favourite water feature

This is where we like we like to start our day with a nice cuppa. It's very peaceful with the water gently trickling down the rocks. It's just had an annual clean, the algae on rocks gets a bit out of hand, so it's looking it's best at the moment. This was taken early evening, the underwater light in the pond is just catching the rocks.

magnificent moss

we are so glad we had the driveway and paths paved instead of concreted. we were advised to use seconds because there is always a good percentage of reasonable quality ones amongst the load and the poorer ones (which were very few) were used in inconspicuous places. we've had very few weeds come up , but to our delight we have lots of this verdant green moss in our shadier spots. It's worth a click for the larger image to see the detail.

Inspired

Inspired by cheryl's beautiful exhibition of garden images 23.8 perches, I approached our garden this morning with a fresh set of eyes. We truly do have a wonderland of treasure in front of our noses

Litoria Peronii

With this little frog we can see the distinctive markings that give it the commmon name emerald spotted tree frog. They are not normally so visible in the day. This one was in a bromeliad hanging near our back door, it was accidently disturbed and jumped onto this plant. They are slightly warty, I always hope people don't mistake them for cane toads. Double click on photo for better view of emerald spots

tockie

If you like watching long tennis matches you won't mind striped marsh frogs, the noise is very similiar to a tennis ball going backwards and forwards, except after heavy rain then it's like fire crackers on chinese new year. They don't keep us awake,and the neighbours have never complained. So this is tockie the marshie, I can never find them in the day, they are usually under the rocks, I caught this one under torchlight.

check this out

This is our garden chess set, It's made from sandstone and volcanic lava rock. We've just started our first frog garden tournament with the family. It's quite strange playing a game with real pieces on a board after playing online for so long. There is so much more atmosphere and intrigue when you play with the real pieces. I suppose Gameknot ( the chess website) fulfil a need as very few people have the time to play a game through with so many busy lifestyles today.

down the garden path

This is the very back of our block It's mostly tropical plants Bangalow and foxtail palms, cordylines and dracena's. It's still quite young and not yet the jungle look we want to create. The pathway is starting to weather nicely with moss growing between the pavers and babies tears encroaching from beneath the rocks. As the pathway curves around we pass a poinciana tree, (which unfortunately we had to have lopped and poisoned because it was lifting the driveway) to which we've attatched a variety of bromeliads. These plants are actually epiphytic so we are hoping the tree will be completely covered eventually.Then as we round the corner this is our shade section with a rich assortment of subtropical plants. We love to inspect this part of the garden early mornings as the birds are singing and have our first cuppa of the day in front of our water feature

ready to pounce

This L. fallax (eastern sedge frog) is just waiting to pounce on some fruitflies. when our tadpoles first morph we leave a few containers of old fruit peelings around which attracts plenty of fruit fly and other insects. old bits of pineapple is particularly effective.

popular spot

This bromeliad is one of the neoregalias. It sits on the top of our outdoor table and has become a very popular spot for our frogs. you'll spot the green tree frog in the top quarter of the photo, with a close up further up. The following day there was an emerald spotted tree frog in exactly the same spot. I think they must feel feel very secure in these plants .

We'll give our frogs a rest today, this is a grafted eucalytpt outside our bedroom window. It flowered abundantly this summer. It's rootstock is eucalyptus ptychocarpa (swamp bloodwood) chosen for it's hardiness in the normally wet and humid queensland summer. It's a beautiful sight to wake up to on a midsummers morning.

cosy corner

although peron's treefrogs are quite often a grey/fawn colour, I think this one realised it would be well camouflaged as it settled for the day on the back rungs of our gardenseat. We had to look twice when we first saw it.

baby eastern sedge frogs

These little frogs would have to be our favourites, partly because they hang around in the day. some are darker than others, I wonder if thats the different sexes. I must consult the frog society. visitors to our blog are welcome to comment, just click below 

graceful treefrog tadpoles (one week old)

these are our new babies just starting to swim around. As soon as they are a bit bigger we'll transfer them to the ponds. we probably won't see a lot of growth before winter sets in. I think they take about 14 weeks. Although we've got 11 weeks of autumn to go and queensland winters are quite mild I doubt if we'll see them out before spring 

we had the pleasure last week during a night of heavy rain here in brisbane to have some graceful tree frogs breed. sorry the photo's a bit blurred. they laid their eggs in the lily pond (pictured in an earlier post) we transferred them to a bucket of pond water, because although pacific blueyes don't eat tadpoles in the main, they together with a few large perons treefrog tadpoles seemed to be nibbling away at them.

these baby graceful treefrogs generally hang around for about a week before heading for tree tops then we don't generally see them again until they come down to breed as adults 

Sometimes you can get a lovely surprise when you turn your head in the garden. this baby sedge frog is about 9mm long as you can probably tell from thhanging basket ring. 

a shady place in our garden

This is a favourite area of our garden, with a variety of bromeliads, (frogs love them) cordylines and a few native orchids. On the fence we have a number of elkhorns and in the hanging baskets there are a variety of miniature hoyas. We've become more interested in hoyas since an original one that we planted had flowered beautifully this spring/summer. There is a variety of hoyas available, they have exquisite flower heads, some strongly scented. It's lovely to walk through this corner on a summers afternoon when it's bathed in 50% sunlight pleasantly dappled by the overhead trees.