Australian and New Zealand Gardening: LOOKING FOR SPRING..... BROMELIADS 2015, 1 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi everyone – I can’t stay long today as I have to get breakfast and then pack up my stuff for our workshop. It’s still very cold of a night and early morning here but the sun does warm things up a bit around ten o’clock, but just when it’s nice and warm it starts to cool down again around two o’clock.

Jean – The flowers on your dykia encholirioides x brevifolia are very eye catching with the nice orange colouring, but they still aren’t a brom that has appealed to me; it’s probably all the spikes that turn me away from them. Having said that, there are a couple of growers in our Brom. Society that grow nothing else which illustrates the saying that “there’s a brom for all tastes”.

Thanks so much for sharing the pic’s of the Brolgas. I’ll bet that was a “high point” in your drive over to Mt Gambier. They are truly a such a regal bird and so considerate as well as they posed especially for you.

Teresa – I have to agree with you and Jean, climate change has been going on forever and seems to go through various cycles; like my son says, “don’t worry about something you have no control over”. I do however agree with your comment on the air and waterway pollution, and these are things we can do something about.

To look at a positive though, when I was a kid it wasn’t unusual to regularly see people tossing wrappers and empty cigarette packets out of cars or just dropping them on the ground, but these days it seems quite rare, so the message is getting through, in our area at least.

I have to go so I’ll finish with a couple of unusual pic’s today. Pic.1 is of a Banded Rail which a couple of years back, came into our yard for a few days and shared the food scraps from the bird feeder which twice a day I put on that milk crate.

Before you ask “why the milk crate”, I use that so I can move it easily to a different spot each day so as not to kill he grass. Although these birds are supposed to be common in our area, that’s the first time I ever saw one in over seventy five years living in this area, and as a kid we frequented the bush and swamps all around the area constantly. What’s more I’ve never seen one since this picture was taken. He just appeared one day, stayed for a few days and just disappeared again.

While Jean is on the topic of spikey brom’s, here’s a picture of a magnificent specimen of a Dyckia brevifolia. The container is over two feet across and it was grown by a friend of mine.

Sorry, I have to go so I’ll catch up with the rest of you tomorrow.

All the best, Nev.