Verandah birds

Must be spring; the swallows are back. Several are squeaking and doing aerobatics out there in the yard’s airspace, but two have claimed that of the verandah.

They’re doing low flying runs from one end to the other, looping out over the lattice gate or though the still un-vine-screened ‘windows.’

Over my computer I watch them alight on the fairy light strings — just briefly. They sway a bit, peep to each other  — and they’re off again. I haven’t found where they are nesting; the old one on the verandah rafter has not even been visited, or not so I’ve seen.

I think it might be nearby and that the aerial maneouvres are to shoo off the magpies as much as to show off.

Today, I also had ‘rosellas in the mist’. The rosies haven’t been visiting the verandah, probably busy raising those green-backed babies, and I don’t know how they twigged that today I’d put out some birdseed, after about a month of none. I don’t like them to count on it.

They were a welcome splash of colour.

Forest fires

Many early colonists thought the Australian bush a drab monotone of greyish green, blinded as they still were by the vivid lime greens and emeralds of their European trees and mist-made lawns.

I hope closer acquaintance taught them to see more clearly – if they hadn’t cleared all the bush around them.

At present my forest’s greens of a million hues are lit by fiery reds and hot pinks as new spring growth announces its presence.

These small ferns (left) prefer the shadier side of the mountain but are particularly beautiful when backlit, set alight by sunshine striking into a clearing. I stopped on the muddy track to capture the moment as their individual tongues of fire flamed amongst the grass.

The sunny side of the forest holds its fires high, blazing in bunches through the dense older growth and across the sky. We may not get autumn colour, but I challenge anyone to say that our eucalypts are drab or lacking seasonal variety. These gum tips are downright pretty!

Out-of-reach roses

This year I have only three varieties of rose in bloom  — all climbing varieties. The others were shrubs but are now mere snapped sticks and stripped stems, some with a topknot of leaves where the wallabies and roos can’t reach.

Last year they all bloomed but the climbing ones were eaten by the possum. Since the quoll seems to have eaten the possum, where these roses have climbed out of reach of the determinedly reaching macropods, they are giving me a fabulous display in this late Spring.

The Crepuscule rose on the verandah is bursting with buds and its ragged apricot blooms are buzzing with bees. This rose has been climbing for about 15 years and its stems are thick and woody and likely to lift the battens on the verandah roof eaves where it snakes around the side, but I can’t bring myself to tell it it stop.

These roses drop their petals fairly quickly when cut, but the other two varieties last well inside. Stuck inside working away on my book, I don’t get outside much now to enjoy them where they grow, so I bring them in.

I am delighted and awed by their beauty every time I look at them. This delicate old-fashioned shell-pink beauty is Madame Carrìère and she bedecks the rusty shed walls, but only above about two metres.

The densely cupped rich yellow flowers of the Graham Thomas rose on the ‘guest wing’ are right beneath where the possum was living, and its stems were constantly broken as it climbed. Now it arches freely and blooms in profusion; I love the sheer opulence of its fat full cups!

As I never know how long any particular balance will last among the creatures here, I shall enjoy these roses while I can, and hope the macropods don’t learnt to climb.

Stormy roos

October has been a variable month, veering from warm to cold to freezing, from spring buds and seedling growth to blossom profusion.

And then we had a wild storm or two, one close to gale force, with winds roaring like freight trains, smashing branches and trees down and shredding gumleaves like confetti on the ground.

In fact that Saturday afternoon it had felt like it might snow, and I’d said so to a visiting friend. There was a laugh and the comment ‘You’ve got about as much chance of winning the lottery as getting snow in October!’

As if on cue, only minutes later — through the kitchen window we saw, briefly, lightly, but unmistakably, the graceful swirling downwards dance of snow. There was another flurry later. My friend is buying a lottery ticket.

The other storm was not so cold or wild, but wet and loud, with thunder and tiny hail and rain like driven nails on the roof.

I watched from the verandah, bemused because the kangaroo family hadn’t sought denser shelter than my garden trees. Was it to do with the lightning?

They slightly changed the direction of their positions but did not move from their chosen trees. I’d have thought a birch tree would give little shelter.

And from where I stood, I couldn’t see one wallaby in the yard.

When the drama was over and the sun had retired, summer storm-style, life returned to normal grazing — except beneath bedraggled pelts of wet fur.

The wallabies must have been somewhere near, for the first one I spotted was this rather confused joey next to my house tank. Maybe they had been under the verandah? I hadn’t thought to look.

Spring surprises

The extremely slow-to-bloom (16 years!) white wisteria is now fully out and it is so beautiful in form and colour that it deserves a follow-up post. For some reason, its delicacy makes me think of Japan, where I’ve never been. Perhaps the decorations on geisha hair combs in paintings?

The weeping habit has given my verandah view such added beauty that I am quite awed. And just look at the all the reddish new leaves on the climbing and possum-less rose!

Thanks, quoll.

The other spring surprise has been that the bird-sown Pittosporum tree in my garden has also blossomed. There are two indigenous varieties here, one more sweetly scented than the other, I believe. So I have been wondering which this one would turn out to be.

Perhaps I still don’t know, not having the two to compare, but mine definitely has a sweet perfume. It will do me. What a treat!

The bees seemed to think so too.

