garden

Damp glory

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Typical of April, it’s been raining here, offering the sort of disappointingly drizzly days I associated with Saturdays when I was a child. The main splash of colour I see from my desk is the Glory Vine, the grapeless ornamental grape vine that decorates and shades my verandah.

Its job nearly done for the year, the leaves are rapidly changing colour.

But not uniformly or in unison. Some are already deep burgundy with blackish veins, presaging their winter demise, while others stay summer green, stained at the edges with strawberry juice.

In between these extremes there are pale lemons and limes, vivid rusts and scarlets, splotches and streaks like blood, a riot of colour dripping with raindrops — just for me.

Degrees of familiarity

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This young wallaby mother has taken to sleeping up against the western wall of the cabin. As the eaves are wide, it is usually dry and warm there, with heat reflected from the mud walls and the rock base further along.

She is quite relaxed about me walking up and down the nearby steps. The other day her joey poked its pink and only thinly furred face almost out of the pouch — just to see who was talking to its mother.

A brief hello and it popped back in. I am going to enjoy watching this one grow up.

Other wallabies, like this male, choose the warm dirt and cosy sides of the excavation trench for the bathroom. The latter hasn’t progressed at all, as I am too busy, but if it makes a playground or cubby or daybed for the wallabies, that’s a plus anyway.

Although it is wallaby world here, the regular kangaroos are gradually getting used to me. This trio of adolescent kangaroo boys is new, and properly wary of coming into the open yard. They stood and sniffed and looked and turned their ears every which way before entering.

Shade magic

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Each year the Crimson Glory Vine powers up from its woody trunk and heavily pruned short stems — and goes crazy along my western wall. I am amazed anew at its vigour. 

Before it begins to live up to its colourful name, I wanted to celebrate its green and growing summer stage.

Not only does it lace in and out of my verandah lattice, giving shade, and protection from wild summer storms, but it stretches right across the mud wall.

Each year it reaches further and this year for the first time it has made the rear extension. Next year I may not have to put up that shadecloth.

On the main western wall the greenery brings shade to the unused door and the upper fixed window; there is a leadlight window to the right of the door, but so densely shaded that it is invisible.

All from one plant! Magic — and free. And far more beautiful than shadecloth!

Giving up the garden

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Lately, with the aytpically tropical afternoon storms and heat, the grass had been growing at such a rate that I couldn’t keep up with it. I had to wait until afternoon before it was dry enough to mow and by then it would be raining again.

A bout of illness which took away any energy to seize mowing opportunities sealed my decision. I needed help.

Life is a compromise and I was about to make a big one. In essence, bugger the roses, come in and eat my grass!
One late afternoon I opened all four gates into the house yard. You will not have your wallaby photos obscured by netting from now on.
Slowly they ventured in. Wallabies first. The wallaroo looked on disapprovingly from outside the fence, where he stayed. Kangaroos are coming in too, but not close yet.
Soon they were everywhere, and over the next few days some began to rest inside the yard, using the shade of buildings and trees during the day. Some were more calm than others, some staying still as I walked past, others bolting in panic.
I immediately cleaned some strategic windows so I could take photos, like this laid-back wallaby. I enjoy observing the process of familiarisation. This is a new era of living here for me — and my neighbours.

It was actually a great relief to have given up the struggle to maintain the yard in a manner for which I have no time – but I have to take deep breaths as I watch them stripping the roses!

Just leave the citrus alone please — I silently beg, hoping they appreciate the spirit of compromise under which I have done this.

Free diamonds

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After showers, if the air is still enough, for a very brief period before the sun soaks up the raindrops — I am given diamonds.

Every tiny leaf holds a trembling drop of water that catches the sunlight to sparkle and shimmer. The magic only works while the light is at a certain angle, so I always know to cherish the moment and run for the camera!
Even my hodge-podge of a vegetable garden fence is transformed; for a few minutes its strips of netting new and old, large and small, cobbled together as a snake barrier, become a thing of beauty.

Nashi robbers

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Usually the parrots and I share the crop from my two large Nashi pear trees. I get hundreds of fruit from the lower branches and they take even more hundreds from the higher ones.

Nashis ripen well off the tree so I can pick them when big enough, but not quite ripe, and layer them in foam boxes indoors. If I get a large wheelbarrow full from each tree I am happy. Last year I had so many I made Nashi pear wine, or Perry.

