A Sign!

And so it begins.

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful that the Sunshine Coast Council actually acknowledges the coming "holiday" season by its proper name, but once again in a city, no, a REGION which relies on tourism for its principal income, surely this effort at street decoration could be described as paltry!

To be fair, there is a matching sign on the other side of the street, (which has a more generic wish, no doubt to appease those who would wince at the use of the word "Christmas" while happily buying their cards with snow-scenes on them....) .  Seriously, do two little flags in the main street of a major suburb send an adequate message that we are grateful for your tourism dollar and will do what we can to make your stay a joyous and festive one?

Thank goodness for the good will of the traders in town.

Merry Shopping under Christmas skies!
Woombye



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Cafe Venice

When new it would have been cheap, poorly fitted, unwelcoming perhaps and may have been marked as "a good try" as cafe fit outs go.   Now though, with a few year's of neglect and a bit of tatter about the place it all seems to work in an almost authentic sort of way.

And lunch for five dollars is about as good as it gets.

Great stuff!

Cafe Venice
Maroochydore

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Eclecticism

Genuine Victorian era cast iron lace sits happily beside Javanese "antiqued" carving in happy juxtaposition. The lace, no doubt scrounged from a building more ancient than any on the Sunshine Coast, is the face of a counter in a coffee shop.  

It's a covering of some genius I think.   Look closely, between the crazed paint and rusting panels, you'll see coffee spills streaking down the backing, taking the shiny newness off the plastic, making it look as though it's been there for ever.

I'm not sure what the Health Department think, but I don't care.

Maroochydore.

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Over-exposed.

The building is called "Sea" which is what it overlooks at Maroochydore, as well as a six-lane feeder road, a busy intersection, a caravan park and countless other not quite fully developed or perhaps well-utilised would be a kinder description, pieces of urban infrastructure.

There's a certain etherial quality about this photo which is a little accidental.  Something to do with looking into the midday sun.  The camera's idea of squinting I think.

Maroochydore.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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The passing of the breeze-way..

Sometimes I wonder how some things became synonymous with beach side living.   I "get" the concrete "breeze blocks" and the outdoor space which now would be called a patio or a deck,  but which back then was ever so much more descriptively a "breeze-way".  What a lovely term.  Let's do what we can to bring it back into common use!

What I don't get is the array of clam and bailer shells, well weathered and no doubt souvenired from a reef barely five or eight hundred kilometres from here, definitely not locally sourced.   I'm not suggesting anything illicit.  That was "what was done"  in the sixties, a time when the world would never run out of anything.

They were quite a common artefact back then, declaring in the way that signs made in China which proclaim things like "gone fishing" do today, that this house is at the beach.

Mooloolaba.

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Not great for getting the washing dry.

Great weather for all those little plants though!

Dicky Beach

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Bike Hooks.

We don't actually get out a lot these days, but this was a rare moment between house and plant nursery.

The cafe is in Woombye (search this blog) and is notable among other things as it is one of, if not the only business in town that doesn't have the word "Woombye" in the business name.

It's the hooks that took my eye, (as well as the splendid coffee and perhaps even marginally more splendid genuine French lemon meringue tarts) - they are there to hang your bicycle out of the way of others.  No doubt they'd be particularly useful on that odd occasion when you are having trouble with the car and are in desperate need of a coffee or perhaps lunch.

It did occur to me that they would also serve as a convenient place to store unruly children in the unlikely event that one's quiet enjoyment of  the surrounds be put at risk of disruption.

Hugga Mug Cafe
Woombye.

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We've come to buy ONE.

But it's so hard to decide, in the end I think we left with fifteen plants, thanks in no small part to Sue who continued to ply us with baby plants in all sorts of shades, at prices that seemed to become more reasonable even as our budget began to crumble!

When one is in a greenhouse that looks like this, one must hold one's wallet and one's resolve very very firmly.

The trouble is, collecting the things is quite addictive apparently.

Bromeliads of Australia
Palmwoods.


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By appointment only.

The sign on the internet said that visits to the nursery were by appointment only, but we hadn't noticed that and so we just turned up and were greeted as soon-to-be members of the bromeliad family.  

