It's been a sad week.

Coastal sword-sedge: Lepidosperma gladiatum.
On Sunday an old friend died. He wasn't old, I'd known him a long time. Not as well as I could have but he was a very kind and intelligent man who knew more than anyone about Perth's local species.
Greg was a former boss of mine at the revegetation nursery in North Fremantle. He was the friendlier face of the two managers, though still seemed a little intimidating at first meeting, tall and seemingly surly at times. He did however have a very dry sense of humour and had some interesting stories of growing up around Fremantle.

Making thousands of cutting of sticky Scaevola crassifolia was much more fun when Greg was in the room. Any question about local plants you could ask and he could tell you. Some of my favourite local species remind me of him because we made many many cuttings of them or he tested me on their names while out looking for cutting material. For a boss he was an excellent guy.

We'd been waiting for Verticordia season to come and were going to go and visit him and his family in the country where they moved to a few years ago. He'd told us that there were lots of different species and he knew a great spot to show them to us.
I'm glad he got to move out to the country for a while; to the heart of the beautiful wildflower country.

So many things remind me of him because I love so much of the vegetation he did. I'm going to be a complete blubbering mess at his funeral. I think there will be a lot of us there the same way. He will be missed by many people.