garden – Page 3 – The woman on the mountain

Autumn mornings

May 13, 2015 by Fred Baker

It’s mid-Autumn; at last the nights and mornings have turned cold.

The slow combustion fire warms me at night; the sight of Autumn mists rising from the valley warms my spirit of a morning.

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The dew and the sunshine cause even the electric fence and the wretched Setaria grass to take on beauty.

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I am rarely quick enough to catch the occasional grazing wallaby who is still out in these misty mornings. The rabbits are even more occasional and usually even quicker to leap away, but I managed to snap this one, looking for all the world as if he’d hopped out of the pages of a Beatrix Potter story.

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I am very happy for this handsome fellow to eat the grass; so far I have only found evidence of unwanted nibbling on the lettuces, sorrel and parsley.

Beatrix observed that lettuces have a soporific effect on rabbits like the Flopsy Bunnies, but I am yet to find a snoozing rabbit in the garden.

Of bulbs and birches

August 22, 2014 by Fred Baker

After a few days of welcome (if inconvenient for moving house) heavy rain, the bare trees are glistening in the morning sunlight, and the bulbs beneath them are struggling to lift their heads.

I love winter birches: for their bark and the lichen it attracts, for their bobbles and fine branchlets and twigs and the raindrops they cherish.

Some of the fat snowflake clumps are flattened…

…the first shy daffodil heads are about to unfold, and the fallen autumn leaves escape the wind by huddling amongst new iris leaves.

Natural creativity

June 14, 2014 by Fred Baker

When I look closely at the things nature creates, I am very often overwhelmed with admiration.

For example, this side view showed me the superfine and tiny holding points of this bejewelled web, suspended from the possum-chomped twigs of the climbing rose. Like upturned arms, ready to have the wool wound on for grandma…

I usually only see it from the front, backlit by the early sun, the weavings delineated by overnight dew. How does the spider get it so evenly spaced, so perfect?

The inspiration for lacemakers.

Home Fungi

May 11, 2014 by Fred Baker

This damp but still-warm weather is clearly enticing all fungi home and abroad to show themselves.

They are the most unpredictable natural phenomena here, along with the slime moulds. I never know what surprise will pop up or where.

Like the little cluster above forcing its way out at the base of a pole set in concrete. Never seen anywhere here before!

However, they are in my fungi book, so I think they are Auricularia cornea, with the quite appalling common name of Hairy Jew’s Ear. Not hairy but velvety. Apparently the Chinese eat them.

Not far up the hill were two pairs of these: fat and yellow, like Wettex-textured French toast, served with a smear of tomato sauce. They seemed to be flat-topped or even concave, but as they jostled each other for space to emerge, were rather misshapen.

I couldn’t find these in the book.

But in my vegetable garden was one I had seen quite a few times here over the decades, usually solitary. It’s the appropriately named Red Starfish fungus, Aseroë rubra, belonging to a family with the most unlovely name of the Stinkhorn Fungi. It likes compost.

Ending at home

December 31, 2013 by Fred Baker

I am so glad to be home for the end of 2013. Since September we have all reeled from one Abbottrocity after another.

I need some peaceful time where the protected Nature here can make me briefly forget how much it is under attack elsewhere, like at Bimblebox.

So the camper is off the ute and the wallabies have reclaimed it as just another shelter.

In their usual fashion, the critters here step up their ownership levels if I am away too long. This time it’s the wretched possum.

He’s been taking the odd lemon but now he’s eating my oranges. They’re not ready but I’ll have to pick the lot anyway, or I’ll get none.

His most unwelcome habitation here not only means stains of possum pee on the ‘guest room’ ceiling, but I get no fruit. The parrots leave me enough not to mind their share, but with a possum about…

Not a single Nashi when normally I get hundreds, no peaches, no nectarines.

How I miss my possum-eating quoll.

I am grateful for the flowering plants that neither the wallabies nor the possums eat — so far — like the Chaste Tree, the hydrangeas and the waterlilies, but my fruit and vegies are for eating, for sustaining my life here.

So how about the vegies, you ask? Well, I found that the bush rat has burrowed under the vegie garden netting and uprooted large parsley plants and lettuces and gnawed the turnips.

All minor annoyances, I know, compared to what others are threatened with.

I can only hope that 2014 will see the awakening of more people to the permanent damage the Federal and state governments are doing to their people, the land and water, and the planet.

These ‘leaders’ have become so extreme and blatant that one can only hope they have enough rope to ………………

Bring on the next election.

Summer Surprises

December 15, 2013 by Fred Baker

After so much rain, the early summer heat is encouraging growth and blossoming and inviting birds and bees to sample the offerings.
It doesn’t seem to bother the plants that this heat alternates erratically with chilly mornings and nights.

And of course these are all plants blessed by being despised by my munching macropods!

My most spectacular summer surprise is always the clump of Spider Lilies. From nothing they arch forth their broad straps of leaves and then their extravagantly designed flowers, trailing enticing scarves of white and extending shamelessly come-hither stamens.

A close second are the Lilliums, heading for the sky afresh each summer and making at least two metres before they trumpet their bunches of elegant bells.

Far less showy but making up for this lack in abundance is the Lilli-Pilli shrub, much loved by a world of insects. Who would miss Spring with such annual Summer surprises? It’s always incredible to me that these plants resurrect themselves, unaided and unreminded, every year.

