All the rain has certainly seen native flowers flourish in our nature reserves but it's also created unexpected pockets of beauty around the national capital.
Weeds, very pretty ones at that, and wild flowers have also cropped up on road verges and on median strips, almost like never before (that I can remember, anyway).
It's made grungy, utilitarian spots like the median strip on Hindmarsh Drive resemble a field of wildflowers in Sweden. Well, almost.
And, just recently, a huge number of red flowers appeared out of nowhere on the verge of Mawson Drive in Mawson, just across from the the shopping centre.
The sight was so arresting and so unexpected, I pulled over straight away and took a photo.
It was just a little slice of joy right there near the lights and busy Athllon Drive.
Thanks to the CSIRO and its experts being so handy, I was able to find out what both plants actually were.
Brendan Lepschi, curator of the Australian National Herbarium, at the CSIRO Black Mountain laboratories, quickly came back with a response after I emailed him the photographs.
"The poppy is Ppapver somniferum, which is indeed the species which is grown for opiates. However, this is the wild form, not the form that is cultivated for that purpose," he said.
"The clover is Trifolium incarnatum, crimson clover.
"The species commonly called 'red clover' is T. pratense, which has pink flowers. That also grows around here as an uncommon weed."
(The iNaturalist app can also give you almost instant IDs for most things.)
I love nothing more than walking on places such as Mount Taylor or Farrer Ridge and seeing what a dramatic impact the rain has had on the native flora, not just in recent times, but even in the last year or so.
The yellow ever-lasting daisies formed almost a sea of yellow at times.
It's so uplifting.
But, you know what? So are the weeds.
There is so much clover around at the moment that it makes me want to sit down among them all and make an endless daisy chain.
The poppies waving in the wind on Hindmarsh Drive are just so lovely. I'm waiting for them to be mown into oblivion, but they are still there. (And on that note, the ACT government mowers are doing a champion job up against an enormous challenge of getting all the growth under control. Our local oval was mowed recently and it's like a bowling green and so nice to be on.)
There's no doubt a lot of communities are suffering with more rain falling on already sodden ground.
The Bureau of Meteorology (no acronyms here!) is forecasting rain in Canberra through to Thursday, although petering out to almost nothing by the latter half of the week.
We've been pretty lucky compared to many other parts of the country. No serious flooding but enough rain to make the garden flourish. The weeds in the garden are annoying, but the pretty ones by the road? They make my heart sing.