They are different varieties, as is needed for cross-pollination: Hosui, with grainy brown skin, and Nijisseiki, a smooth greenish-yellow. Their texture and taste are different too, and the Hosui ripens to a honey sweetness that is foreign to anyone who has only tried Nashis straight from a supermarket.

But this year there is not a single fruit left on either tree. The entire crop has been eaten or knocked to the ground, along with a great many leaves, now turning black amid the mushed fruit. As you can see, they haven’t left me any salvageable scraps.
Crimson Rosellas like this one are a major culprit but so are the red and green King Parrots, who are more elusive — or guilty.

A damp end to 2009

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Christmas is over and it’s been raining steadily on the mountain since Christmas night. Welcome gentle rain falling from cloud cover that is allowing a pale warm light through as well –and probably putting a light charge into the solar batteries as well.

I have moved the car out of the carport so it can have the dust washed from its once-bright red duco.

Everything green is even greener; I try not to watch the grass growing or think of the mowing ahead of me when it stops and dries out. But that’s next week.

This week I have a good excuse to stay inside tapping away on the computer, working on my next book.
Beyond occasional emergency dashes I am confined within the cabin and the verandah’s dripping edges.

From here I can see the little dam rainspotted and filling back up to its reedy edges, and a young kangaroo mother and child grazing beyond the fence, their fur much darker in the rain. They seem unbothered by the weather; I assume they are warm and dry beneath their bedraggled coats.

I know we’d both prefer this to heat and fire-danger.

Native garden

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Without the need to sow or prune or feed, native plants appear, thrive and flower on my yard, where and as they choose.

One of the most common and obvious flowering plants is the Twining Guinea Flower (Hibbertia scandens), whose bright clear yellow blooms are easy to spot. I have been told it is also called Snake Bush because, when not climbing, apparently its broad leaves make a good hiding place for snakes.

A better climber that takes advantage of any stalk or stem is the daintier Wombat Berry (Eustrephus latifolius var. angustifolius) to the left, with narrow leaves and clusters of pale pink flowers that develop into bright orange berries. Don’t ask me what wombats have to do with it!

On looking closer at this little pocket of my self-sown garden, I saw it had an inhabitant – a green and pink and hairy caterpillar, which I cannot identify.

Toona baby

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toona-1My little Red Cedar (Toona australis) trees are putting forth new leaves. These are of bronzed burgundy red, although the trees are not named for that, but for the rich red of the timber when cut.

Two-by-two, one pair above the last, on opposite sides of the stem, they raise themselves higher.

 
 
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I walk closer to feel the new growth, expecting softness, fragility. As I put my finger gently underneath the newest arrival, it seems to curve firmly around my finger, its strength as surprising as a new baby’s reflex — and as charming.

Orchid fruit

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orchid-fruit-1The spectacular flower spikes of my King Orchids are long devoid of their blossoms, studded with only the tiny gold memories of where they were once attached.

But last week I noticed that three of the spikes bore ribbed green lumps at their ends. One had twins!
orchid-fruit-2Up close they are elegantly sculpted, puffed and blown up like gooseberry paper cases, but no delicacy there; firm and fleshy, with a gold stripe down each rib, smart as the Tin Soldier’s trousers.

A new orchid

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potato-orchidThe 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, encouraged by the damp weather?

It is a total stranger to me — and there is a whole little family of them shooting up through the fallen leaves and bark. At first glance, the shorter ones, unopened, looked like they could be fungi.

My orchid book says it is a Potato Orchid, and I can see why, for the knobbly brown buds. But the opened flowers are prettier than potatoes — their shyly flared frills are fresh and white against the café au lait of their bells. (There is another orchid with the same common name and it looks nothing at all like a potato!)

The botanical name is Gastrodia sesamoides — meaning like sesame seeds — but how? If they are going to name the flower for the bud I’d say peanut rather than either potato or sesame.

I simply cannot call it a Potato Orchid.

When the possum’s away…

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crepuscule-1The 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 – verandah, shed and yard – hasn’t been advertised as vacant yet.

My roses are now covered in leaves and buds and blossoms; some of the varieties I haven’t seen in bloom for several years and I can’t quite accept that they won’t be munched off any night now, so I am rushing about and photographing them.

Maybe this verandah climber, the Crepuscule, doesn’t believe it either, as it’s having a most flamboyant flush, high and low and hanging in between.
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