These things originate in the South American jungle, but they seem to exist quite happily in our own open, dry environment as the plants lining the paths to the greenhouses attest.

Palmwoods

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Bromeliads! (not pineapples)

Late at night while poking around the world wide web, looking for things to fill a small space in the garden,  I discovered a bromeliad nursery almost within shouting distance.

I know that it would have been quite easy to simply order online, but the lure of talking to a human being about these amazing plants was too great.   Normally we have a distinct preference for Australian native species, preferably ones that are appropriate to our region at that, but the prospect of planting something that will sit in the shade, mind it's own business and usually not die or even sulk if no-one pays attention to it proved too great, which is how we found ourselves at first light on the road to Bromeliads of Australia!

Palmwoods.

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Bees on the buzz.

The backyard theme is going to continue for a time I'm afraid, partly because that's where I've been spending a lot of time of late.

I've been moving a couple of my bee hives much to the consternation of the residents within them, and they settle down in due course.  I have no fear of being stung though as these are tiny Australian native stingless bees Tetragonal carbonara (follow the link to a wikipedia outline).

As far as the photograph is concerned, I was trying to capture the depth and freneticism of the swarm, and discovered in the process it's not an easy thing to do!

Dicky Beach.

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Umbrella Fern

This is a strange photo if I do say so myself.  It's a very small bee (more on them tomorrow) behaving like a fly, slightly out of focus because it's moving so rapidly, but the real star of the shot is the little fern.  

To give some scale, the bee is no more than 4mm long (about 3/16"), the longest leaf on the plant about seven centimetres or three inches, but it's a baby and one that I'm quite excited about.

It's an umbrella fern, a native to the forests not far from here, with fronds that one day will grow to two or three feet and by then its height will be around four feet.    (Do I really need to do the metrics as well?)

The reason for my excitement is that I have a couple of them planted now, and I'm hovering over them in a way that only people who have planted new plants or have small babies will understand.  They are available for purchase now thanks to the efforts of a young floraculture expert who discovered a means of cultivating them.  If you are interested you can read the story here.

For the time being, until someone figures out the secret, I think this may very well be a genuine, Sunshine Coast exclusive product, currently exported internationally for use in the cut flower industry.

Palmwoods.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Window of dreams

The real estate agent's (realtor's) window is the same as any of its ilk from all over the world.  In fact that's the message this one is sending us in those little dark panels - it has a world-wide connection and therefore is extremely credible.   But before one get's excited about the prospect of living in say Madagascar, the only stock for sale seems to be within a few kilometres of here.

But we can dream.

Caloundra

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Once was green

This little row of shops in Montville was once a ghastly mid-green.  Now it's being transformed into something a bit pink, or perhaps that's cream.

I think I like the bits where the painting is half done, where there's a semblance of weathered texture about the place.   Despite that, soon it will be back to a crispy well maintained example of its former self, in an ever so slightly more palatable colour!

Montville.

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Agapanthus

I don't really "get" Agapanthus plants. They thrive in sunlight and temperate climates, yet look as though they were meant to be when planted in sub-tropical gardens as well.

The flower tells nothing of the form of the plant, so no points for the education value of this photo!

Montville

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Camphor Cottage

A house repurposed as a coffee shop.  It was not common for external timber walls to be left in an unpainted state, or perhaps it was and there are few survivors.    Our climate is such that unpainted timber has no chance of survival unless as is the case here, it is protected by a very deep verandah overhang.

Camphor Cottage, presumably named for the giant camphor trees surrounding it.

Montville.
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Look up then.

When all else fails, look up - no pesky chairs up there!

That's a tree fern blotting out the sky, and a huge camphor laurel providing shade while we sip our coffee and poke in the crumbs of our scones.

Montville

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Foiled by a chair

Sitting as we were, waiting for our coffee to arrive in the gardens of the Camphor Cottage in Montville.   I thought I'd try to capture the essence of the garden surrounding us.  It was by and large an unsuccessful exercise, this shot came close, shame about the chair doing its best to flick a pair of "rabbit ears" behind the tree.

