Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS GOING INTO WINTER 2015, 2 by 77sunset

77sunset wrote:
Hello everyone.
Its raining again down here. Nothing heavy but continuous, which makes things awkward when going form shop to shop where there are no verandas.
At least the cold wind has let up a bit so its not so bad to be out.
I am off to my hospital group today and if the weather does fine up a bit we may go over to one of the small towns not far away to have a wander around their jumble sale.

Trish, beautiful pics of your broms. I still drool at the sight of them all, but am getting used to saying no more to myself...lol.
I agree with Nev, your "gang gang" is definitely not one.
Its is a red tailed black cockatoo.
There were lots of them over in WA when I lived there. They are quite large birds and seem to live more in the drier northern places. I know they are disappearing from a lot of the eastern states habitats
We do get the few pairs of the white tailed ones, as Nev mentioned. They are usually seen along the coastal and near inland areas.
We do get the odd few Gang Gangs around here too. They also like the inland drier areas.
I used to see a lot up around the mountains and more inland.
As Nev said they are a beautiful grey with a dark pinkish red head, although the females dont have the brilliant color of the males. They are a very quiet bird and like the other beautiful cockatoo, the Major Mitchell, will sit quietly in the trees and you would never know they were there.
Its a shame that people have pushed some of our most beautiful birds out of their habitats and into obscurity.
One of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen of birds was when we were out hunting rabbits and came upon Major Mitchell cockatoos sitting around in a group of small trees. There would have been about 300 or more.
I have never seen so many of them in one place as they are mainly in very small groups.
We just stood and watched them for ages. It was wonderful.

In WA the retailed black cockatoos all come down on the ground to eat the prickly seeds of a creeping pest we called double gee.
The old timers said it was just before rain you would see them.
Like you Nev, I love watching birds.
Robert & I would sit and watch all the different ones that came to the garden at the old house.
I get a few birds here , but the most prolific and noisiest have to be the pesky white cockatoos. We get them in huge flocks and the do an enormous amount of damage to the trees . There are both the white corellas and the slightly larger sulphur crested whites.
Both are in no danger of extinction. I have seen them in their thousands in trees along inland rivers when I traveled around Australia.

Anyway, back to the garden.

My broms are showing no sign of any frost damage so I am pleased that they look like surviving here.
Nothing seems to be damaged at all so far, even though the temps have been around 4C on a few days.

Brian, I hope you are having good weather to get on with your shadehouse.
Are you going to use the beige shadecloth ?
We were talking last year about the merits of the various colors.
I did have a lot of the green on mine as it was the only one I could get at the time, but I did use beige on the last 2 we built.
I like the beige as it lets in more light, although I was told it has the same UV protection as the green.
My broms liked it better , mainly for the extra light I would assume.
I did cover any areas which had sun all day, with a piece of green in the summer.

Teresa, your cooking sounds very tasty.
I dont cook a lot of the more fancy things now I am on my own.
My Robert used to laugh as he said he never knew what experiment in cooking I was going to try on him next.
We both liked Asian food as its simple to make and full of taste.

Now I had better get myself going or I'll be late.

No new pics but a couple of oldie group pics.

Keep warm and safe.
Jean.