garden

Familiar faces

by

As at my last two homes, I see a lot of wildlife just from my decks and verandahs, perhaps because I choose homes that are part eyrie.

Not having heard kookaburras here yet, I was delighted to see this one last evening, just metres away from my side verandah. Such a handsome fellow!

Next day, I heard the unmistakable continual rusty sawing of a young Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoo. Rushing out to that same verandah, I spotted him, large and loud, carrying on as only a baby magpie can beat.

This equally handsome fellow was in a Silky Oak, but where was the parent? Not in the same tree…

No, but near enough, busy in a Casuarina, ignoring the whining young. I am so happy that these familiar avian faces are appearing in my new place, making me feel more at home with each visit.

But this place is all about trees; even the clothesline is a pulley system off the high back deck, where I send my washing out into the air space between trees… past the reach of the yellow droppings of birds in the Silky Oak.

Morning benediction

by

Most times I am awake and risen early. Some days it’s more worth it than others. Like today, as the sun rose in just the right spot over the escarpment to be split into morning glory rays of benediction by a perfectly placed tall tree.

Within minutes the sideways rays grew longer, the view brighter. The day was here.

All too soon it settled into the more usual lovely misty layers gently steaming skywards, with only a faint ‘hand of god’ ray visible.

Worth getting up before sunrise to catch that moment? Oh yes.

Watery wins

by

The delicately feathered lilac curls of the native Melaleuca thymifolia are a relief as well as a delight to see, as these swamp-loving small shrubs have only been in for about six months.

They will only grow to about 2 metres and will hide my shed from view for verandah sitters.

Willows love water and my little willow is now taller than me. I did plant it to help soak up a wet spot, and so it does. It will be a magnificent summer shade tree in years to come.

I had bought the cheapest ($30) little fountain I could find online, as a tester. I am amazed at how much it enhances my little pond, adding sparkles and ripples and splashes, varying its spray height with the strength of the sun. I have come to regard it as a little creature, part of the pond life, and I enjoy watching its varied moods. It even works in a sun shower.

The mosses are thick and glowing like furry jewels, with tiny golden fungi flowers bringing bursts of sunshine on a grey day.

While appreciating the bonuses it brings, I am as sick of the rain as this Willy Wagtail, who may not be able to see the watery wins as I do.

But of course with the sort of showers and sun roundabouts we’ve been getting, we are at least blessed with a rainbow now and then.

The Big Wet

by

In one week, another 416mm of pounding rain fell, flooding the creeks and closing the roads, strewing logs and stacking beaver dams at fences and bridges and crossings that got in its way.

The skies cleared one evening and the moisture began to separate into creeks and clouds, as they should. It heralded the dawning of our one fine day… which just happened to coincide with our village Fair!

But the wet returned with soggy monotony, more of the driveway gravel came down the hill to visit … and even more fungi appeared, so large and so many that they were obvious even from a distance.

They popped in gold flushes out of palm tree stumps, in pale lilac ripples out of grass.

Parasols opened in pure white profusion while on the opposite side of beauty, two sole fat white drumsticks turned black and crusty overnight.

Daintiness returned with tiny white pinheads on an exposed dead root.

Mysterious red moss-like filaments on a long and alive casuarina root caught my eye… but is this fungi?

Post-deluge fungi

by

Wet, wet weather and just enough warmth still in the air to cause a whole new aspect of life to come forth and blossom … fungi.

This beauty unfurled out of the top of a palm stump that has sat there unadorned for two years.

Way down in the paddock, a smattering of white glimpsed from the house, demands investigation. Up close they are cinnamon coated narrow domes as babies, maturing to large cream umbrellas still carrying their cinnamon, as flakes.

Walking back up to the house level, a very large single white blob proves to be one that I know, the stunning parasol, Macrolepiota dolichaula.

Its pure delicacy and detail still amazes me, as does the charm of that faint toasted marshmallow blush on top.

On the soggy house lawn there are drifts of smaller lemony circlets that turn up their edges and flash their gills as they age.

I thank Nature for the unexpected flashes of fungi of whatever colour, size or quantity!

Post-deluge frogs

by

It’s autumn, and I welcome the cooler mornings, but we are also having daily deluges more like tropical summer storms.

In the first five days of March we had 124 mm — or six inches if you’re my age — and that’s on top of what we’d already received in 2017. 

By New Year it had become so dry that small native trees were dying, citrus were turning up their toes, my creek had stopped running and its isolated pools were becoming stagnant. 

But from January 2 we’ve now totted up nearly 15 inches!

These brief but astonishingly intense autumn rainbursts make a joke of my carefully planned drainage systems, with pop-up waterfalls taking much of my soil down to the creekflats below. 

They have filled and overfilled the ‘pond’ that has been bone dry for months.

Up close, they looked more like aquatic mini rats, with their pointy noses and long tails.

Next day they seemed to be less often swimming under the water than hanging from the surface vertically, blowing bubbles, opening and closing their mouths in air. 

Clearly not fish nor rats but growing amphibians… froglets, frogs, soon to be adding to the frog chorus here!

Fleeting fungi

by

You have to be quick to capture some fungi at their best. This beautiful, delicately stippled and pleated limey-yellow trio appeared one morning in my mint pot at the back door. The next day they had wilted to an unimpressive brown.

