X

I should be eXiting stuff like this and Xing things off my "to do" list ... not joining in more stuff ... but when I found This I couldn't resist joining in (how could I resist something like "Wednesday ABC? lol) ... even if I only keep it up for a while until I get busy or whatever ...

hmmmm ... If I understand how this thing works, we should be posting something about the letter X ... er ... I picked an easy week to join didn't I?

Actually ... X is not that hard ... not when you know that you have photos of an Australian plant that just happens to be called a Xanthorrea ;-)

... and yes - it is a real plant - if you don't believe me check it out here - http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1145455.htm

(not that the picture is that great or anything, but it does prove they exist and I am not making the name up!)

Now ... where did I put those photos? ... or ... more importantly - because my photos are sorted out according to when they were taken - when did I take take those photos? LOL

I don't know when I took the photos I was thinking of ...

- they were some that I know I have taken at several different times, mostly in the bush around this area - in the hills near here and in some areas a bit further away while on Land Rover Club trips/etc - and I have even put some of them on my blog a year or 2 ago - here

... and yes - it was for a similar reason I am posting X things here now!
so ... to save repeating myself here - if Xanthorreas are not enough X stuff - then go to that post and see some more X things ... none are X-rated, but there are pictures of Xylem, Xylol, an XS650, Xanthorreas, "chemical X", X-rays AND an X-ray machine! ... no picture of xanthan gum, but there is a link to my Xanga blog (that I never post to) and a picture of some xylophagous xylophiles ... and a few other odd things ... lol

... but, when I went looking for those Xanthorrea photos, I found these photos instead - I had forgotten about these!

I took these photos in April 2007, up in some hills near Mum and Dad's place on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland ...

The Xanthorreas are the spiky things - the trees in the background are gum trees (Eucalyptus)

here are some more - this time showing the trunks that some of the species have:

... now you can see why they are also known as "grass trees" - lol

and here is a scribbly gum ("the scribbles" on the bark are actually caused by an insect that attacks this particular species of gum tree) and some more Xanthorreas:

and no - the tall spikes are not garden stakes or poles - they are the Xanthorrea's flower spikes!

... these ones have finished flowering - the spikes will probably all end up falling over/get broken off/etc before the next flowering season - each time they flower they grow a tall spike which is covered in buds which open up into white flowers as the spike finishes growing (and if the spike is in the middle of growing and there is a really hot day they can wilt and end up bent over or even all twisted/curly instead of straight - I used to like finding the weird shaped ones in the scrub when I was a kid!

Talking about finding photos ...
(and this also kind of fits in with X - and it being an "unknown")

... while getting lost in cyberspace, and finding out about this ABC thingy, I looked at a few other blogs of people who are doing it and found this blog post (about what the cat dragged in - lol)

and I left a comment on it ... and I also spent half an hour searching for the photos of a particular B%&%^ grasshopper we get around here, so I could stick one of them on to my previous blog post and link to it ... but do you think I could find it? - no - so now here I am looking for something else and what do I find instead ... yes - the grasshopper!



problem was ... I remembered taking these photos, and I remembered seeing these grasshoppers while on a nature walk (with a group of people) in the local grasslands ... trouble is ... turns out I actually took these photos in the back yard on a different day than the one the nature walk was on! LOL


The amazing thing is ... I think the grasshopper on that blog was in Italy ... the link that said what someone had identified it as showed a similar one that is found in America and this one here is similar too (in fact this one looks more like the Italian one than the American one does ... but looks can be decieving) ... of all the thousands (millions?) of grasshopper species around the world ... or even just how many there are in each country - and there end up being some that are so darn similar but are at opposite ends of the Earth!

anyway ... X is also what one does against a WRONG answer when marking a test/etc ... or to cross out a mistake ... and I think deciding to go blog surfing last night was a mistake - because I am still here - and it is not last night any more! (it is after 5am and the sun is coming up!) oops?