Montville.


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Monsterio

The Monsterio Deliciosa if Blogger's stupid spell checker has allowed it to stay spelled correctly, is  native to the rain forests of southern Mexico.   It turns up in lots of places round here, particularly in gardens with a forest - feel.

Those giant leaves are the only ones in the plant kingdom with naturally occurring holes in them apparently.

In a shop garden.

Montville.

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Street reflected in a pair of board shorts.

Bulcock Street, Caloundra, reflected in a surf shop window, board shorts hanging behind.

Caloundra

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The Long Wait!

Things have been just a little chaotic "on this side of the keyboard" in recent times. In between a dose of 'flu, house renovating, not getting the kitchen and bathroom details, or the planting plan on paper, and the usual rounds of fiddling with switches on the City Daily Photo Portal and the other blogs, all the while hovering just above the point of falling stupendously behind on this photo a day thing, we couldn't imagine fitting in a visit to a nursery to get the rest of the garden underway.

A few simple strokes of the keyboard had a few hundred teensy baby plants from the lovely folk at Australian Plants Online at our door.  They don't come pre-planted though, which gave an excuse for even more procrastination on those other tasks.  For now like the parents of every newborn we tend to  hover over them watching their every move.  In a week or two we'll just stand back and wait for them to turn into beanstalks...  or forest.

Dicky Beach

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More holiday architecture.

Not entirely satisfied with yesterday's shot, I tried another angle.

The building with the yellow?  Now that is what was happening in the seventies.  I like the noughties version better.

Caloundra

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Timeless.

It's a warm but murky evening, and I don't have a photograph for the day, there's not enough light to show the building in it's modern white livery, so it ends up looking a bit "seventies magazine" perhaps.

Actually it is a bit seventies looking in bright sunshine as well.  Cheap buildings for cheap holidays, entirely vacant at the moment waiting for the next round of happy vacationers.

Caloundra

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Spied 'er

This little girl is a Saint Andrew's Cross spider (Argiope keyserlingi)  She's not a huge specimen as these things go, probably eight or so millimetres across the the shoulders (that's about three eighth's of an inch).  

The "shadow" is a male, who no doubt has been invited into her parlour for an afternoon in the shade of the leaf which glows above.

I must roll around upside down in my garden more often!

Dicky Beach

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Pandanus

I can't think of anything to say that's suitable for publication, so I'll just note that these are the aerial roots of a Pandanus palm, I liked the lighting, and leave it at that.

Dicky Beach.

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Cluster housing.

One gets the impression that each new building has to stand on tippy toes to see the beach over the one in front.

I can't wait for the next to appear further up the hill, but I'll bet no-one is anxious for the owners of the house to redevelop.

Bulcock Beach

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Not snow, with a small orange leaf.

Yes I could have cropped out the leaf, or faked it and positioned it in the composition "just so", but I thought I would see if it was sufficiently distracting to become the focal point of the photo.

Hmmm..   This is sand by the way, covering a timber boardwalk adjoining a concrete path.   Wind can move tons of the stuff, and I have no idea who moves it back.

Bulcock Beach.

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Back to nature.

I was taken by the faded colour of the stamen (I think that's what the red things are - not petals?) and then I noticed that at the heart of every flower giant ants were having their wicked way with the pollen.

Nothing more to see here, I still don't own a macro lens, and the telephoto was at home!

Dicky Beach

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Kite eating tree.

For those for whom the grammar is unclear, this is not a photo of a kite eating a tree.  The reverse is in fact happening.   A kite eating tree is a tree which eats kites, the species was famously discovered by Charlie Brown many many years ago and until now I thought it was some sort of exotic overseas kind.

Here a Norfolk Pine has obviously undergone some terrifying genetic mutation.

Bulcock Beach

© Sunshine Coast Daily Photo - Australia

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Ephemeral

This month's City Daily Photo theme is "Ephemeral", and there is probably nothing that fits that theme more than the constantly changing line of white foam on a beach near you.

Don't forget to visit the theme day portal at this link.


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