty exposures.  R is a far, far better technician than I am but he, in common with most camera nerds, couldn't really compose his way out of a wet paper bag until I taught him the basics, so allow me a fart-huffing moment of insufferable credit-snatching while you peruse these lovely images.  His eye is coming along nicely.  

R sneakily posts some nice things that don't appear on my main blog so check out his page.
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Flower IDs: Oriental Poppy Pictoee, unknown Azalea, Oriental Poppy Patty's Plum, Bedding Dahlia, unknown Rhododendron, Brugmansia sanguinea, unknown Rhododendron, Buttercup.
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*   The Lovely R   *   Our Photography   *   Photoessays   *   Flora   *


Photo du Jour: droplets on an Aloe bud

13/6/2017

 
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​Nice detail by R.  I think this is an Aloe x Gold Tooth bud

*   Our Photography   *   The Lovely R   *   Flora   *


Photo du Jour: Summerina, our garden

1/6/2017

 
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A lovely shot by the Lovely R.

Summerinas are a recent intergeneric hybrid.  We have trouble with this plant's parents- echinacea and rudbeckias- because they tend to be dry prairie type species and we are well, a dampish coastal situation on the other side of the fucking planet.  They'll do alright in a hot year and then rot down into slimy little grey masses the next, which is a shame because the plants are somewhat expensive and very lovely when successful.  I splashed out on two summerinas this year and they dutifully put forth both marigold-yellow and these deep mahogany red blooms; it remains to be seen if they will prove as perennial as their nursery bumf claims.  

I highly recommend them if you're in a hot dry spot and like a nice showy late season daisy; their colours are pretty unique and highly saturated, providing great contrast to the fleshy turquoise and emerald of xeriscape species etc.

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