About a metre away these little Chinese-hatted soldiers had popped up in another pot.

In the manure/mulch fill around the pot a sprinkling of small milk coffee domes briefly ‘bloomed’.

Above them, several generations were making good use of a dead stump, frilling and flaring in stages, but remaining as they dried, unlike their more ephemeral ground-dwelling cousins.

Diamonds for breakfast

by

As I’ve never been one for expensive jewellery, the ephemeral gems that nature offers now and then are quite enough to send me into raptures. They are only visible when the night dew has been caught by them, the sun’s light catches them in turn, and I awake in time to catch the sight of the fleeting treat of strings of tiny diamonds.

diamonds-2

They are especially welcome because they appear to decorate the wintry bare of twigs and vines, to interlink the sticks about to be pruned and set wheels of wonder amongst them. This triple display demonstrates that they’re available in a range of sizes.

diamonds-3

diamonds-4

Set amongst the lichened arms, while the sun is behind them, the intricacy of the night’s work in these webs is clear for the moment. Stunning engineering and art.

diamonds-5

And then there’s the slings, the hammocks of gossamer, stronger, more layers, to catch…?

diamonds-6

But if I miss the diamonds, as the sun’s heat intensifies I am given the spectacle of the ground steaming as if I have hot springs just over my garden edge.

Never a dull moment when you live with nature on even a small scale — so long as you take the time to notice it.

Water for birds

by

I had treated myself to a plain terracotta bird bath for my 2015 birthday; then I was given a green glazed one for this year’s birthday.

I couldn’t resist adding some bling with these iridescent stick-on glass beads. They didn’t all stick but nevertheless look pretty.

Not sure yet whether the birds like their bathing Bollywood-style…

The bird baths are for little birds, and lots of those come to drink and splash. But I want to attract waterbirds nearer to the house than the creek.

waters-2

So a few ponds joined by a moat have been dug. We pumped from the creek to fill them at first, to see if they hold water.

Sadly, as you can see by the dropping water level, they don’t. I’ll need to add Bentonite and see if that helps the obvious clay particles to merge and seal.

waters-3

Then I’ll add rocks to the edges and plant or stand pots on the ledges that ought to be under water.

This will give some cover for shy ducks and water hens.

I’m sure frogs and water bugs will find it very quickly. 

I can’t wait — I’m already imagining a solar fountain, a waterfall…

Weavers

by

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the dearth of blog posts lately. The website has been in process of transferring servers and this has been more of a prolonged nightmare than imagined, with many unexpected side effects and hiccups.

Hopefully we can now get back into a routine of weekly posts, where I snap and rabbit on about my wildlife and webmaster Fred turns them into web language.

weaver-1

On a bushwalk I noticed this odd swathing at the base of a tree.

A bug-savvy friend tells me this is probably the home of one of the ‘bag moth caterpillars’ — family Ochrogaster, also called procession caterpillars. Apparently they feed at night on the tree and ‘hide’ in their web during daylight.

weaver-2

Then I found a smaller swathing. Having harvested the Kangaroo Apple bushes which were about at the end of their season, I’d put the oldest fruit in a dish, prior to planting them.

I’d left it overnight on a table on the verandah.

In the morning, I found they were neatly and thoroughly enmeshed by the web of a tiny, hard-working spider.

What amazed me was how it had formed anchor points on the smooth sides of the stainless steel dish. Some superglue!

Morning glories

by

Spring is here, with welcome rain freshening the creek, which had slowed and dropped alarmingly.

Having only one tank here, when I used to have four, is nerve-wracking.

Nights are still cool enough for a fire, and mornings are bright and crisp.

Not so crisp as to make me want to stay in bed, however. I am happy that the light is waking me up earlier, so sunrises are back on my radar.

glories-2

Dews are heavy of a morning, bringing endless varieties of bejewelled webbing designs.

The grand she-oaks are especially favoured, with one branch bearing an unusual flag-shaped web.

glories-3

The small Acacia Baileyana wattle that I planted only months ago had not been forgotten. 

It hasn’t flowered yet, but who needs flowers when you have strings of pearls?

New kids on the block

by

I have reluctantly become a grazier.

These two Friesian dairy steer calves are now our permanent resident lawnmowers, and company for Clancy the horse.

This block is cursed with setaria grass, introduced for cattle, but harmful for horses. That’s it towering over them on the right.

It depletes horses’ calcium, so Clancy needs supplementary calcium, even though he doesn’t prefer the setaria over the kikuyu and couch grasses.

It seemed ridiculously unsustainable to keep paying to have the paddock slashed.

Hence the live solution of pet cows. Handreared, they are gradually getting used to me as I feed them their calf pellets.

My granddaughters have named them Salt and Pepper, given their colourings.

As their owner quipped when he delivered them: ‘At least you’ve saved them from being salted and peppered!’

For they’d have ended up as someone’s weiner schnitzel.

Male dairy calves aren’t good for anything else…

As a vegetarian, I would not have used beef breeds, despite all the advice as to how many quid I could make.

calves-2

Pepper has the prettiest heart-shaped blaze. Salty is the pushiest, which is no doubt why he’s bigger. 

Today they let me stroke them, for the first time since they came a week ago. Very cute!