I am wallowing in the daily delights of my mountain, after too long away. Tassie is a permanent seductress for me, but so is home.
Even the wet days have been a treat, as I am snug and warm in the cabin, with the slow combustion fire on and banked right down. The mud brick walls hold the heat beautifully.
Being thus confined to the cabin and verandah is hardly a visual penance either, since the Glory Vine’s vibrant pinks and reds light up my once-green living blinds, while the wisteria’s slow pale gold and its ‘beanpod’ seeds interweave with the backlit evergreens.
And I noticed that the grape ivy had neatly knotted itself around my Thai temple bell!
Having more ‘free’ time between talks this year, if you don’t count doing EIS submissions, has meant I have been able to begin to tackle the long-neglected jobs here.
My outdoor pit toilet is now a visible building again, relieved of its overwhelming burden of honeysuckle (see my ‘Heady honeysuckle’
post of three years ago).
I was forced to this task because the little tank, whose tap I use for hand washing, was suddenly empty. Apart from smothering the whole shed, the vine’s fine roots had choked the gutter, the downpipe and the tank sieve entry.
It’s uncharacteristically neat now, and warmer of an autumn morning, as the sun can find the tin wall.
Natives can be spectacularly autumn-coloured too, except in reverse, as the new leaves of this Lilli-Pilli show.