From the category archives:
Far treats here are the changing interactions of mountain and sky. After the rain I watch from my dripping verandah as Omo-white clouds boil and steam in and out of the nips and tucks of the densely forested southern slopes. Wisps linger to lick the gullies clean before joining the rising mass above. Closer to [...]
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It’s Autumn, and my yard is being coloured– by more than autumn leaves. The indigenous Bleeding Heart Tree (Omalanthus populifolius) that I raised and planted shows how it got its name with its bright red veins that seem to drip to colour the lower leaves. The first bunches of wattle blossom have burst out of [...]
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I don’t plant annuals, so my garden is never the riot of colour that others manage. I rely on bushes and bulbs to surprise me with blossoms. Outside the house yard, the surrounding bush does the same. Lately there has been an explosion of blossom on a select few of the Angophora floribunda trees. The [...]
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The forest here never ceases to surprise me with the apparently infinite number of plants or fungi that I have never seen before. This tall orchid has appeared right beside the grey gum which is right beside the outdoor loo. I walk past here daily — did I miss it yesterday or has it come overnight, [...]
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The cycle of boss tenants around here changes so often I hardly have time to adjust. With the quoll absent I’d grown used to having all my roses eaten by the possum. When I found the dead possum in the yard I didn’t assume it was the only one, but perhaps its territory – [...]
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Drivng back from the Gloucester district a few weeks ago, I passed above the very steep and narrow, very special gully near Dungog where a remnant rainforest of giant trees like figs and stinging trees and white cedars stand tall and proud amidst a dense jungle of vines competing for the light. I am always [...]
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I have two of these shrubs planted in my yard. They are native, although not indigenous to the area, but this is my garden after all. I think they are Melaleuca ericiflolia, or Swamp Paperbark. This Spring everything seems blessed with an abundance of blossoms, in excess of years past. This butterfly is taking full [...]
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My shed is made from rusty but sound old corrugated iron, with no charm in shape or design to allow me to call it ‘rustic’. So it has to be disguised. Originally a lovely Madame Carrière climbing rose graced the eastern end, but the possum’s munching has almost made that disappear. This spring however, for [...]
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Just spring, and another of my old-fashioned camellia bushes has come into bloom. Grown from cuttings taken from the garden of an old house in Port Macquarie, this one is lolly pink, streaked with strawberry. A candy camellia. Ain’t she sweet? In a less domesticated part of my yard, three native plants have formed a [...]
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My spindly Buddleias can’t be called bushes because they never get bushy enough, despite my annual pruning. But the stems that do shoot and flower each year affirm the plant’s common name of ‘Butterfly Bush’ nevertheless, because those creatures love it. These are white buddleias, rather than the more common purple, and mostly I have [...]
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I have now managed to prune four of my fruit trees so as to be able to net them later. It has to be gradual, as my thumb joints don’t like too much secateur work at a time. One of these trees, the nectarine, had so many closed buds that I felt like a murderess [...]
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Each year the front yard explodes with the bounty of winter-flowering bulbs: tuberoses, jonquils of at least five different types, including the highly-perfumed and multi-layered clusters of the Erlicheers, and the dainty arches of the snowdrops. I know the latter are properly named ‘snowflakes’, but childhood memories and habits, as well as their drooping stems [...]
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Exisle, my publishers, have made a special arrangement for my web site visitors — you can buy Mountain Tails at a special 20 per cent discount by ordering from the Exisle website and quoting the coupon number MT2009; you can use that coupon any number of times.
A candid meander through my life up here on my remote mountain wildlife refuge, answering the oft-asked question 'Why do you live way out there?'
