Cabin fever

Anyone would think it odd to get cabin-fever during summer, unless you're used to receiving most of your rain during that time. Which is what has been happening here over the past few weeks. We had a "drop" (or several days worth of rain) a few weeks ago, and the sun came out to dry everything. Yay! I even got to plant a couple of tree seedlings, which always makes me happy.

The pond is full!

Then another rain trough dropped in recently, and has rained continually since. Yesterday and today it stopped enough to go outside - I even caught sight of the sunshine! But as far as doing any yard work is concerned, everything is still too wet. I did manage to capture some images in the garden though.

Lawn mushrooms

Plenty of mushrooms have popped up in the lawn! Not sure if they're edible or not, but don't think I'll risk a sample. They look quite handsome with their stately caps on though.

Red Fungi

Strange, red fungi has appeared in other areas - mostly in the bark mulch we put down at the end of winter. They are bizarre, wonderful miracles of nature, which seem to love the soggy weather. I'm told fungi is responsible for moving nutrients around the forest floor. Where this little fellow popped up, was underneath a canopy in a particularly dense area. Our garden is still too young though, so these red fungi appearing are very rare. And it only seems to be during very wet periods.

I look forward to seeing more as the garden matures, and the canopy grows higher!

Always delightful ~ frangipani

One plant I am always happy to see during summer (rain, hail or shine) is my mum's frangipani. It was imported all the way from Thailand I'm told, by a friend who fell in love with it's colour when they were on holidays there. While I can never see me jet-setting off on a holiday to somewhere exotic, it doesn't mean I can't get a small taste of it in my garden. I'm really quite lucky! A very generous friend, to give my mum a cutting too - she died of cancer (sadly) several years ago. I always think of her when the flowers come out though.

Her name was Stella, so I always think what a stella bunch of flowers this year!

Are you bananas?

Our dwarf ducasse banana tree, has finally put on it's first flush of fruit. I'm waiting for the male flower to open - at the very bottom of the bell, to see if the honey eaters come for a feed. I hear they love them! Of course, these bananas are of the sterile variety, so don't need pollination to form fruit. At some point (soon) I'm going to have to think "bags" to keep the fruit bats and other birds away.

Originally planted mid November 2011

This was "Ducca", our pet name for the variety of banana, not long after he was first planted. Ducca has come a long way to producing fruit - 15 months to be exact! It should be another 3 to 6 months until we can eat the fruit though. Which will be kind of weird, considering it will either be at the beginning of winter, or the end.

Ducca also has two strong suckers growing on either side, to replace the main stem after it fruits. So twice as many bananas, next year - fingers crossed!

Although it looks like the rain will be with us for another few days - at least until after the weekend, I did get a small window of opportunity to go outside in the garden.  A break from cabin fever (no matter how small) is better than none at all.