garden

This weird and wonderful world

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I finally stole half an hour to pull out some old tomato plants and onions add a bit of compost to the vegie garden — and look what I uncovered. Damn, I thought, more plastic that got into the compost and didn’t compost.

But I couldn’t recall what on earth it might have been the framework of… and then I twigged.

I rushed inside and checked my fungi book; yep, incredible as it seemed, this was one of the really weird fungi. Of course the next step was to go to my website and click on the link for ‘Gaye’s fungi.’

Once there I clicked on her ‘White without gills’ category, scrolled down past some rather disgusting looking other fungi, and there it was:

Ileodictyon gracile (Smooth Cage) a stinkhorn fungus. 

Gaye gives a very detailed life story for it, with photos from egg (yes, egg!) to final free-rolling lattice or basket form.

Who would dream up such a strange organism? I am still having trouble believing it.

Sharing the place

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After all the initial rushing about and media interviews for the new book — ongoing and more to come — I was glad to have a few relatively peaceful days at home with my fellow inhabitants.

As I am still without 240v power until my solar system’s inverter is fixed, I am to-ing and fro-ing between cabin and camper to use the small inverter and two panels there to recharge the laptop.

On the steps, about to dash across once more, I saw the big red-bellied black snake who has been visible somewhere about the yard most days for the last few weeks.

It was under the camper, heading towards one of the wallabies who like to rest there.

They looked at each other for a while (long enough for me to grab the camera) — and then the snake did a U-turn.

Unfortunately it then headed towards the cabin. So I’m on the steps, needing to see where it goes, while saying, ‘Oh please, don’t come this way!’. But it did.

It went under the open steps, so of course I was hoping it didn’t decide to come up through them on to the verandah.

But it came out the other side and into what used to a herb rockery before the coal book lost me my garden altogether.

Immobile, there it stayed for ages — waiting for lunch, I assume. With the days warm but nights cold, I guess it’s fattening up for a winter break.

It’s pretty nerve-wracking having to be so on the alert, with it stretched out and almost invisible in many of the places I’ve seen it, and where I often walk. I wish winter would hurry up!

Verandah microcosm

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Even without stirring from my verandah, I have a world of nature in view.

The wildlife comes to me, and this time I don’t mean rose-climbing possums or gate-leaping wallabies! These are mini-inhabitants, easy to miss, and easy to admire.

One dull day I spotted a strange blob of white on the corner verandah post. Being vertically placed, it couldn’t be a bird or lizard dropping.

Close up, it was connected to what I assume was a moth. Or was it a beetle? Does anyone out there know?

Next time I remembered to look, it seemed totally enclosed in its own white sheath, its cocoon.  If so, how did it do the last bits, I wondered? It would be like making a mould of yourself.  

But then I thought that probably this was an illusion and that it had made an ‘egg’ case and left.

It’s still there and I try to check now and then in case it’s cracking open.

On a railing attached to that post, yesterday I noticed that a seed of the Mandevilla laxa vine has begun a new life in a crack in the timber. As you see, it’s tiny now, and I will be interested to see how it goes. Will it grow too big to survive in there or will it widen the crack?

Isn’t life amazing??

Cloud blossoms

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When I wake up to a white world it’s not usually because it has snowed — although that has happened — but because a cloud has decided to descend and join me, poor earthbound being that I am.

At such times the only bright colour is in close things, seen sans veil of finest white muslin.

My thinner north-east verandah sunshade is the Mandevilla Laxa vine, currently unfurling its pure white bells and perfuming my the air around my cabin.

Since the wallabies eat the lower parts of most ground-based vines, they have to survive to taller-than-wallaby height before they can burst into full production and show me once more why I’d planted them.

This year, given how tasty the self-seeding but fragile old-variety sweet peas would be when they popped their heads out of the ground, I broke my rule of ‘survival of the fittest’ and planted some in the pots on the wallaby-proof (so far) verandah.

With that extra metre or so leg-up they have climbed up the Mandevilla and hit the roof, adding their unmistakable scent and their candy pink colours to my cloud-white day.

