Local Trivia

Very local! around my house and yard!
After the big hail storm it took me a little while to discover the amount of damage that had been done to the trees and plants around my yard.  This Leopard Tree is mid way across my back yard and very visible from my back window. Every year it loses some of the leaves but this is what the hail storm did - I could get a good view right through all the leaves and see all the birds that usually hide somewhere in there.

Slowly the dead looking branches flushed with new color and soon after that leaves covered everything again.

This palm tree is in front of the Leopard Tree and shows the hail damage. Some of the fronds were totally dead - many more badly shredded and right in the middle is a new green frond. However it will take a while for some of the palms to look really good again.

It was the palm trees out the front garden that were the most surprising. I assume it was a response to the severe weather and then the soaking rain we got a few days later. They all put up flower stems and then set seeds at a similar time.

This is an appropriate place to say that when I had a tradesman go up on my house roof he found a lot more hail damage than I had expected. Both sky-lights were broken, the roof itself pitted quite badly in places, the solar hot water system damaged, and the two roof vents on the shed roof broken.  Now I am waiting for the insurance to make up their minds!!! It will all have to be replaced. Anyway there is no water coming inside so no-one seems in a hurry
 I have recently passed another milestone. It is 5 years since I was diagnosed with macular degeneration and started getting injections in the eyes to control it. I am very grateful that I can still read and drive the car and I guess the rest is not important in the long run. I must say that the injections are never comfortable. When the eyes are too uncomfortable I retreat and remind myself that ' this too shall pass'!
Enough of the doom and gloom. The other day there was a heavy rain fall and much of the property next door to me had a few inches of water lying over it. Australian White Ibis found this and came down to poke their beaks into the softened ground and hunt for whatever they could find. These birds have got a bad name because they are very good at finding all the rubbish that we humans discard - they are commonly called 'dump chickens'  .  On nice clean grass like this they look too good for that name!

For more pictures from around our world visit Our World Tuesday.