From the category archives:

Spring

Signs of Spring

It’s September, so it must be Spring, but at this altitude we are often some weeks behind in flowering times. I love the way bulbs have naturalised and thickened into clumps over the years — and I love that wallabies don’t find them tasty. The winter snowflakes and the jonquils of several varieties, both white [...]

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My reptilian residents

As the weather warms up so does the action round here — at least as far as my cold-blooded residents are concerned. My favourite is the sprightly Jacky lizard; perky and patterned and with such dainty digits! I wouldn’t mind a few more of these little blokes darting about the yard. My least favourite is [...]

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Spring heads—and tails

It’s spring! In the bush, dead spars of tree trunks have sprouted flamboyant purple head-dresses as Hardenbergia stems have reached the top and found the light. In the garden the winter bulbs aren’t even finished, the spring ones haven’t started; there are many clumps of green strappy leaves gathering food for the bulbs for next [...]

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Garden gifts

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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Indoor Spring

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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The bounty of bulbs

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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Spring shades

Pinks, mauves, magentas, purples – spring is hitting the full spectrum now in its flower offerings. In the forest, the native Indigofera bushes have burst into prominence with masses of pinkish-mauve pea flowers, carried at about chest-height below the eucalypts. Normally their delicate foliage renders them less visible. Any garden would be graced by these. [...]

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Wild purple

Even before Spring had officially sprung, the forest began to deck itself in royal purple. Twining up saplings, threading through the spiky clumps of Lomandra and Dianella, or just running for glory through the grass — the Purple Coral Pea, Hardenbergia Violacea. It’s also called False Sarsparilla, which doesn’t seem fair, as it’s just being [...]

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