Welcome wisteria

For sixteen years the wisteria on my verandah has done a great job as a living shade cloth — but it has never flowered. It was given to me in a pot, grown from a cutting of a white wisteria, so the giver assured me.  I didn’t mind that it didn’t flower, given how lovely were the shape and shade of the leaves.

I bought a normal mauve flowering wisteria and planted it by the laundry.

So when the first leaf bud opened this Spring I rushed to take a photo — and then was stopped short by the odd bump to the right. A bud, a flower bud!! After thinking about it for sixteen years.

In a few days there were more, and as they opened I could see that the flowers were not white, but pale lilac.  Very pretty, subtler than its more uniform mauve cousin. They both have a lick of yellow at their throats.

The other pea-shaped flower in those shades in the garden is the Roi de Carouby snow pea’s magenta and pink, now reaching above the netting and bearing many peas daily.

Sharing my spring

A few warm days, a fat black snake with a lunchtime bulge basking in the sun, and then five degree mornings again.

I know to keep an eye out now, but I have been watching the wallabies and roos accept the snake’s presence, and even close progress, and show no sign of anxiety.

I must learn to be still.

I saw the snake again today — and managed to keep on hanging out the washing.

Almost daily an echidna potters though the yard, weaving its waddling way between the groups of macropods that laze and graze — usually around 20, not counting joeys in pouches.

I enjoy their easy acceptance of each other, as I do when the wallabies let me pass very close and don’t move. No echidna is at ease with me yet.

Yesterday I saw the first satin bower bird pecking around the bay tree, darting in and out from its low growing shelter. She could have been a ceramic figurine, with her subtle colouring and well-defined bumps of breast feathers.

There will be many more, ready for what fruit the parrots leave. While the trees bear only blossom my feelings are simple: admiration.

My latest resident

I have more to tell about my trip to Western Australia, but in between I have to keep you up-to-date with the ongoing news on the mountain. On the second day of Spring, the Diamond Python arrived. 

The day was warm and sunny; I was hanging out washing. Out of the corner of one eye, this is what I saw.

Now I know better than to panic about a non-venomous python — at least, not when it’s out on the open lawn, rather than in my shower, or trying to come inside.

So you could say I was pretty relaxed about watching it from only a slight distance. I do marvel at the way it seems to follow itself in one long and powerful undulation.

I also wanted to see where it was heading with such uphill purpose, past the vegetable garden, past the Nashi tree.

I should have known. Of course it was heading for the shed. As I watched it ooze effortlessly up the stems of the massive jasmine vine, it seemed to know exactly where it was going. 

Did this mean it had previously resided in the woody twists and weaves of vine that so thickly covers this old tin wall before? 

Or was it aiming for one of the many gaps beneath the unlined roof? Had it lived inside the shed — and how often had I missed its bright patterning draped across the dim rafters while I pottered about below?

Yes, I know it means I won’t have bush rats in there — but what about baby quolls?

And what about me? I’m nervous enough already going in to that overcrowded and shadowy place, always with one eye on the dark recesses beside my feet. If I have to keep the other eye on the dark spaces above my head, or in between — finding anything will be very difficult!

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 shudder to think what the wallabies will do to the tender green buds of trees like this birch, but at least they can't reach to the top.

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 and yellow, look perfectly at home around such deciduous trees.

The abundant yellow jonquils like these above may look like mini daffodils but they lack the stateliness as well as the size.

My daffodils only bloom with Spring here, so for me they are the true harbinger. And they have arrived!

Only trouble is, if Spring is here, can snakes be far behind?

My reptilian residents

jacky-lizardAs 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.
snake-zoom
My least favourite is the red-bellied black snake. Impressively muscular as it ripples across my grass and into my gardens, I see it almost every day now, always in a different spot. So my eyes are engaged in a constant flicker to check where it is, as I don’t want to startle it and cause it to panic my way.

I also have to thump about with the hoe first to check in any clumps I want to work on, because it can become invisible in a surprisingly small amount of cover.

This is the first year I have been sure I had a resident black snake rather than a visitor, just passing through. There’s nothing I can do about it – but I don’t like it! I wish it was winter again.

Spring heads—and tails

hardenbergiaIt’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.
red-belly-blackIn 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 year—so I can’t mow these areas yet.

But I won’t be weeding by hand after spotting amongst several of them the tail end of my apparently resident red-bellied black snake.

It’s now a case of where haven’t I seen it yet.

Garden gifts

gift-1Just 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?
gift-2In a less domesticated part of my yard, three native plants have formed a dainty trio. A young Omalanthus tree, often called the Bleeding Heart Tree, only as tall as myself, has been wreathed in thin vines: the clinging bridal shower of Clematis aristata, Traveller’s Joy, and the purple pea highlights of Hardenbergia, Native Sarsparilla. The tree I propagated and planted, the vines are surprise gifts of nature.

The lime green leaves of the Clematis are echoed by the long budding racemes of the King Orchids (Dendrobium speciosum, var. hillii) . A spectacular native orchid, it will be even more so when the flowers are open.
gift-3Found in my rainforest gully years ago, the increasing weight of this clump had probably caused the casuarina branch on which it had grown to come crashing down. I relocated it to rocks at the base of a stringybark in my yard, where it has fleshily multiplied since.

Whoever said the Australian bush is drab?!!