Winter is well and truly here at Mount Dandenong, but despite the cold days and wet, drizzly nights, one plant in particular chooses this time of the year to shine – the one and only Winter Rose – Helleborus. These are a few examples of the varieties currently flowering in the garden at Greatrakes (along with a couple of other early season arrivals).
Also making a show during the cold weather are these beautiful little crocus bulbs:
For the first time in the almost 4 years that we have lived here at Greatrakes, we have had snowfalls heavy enough to settle on the ground, not just once, but two days in a row.
Snow started falling in the early hours of Saturday morning and when I woke up around 5:30 am it was quite heavy – there was a covering of around 5 mm of snow on the bluestones along the edge of the front porch. By 7:30 am the sun had risen and the garden was white with a fresh dusting. Sadly over the next hour the snow turned to drizzle and by lunchtime it was all gone.
Then on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, a fresh wave of snow showers hit, and by sunrise the garden was once again white, however this time it kept snowing, and by 9:00 am there were actually some quite heavy snow showers.
This meant that the snow lasted well into the day, with the drizzle not taking over until well after 10:00 am, and patches of snow still visible in the more sheltered areas of the garden well into the afternoon.
Heide thought it was fabulous stuff, but Reinhardt was completely ambivalent about the whole experience, preferring instead to bury himself in among the cushions on the couch.
We took a walk up to Burke’s Lookout on Sunday morning in the glorious sunshine. Meanwhile, down below Melbourne and its suburbs had completely disappeared under a thick blanket of fog.
Our previous web hosting company decided to increase our annual fee by 125%, so we’ve decided to move hosts accordingly.
Unfortunately, 3 years of accumulated crap across the main website and several sub domains meant that the migration of images & posts was turning out to be a bit of a nightmare, so we have decided to take it all down in the short term while we change the look and feel of the whole site.
Our main website, “Rexness.com” will now take on the name of our previous blog site “Greetings from Greatrakes” and will serve more as a blog, including elements of our former photo blog “Rexness Photography”. In the meantime, “Our Travel Diary” and “Vanessa’s Cakes to Share” will spend some time offline before returning as their own sub domains with a new look and feel.
Links to our most visited sites:
