Mosaic Monday - A Garden Visitor.

I have been seeing quite a few of these butterflies in the last couple of weeks.  This particular one caught my eye as it seemed to have a rather tattered wing on one side.

Visit Mosaic Monday's host, Mary at Little Red House

Happy Easter from Downunder.

Wishing all who read this blog a Happy Easter.  

Easter Wishes from the Easter Bilby!

It's now Easter Sunday evening downunder and ... yes it was another dreary, overcast, showery day!  Still there were a few cheery sights in the garden today.

My Tricyrtis x Empress ... Empress Toad Lily is simply bursting out all over with blooms.  This is my very first Tricyrtis and I'm so chuffed with its performance so far.

My Costus productus - Orange Spiral Ginger - flowers non-stop and adds a little ray of sunshine in amongst all the ferns in the greenhouse garden.

Then there's my Tabernaemontana corymbosa 'Sweet Love' with its gorgeous form and stunning, faintly scented flowers.

Sweet Love being so appropriate for Easter Sunday ... I do hope you have a great day spending time with those you love!

Mid-Autumn ... and it's still raining!

April is our middle of Autumn month and it would be great to say that our fabulous autumn weather is well under way ... but alas that is not quite the case. While it's true the humidity levels have dropped considerably and the daytime temperatures are usually just below 30 degrees C, there's something not quite right about the weather for this time of year.  Can you see what's wrong with this picture?

Townsville Forecast

summary	Fri	Sat	Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu
	Showers	Showers	Showers	Clearing shower	Late shower	Mostly sunny	Mostly sunny
maximum	29°C	29°C	29°C	29°C	29°C	29°C	30°C
minimum	23°C	23°C	23°C	22°C	22°C	22°C	21°C

The rain just will not stop!  Today is yet another overcast, showery dreary day ... here is the view out onto the courtyard garden today.

Now don't get me wrong ... I am the world's biggest fan of rain!  Usually we don't get a drop of rain from mid-March to at least mid-December or the beginning of January ... so the sight of rain-clouds approaching and the smell of the impending downpour can send me into absolute delirium!

But after nearly three months of almost negligible amounts of time spent gardening, I'm now suffering a serious case of garden withdrawal!  Sure I've done a few things when the rain stopped for a while ...

I've planted out my white Ozothamnus diosmifolius - an Australian native everlasting daisy ....

and my Baecka 'Mount Tozer'.  These two plants have gone into my 'white' spot in an outdoor garden bed.

I have also managed to do a couple of the usual Autumn jobs ... like trimming back the crotons,

.... and the ixoras ...

as well as the acalyphas.

A few of the potted annuals have struggled through the rain since being planted up at the end of February.  

I think I was being a teeny weeny bit optimistic when planting these at the end of summer ... fancy thinking the 'wet' was over when the summer was over!!!  That has not been the case this year ... and unfortunately another casualty of all this rain and very little sunshine has been my seedlings.  There are very few survivors, so I'll try again in a couple of weeks.

The on-going wet weather has also meant that the greenhouse garden is once again getting rather overgrown ... I'm going to have to do yet another clean-out in there!

We very rarely get rain after the Easter Weekend ... so here's hoping that the fine weather will arrive soon and I can once again slip on those gardening gloves and get out for some quality gardening time.

The Hot, The Loud and The Proud ..... Cordyline.

This is my all-time favourite cordyline.  It's such a no-nonsense, fuss-free plant in a tropical garden ... and it rewards you with fabulous colour all year round through the rain, the drought, the heat, the fierce sun, the stifling humidity and even the arrival of hungry hordes of enormous grasshoppers!  No matter what the seasons throw at this plant, it always comes back!

My contribution to the meme hosted by Plant Fanatic in Hawaii The Hot, The Loud and The Proud

Presenting  ... Cordyline 'Red Wings'.   (You can click on the photos to get an enlarged view)

Up close .....

... and personal!