Who needs roses?

August 1, 2013 by Fred Baker

The resident macropods have killed all my roses bushes by their perseverance in eating every shoot or bud that dares to peek through the sad grey wood of the remnants.

But they do not eat bulb leaves or flowers. I don’t know why, but I am very, very grateful, because each winter I am treated to displays like these.

The Erlicheer jonquils (above) come first, forming a perfumed bank below my now bare verandah vines. Their dense clusters are a little like roses; I love the deep buttery depths of their cream petals.

The tall white jonquils of a simpler, more open design are less strongly scented, while the orange-hearted yellow ones are mainly there for colour and cheeriness — and because they keep coming back each year.

My childhood favourite was always the clumps of snowflakes, dainty white bells whose picot edges are decorated with just the right amount of green.

Before their flowering gives a lighter touch, there’s a different charm in the strong blades of the leaves as they jostle for space around the birch tree. I ought to be separating these clumps; people say they will flower more if I do, but when a clump like this comes out it is as bountiful as I can imagine.

Home pleasures

April 25, 2013 by Fred Baker

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.

Home is where…

February 11, 2013 by Fred Baker

I’m loving being home for a spell, especially as the weather is so beautifully verging on Autumn.

Here it’s green and fresh and clear and the wallabies and I are fully appreciating it! All the ‘garden’ trees, like the Chinese Tallow Tree, look happy.

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For some reason the Lemon Ti-Tree is only flowering on one of the two main branches, the western one. This tree self-sowed in a potplant in one of my too-many inner Sydney rented homes (as a tenant, not a landlord!). Like me, it is thriving much better up here.

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Its widely spreading branches offer the wallabies a choice of sun and shade during the day and they take full advantage of it. I have wondered if the lemon-scented leaves, when brushed against, give them any flea protection? They spend a lot of time de-fleaing themselves — and each other.

Winding down from Woodford

January 7, 2013 by Fred Baker

After almost two weeks away, I am greatly relieved to be back here on my mountain. Woodford was a visual and auditory overload, so back home I am appreciating small details once again, like the vines that wind their way up any handy prop.

It is the silence I most appreciate, just a wind whisper in trees, a little birdsong or frog croak.

Woodford was LOUD. In the Cloudland stallholders’ camp (I was there for Lock the Gate) on the ridge, the music from the venues below wasn’t clear, but the bass boom was, so loud it vibrated my skull! Earplugs didn’t help.

But Woodford was also wonderful: a rich, surreal world, where painted street artists like the Zombies or our Metgasgo Super Hero Girls Sheree Dearden and Liz Mahood, or the Stepford Wives stiltwalkers mingled with visitors. The variety of dress alone was worth watching as the parade passed our stall.

After talking to people for hours from the stall I was really too tired to dance or to go to any concerts, but the high point for me was giving a talk at late notice, filling in for Lock the Gate president Drew Hutton on Saturday. I spoke to about 300 people and received a standing ovation; only after that could I relax!

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Back home, I appreciate again details like the opportunistic seeds that make use of any water and silt receptacle, like this Lomandra happily ensconced in the bowl of this once-coppiced tree.

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My domestic vines are kept thoroughly in check to wallaby reach height, but they still manage to keep the critical verandah level shaded. And on that cool verandah I am eating and sitting and thanking my good fortune to have this to come home to.

Spring hit

September 30, 2012 by Fred Baker

Having been away from the mountain for a few weeks with the latest book tour means that I was prepared for the worst, like bush fires, or trees blown down and across the track, when I returned.

I wasn’t prepared for the best, which is what I found.

The winter jonquils were finished, but Spring had hit with full force in that time.

The white wisteria on the verandah was making up for all those years it didn’t flower. Its graceful showers of blossoms gladden my aesthetic heart whenever I see them from my desk and its faint perfume greets me as I open the door of a morning.

Its more common cousin, the lilac wisteria, looks like it’s been out a little longer, as some flowers are tinged with brown. Nevertheless it greatly adorns the power shed/laundry building, albeit only on a band above wallaby height.

For I seem to be developing a garden of standards, where plants like this enormous banksia rose (left) are thoroughly pruned of leaves and flowers to the pruners’ heights. Even its arching stems are pulled down to be ‘tidied up’ and kept bare and brown.

The jasmine climbing on an old fence post actually looks quite cute as a topknot!

I’m enjoying these flowerings while they last, as they are always too brief. And as I still have no time for gardening, with more book talks coming up, I’m grateful they manage this spectacular Spring Show on their own.

Happy family

September 3, 2012 by Fred Baker

There seemed to be too many ears in the lolling wallaby silhouette I could see from the verandah. I couldn’t work it out, so I walked closer.

Then I could see that it was two adults cuddled together and a joey in the pouch of one.

Of course I went back for the camera.

Coming from a different aspect made me visible to them – or to those with eyes open. They pricked up their ears but took no more alarm than that.

Check out the size of the joey doubled up in there, with legs and head sticking out into the sunlight.

There are lots of joeys in pouches right now, both wallabies and kangaroos. Some are spending time ‘outside’, slightly wonky on their long legs and oversize feet.

Meanwhile the blokes are happy to forage for green grass shoots amongts my bulbs. I don’t mind, as they are far less destructive than the horses were, and I’m forever grateful that the bulb leaves are unappetisingly toxic.