A lesson in camouflage

Collecting the washing from the line just before yet more rain gave the kids a chance to explore "camouflage". 

Here is a moth as we found in on a piece of clothing.....

A quick look underneath revealed a pretty underside....

Here is a better look at the underside patterns...

And camouflaged again on a plant base...

We identified this moth as a Red-lined Geometrid.

Grassy box gum woodlands to end a year of work

I decided to spend the last day of work for the year out in the field... as the kids were already on school holidays they came too.  We went out on an excursion to an on-farm grassy box gum woodland - here are some photos from our day. I think the pictures speak for themselves.

We were exploring some of the wildflowers - spring is late here as we were at about 900m ASL.

Here's a Blue Pincushion - Brunonia australis.

The kids got into recording the plants they saw.....

Our youngest boy ended up with a list of over 15 local wildflowers for the day (as a botanist I got a rough list of 45 species so I think that's great effort for a seven year old)

This is a close up of the flowers of the Blue Devil - Eryngium ovinum

The Blue Devil - flowers in bud

The star-like arrangement of the flowers on the Blue Devil

The kids found lots of snake skins... there must be lots of shiny snakes getting around

Exploring animal habitats in a grassland - the kids found a small scorpion here.

 A Fringe Lily - Thysanotus tuberosus - I love the fringes on the edge of the petals in this species. 

All in all we all had a great morning out exploring nature and it was a great way to finish work for the year. 

Thanks John for being the caretaker of such a great grassy box gum woodland.

Harvesting summer berries

Last year we planted three types of bramble berries (raspberries, loganberries and boysenberries) in the back yard and we are now getting our first harvest - just a year on.

The kids cannot wait to get out and harvest a small container of berries each day.

It has been great to see the excitement the kids show at harvesting and eating foods from the backyard.