Taking A Wander Up The Hill Driveway.

The following are two videos showing what's growing on either side of our hill driveway  .... there's lots and lots of green!!!!  You'll get to see some of the trees and palms that are around this part of the property.

Bauhinia variegata 'alba' or 'candida' - White Bauhinia

In the outdoor garden beds at my place there are no lovely perennials that show their terrific colours every year ... or masses of wonderful foliage plants that add form and texture to the planting.  No, there are, however, quite a few very drought and sun hardy shrubs or trees that grow in the poorest of soil on the rocky hillside that makes up my property.  The foliage on these plants doesn't change colour ... there are no Autumn colours here ... and, aside from the Durantas, most of these plants don't flower at all.

There is however a tree that breaks into bloom in late Autumn and adds at least one spot of fabulous colour to the usually green garden beds down the driveway ... my beautiful Bauhinia variegata!

It's a striking sub-tropical tree ... very hardy in my dry tropics region.  It will grow to around 8 metres, has a short trunk and spreading branches.  It has distinctive kidney-shaped leaves. 

It gets abundant large fragrant white flowers with lemon-green markings.  These beautiful orchid-like flowers appear in our late Autumn and will continue flowering all through Winter.

The flowers begin appearing when the tree is fully dressed in its large green leaves.  This is the Bauhina as it appears right now ...

 ... and the first blooms have started appearing.

As the flowering continues, the leaves start to drop off until the whole tree is flowering on almost completely leafless branches. 

Here's a view of this semi-deciduous tree when it has dropped most of its leaves in the Winter just before it breaks into full bloom  (photo taken last Winter). 

Now for some photos of the beautiful flowers:

Sunrise in the Bush.

Here in my spot out in the bushland of north-eastern Oz, the weather has turned.  Autumn is nearly over and Winter is approaching.  The temperatures have dropped below 30 degrees C, the days are clear and sunny and the humidity is very low.

As we approach Winter, the sunrises have been spectacular this past week ... and I thought I would share some of the photos I've managed to take quite early in the morning.  That's nothing short of an amazing feat for me ... as I'm not a lover of really early mornings and you won't find me jumping up out of bed when it's still quite dark!

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