Email and photos from "Frog Applause" reader (madbutnotcrazy)

 Hello Teresa,

I'm glad you love my birds, they mean a lot to me. 

We have 6 adult birds, ranging in age from 6 years down to 1, and 7 babies currently in nests (6 and 1 with different parents).

One of our birds is more tame, she is Koko and is 18 months old.

We are hoping to tame a few of the babies when they are 4 weeks old (this weekend). This will involve feeding them 3 times per day using a liquid formula.

Our birds are all kakarikis (NZ parakeets). They are slightly bigger than budgies. If you look on Youtube for videos of baby kakarikis being fed it is cuteness overload.

I am sending you a couple of pictures of our adults (you can use them if you wish). The yellow bird is our oldest, she is 6.5 years, her name is Pikachu. There is also a photo of a pied male Pepe (5 yo), posing with a budgie for size comparison. 

The other pied bird is our friendliest, Koko (1.5 years old). 

And as a bonus I have included a picture of our wild rainbow lorikeets. There are 3 and they come to our garden every day for fresh pears (I am spending a fortune on pears!).

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Formerly flight suit behind the wheel...

I'm always in awe of my readers and their diverse skill sets. This is "formerly flight suit" who has been a friend and fan for years. Brendan has shared several of his stories with me, and I'm always proud and excited to read them. Thank you, again, Brendan. 

Link to the story that goes with the photo above: here.

Hi, also to B's dad, Steve. Brendan and his dad are both long-time readers. How cool is that?!

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Margueritem's dogs...

Charlie, Murphy, and Annie  (L to R)  I’m so happy that your birds are doing better. 

Margueritem

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Echiums

Referring back to the tall echium plants shown in this blog entry: https://lamefrogapplause.blogspot.com/2021/05/more-beauty-from-garden-of-randyb.html 

In addition to being susceptible to branching in ways they can't ultimately support (especially the hybrids), echiums are also susceptible to cresting or fasciation, a condition of unusual growth that can be triggered by hormones, diseases, infections, and even by insects damaging the growth zone at the tip of a flower stalk.

The first photo shows a normal (left) and fasciated (right) tree echium (Echium pininana) at Jenner, California.  This is one of the parent species of my biennial hybrids.  Note that the flowers on the fasciated plant are all on the top edge of what appears to be a wide sheet of tissue.

The second photo shows a different species, called pride of Madeira (Echium candicans) at Stinson Beach, California.  This species is a perennial shrub.  Normal flower heads can be seen on the plant at the right side of the photo.  The fasciated plant on the left shows several different kinds of unusual growth and development.

-Randy B.

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More beauty from the garden of Randy_B

Teresa,

The first picture is a dragon arum (Dracunculus vulgaris) that bloomed by the walkway to our front door this past week.  The triangular magenta part is the spathe, the black rod is the spadix, and the actual reproductive parts of the flower are hidden at the base of the spadix, deeper in the flower.  On this one, the spathe and spadix are about 18 inches long.  Two other smaller ones are blooming on the other side of the walkway.  Besides the size, the unusual thing about this flower is that it's pollinated by flies... so the spadix smells really bad on the first day it opens.  To my nose, it smells like hot spoiled milk and a gas leak, with a base of dead rat.  We invite neighbors to come smell it every year.

The other pictures are of our hybrid Echiums in the back yard, a cross between the shorter tower of jewels (Echium wildpretii) and the taller tree echium (Echium pininana), both from the Canary Islands.  They're both single-stalk plants; the first kind has red flowers, and the second has pale blue flowers, so the hybrids can be red, pink, pale fuchsia, or pale blue.  The pink one that's blooming is just under 10 feet tall.  The individual flowers are on stems that extend outward with new flowers, so the skinny shape gets a bit bushier.  The other one that's just starting to bloom (more of a fuchsia color) shows some of the hybrid variability, with several branches and an inability to support itself, and it's a bit more than 10 feet tall and still growing.  (The side branches break off under their own weight while blooming.)  These plants are biennials, and they die after blooming and setting seed.  In the full-length photo of the pink one that's fully blooming, you can see what a 1-year-old plant looks like behind the poles on the left side: a low rosette of leaves.  We have six that are at this stage scattered across the yard, and hundreds of new seedlings started this past winter.

Randy_B

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My thanks to Randy and other "Frog Applause" readers who are helping me keep "Frog Blog" afloat while I temporarily struggle with content...