Roasting on the deck

Best day for some time so I spent quite a while in the garden today, staking up wind-blown shrubs, finding somewhere to tie up our potted Christmas tree and potting up ferns. My Blip today is of a couple of Blechnum cycadifolium (now to be known as Lomariocycas cycadifolia, as if you didn't know!) which are endemic to the Juan Fernandez islands off the coast of Chile and just about hardy here. They are technically tree ferns, but are apparently extremely slow to form a trunk, so it's unlikely that I shall be climbing up it!

In front of them is a tray of Parathelypteris japonica, a Japanese fern which I grew from spores.  I sowed them in 2012, so you can see that fern propagation is a slow process!

By mid-afternoon I'd had enough so we took a chance and sat out on the deck. The sun was out, but kept sliding behind huge clouds. It got better though, and the thermometer registered 20 degrees in the shade. When I put it on the table beside us in full sun it swooped up to 37.5! And to think that at the same time yesterday we had a severe hailstorm!

While we were sitting there a coal-tit landed on the top of the tree fern trunk which I'm using to grow a bromeliad, obviously gathering nest material, but when I got up to fetch the camera it flew away and didn't come back. Pity - it would have made a different Blip!

Random Quote of the Day: 'We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.' - Jerome K. Jerome.