Western summer

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Despite heavy prunings at ground level by the wallabies and hence a slow start until I netted the base, the Glory Vine has excelled itself this year, and run the whole length of my western mudbrick wall.

In doing so, it has shaded all the windows – which was the intention. I never feel any heat through the unshaded wall but the windows (and the unused door) are the obvious heat leak.

From inside it means a dim green — and cool — light during the day.

By late afternoon when the sun is low in the west, I can momentarily get strange beams of light via small gaps amongst the leaves. These pierce the interior of my little cabin like rays of enlightenment before leaving me, as ignorant as ever.

Like rainbows and sunsets and morning sun on dewy webs, I am ever grateful for such ephemeral gifts from the natural world. As 2012 begins, once more I say to myself  – and the wallabies –  how lucky we are to live in such surroundings.

Bejewelled bushes

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I can’t help rushing out with the camera on the rare mornings where light overnight rain or heavy dew coincides with a brighter morning.

It can’t be too sunny, or the precious jewels thus revealed will have been dried up.

Then all I’d see would be a spiderweb, miraculous in itself, but more common.

On a special morning like this the web becomes ‘value-added’, enhanced to a collared necklace of great beauty — and value, at least to me. The design is always different, and although the jewels — round as pearls, translucent as diamonds — may be ephemeral, the impression on me is lasting.

Bu the way, the lichen-tufted arrangement of sticks on which the necklace is displayed used to be a living rose bush; it’s one of the many victims of perpetual wallaby pruning!

Lofty Lilliums

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Each summer these powerful plants re-shoot, sending up thick stems metres into the air in a race to the roof with the Glory Vine. I do have to tie them to the verandah railings before they become top heavy, as dozens of burgundy pods explode into these elegant blooms.

Beautiful as they are in cream and pink and yellow, they all used to be pure white, which only one plant now produces.

To see them I have to go outside and walk below to look up into their dripping throats — in between keeping an eye out for leeches looping their way up the side of my gumboots.

There is only one small ‘window’ in the verandah’s summer greenery where I can poke the camera through and see over the tops of the Lilliums, but perhaps the best view is from underneath anyway — despite the leeches.

And the walls came down…

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My house yard fence, so painstakingly erected and heightened over the last 17 years, is slowly being dismantled. No easy task, as the tussocks have grown through the netting, but my helper is so much stronger than I am.

As the four gates have been open to the wallabies and roos for nearly two years, and I am no longer likely to have visiting horseriders or dog owners requiring a yard, there seemed no point.

And there are many advantages. I can mow directly across my firebreak more easily and I can see to the forest edge unfettered by wire netting. Much better for photographs too!

Only two sides are down so far, and I am noticing how the overall feeling of the outlook has changed as the netting falls and the line between domesticated and wild disappears.

Much more convenient for the wallabies too.

The gates still standing look symbolic rather than functional. I must take note if the animals still go through the gate, following the track they have worn, or ‘jaywalk’ at will.

For me, it’s as if I can breathe better as my self-imposed barrier disappears. In The Woman on the Mountain I did say it was Wallaby World here; it’s even more so now!

Twisteroo

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The kangaroos are being driven crazy at present with some sort of bitey insects. They are choosing to lie in any dusty spots, which are mainly on the track, where their swishing tails sweep it smooth. 

This male grey kangaroo was ‘caught short’ by the horse flies or fleas or whatever they are, just inside my gate. (There’s no fence now, just a gate!)

His contortions to reach them were impressive for such a big fellow.

Claws and teeth are employed in search of relief; he’s better at reaching those awkward spots than I am.

Job done, he glances around and notices me watching through the window. The look he gives me — ‘So what are you gawking at?’ –—makes me feel a little ashamed of my voyeurism.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘but I’m admiring you!’

I am very glad these big fellows are coming in more often; they are still wary. I hope they will accept my respect and that I will keep my distance. In turn, to see them lying down at their ease, big as ponies, in my yard, is a true honour.

Close encounters

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I have now completed a lattice gate to prevent the wallabies from coming onto the verandah and eating the plants from there.

A few do still come up the steps and nibble what they can reach from there, so the summer vine cover is not as advanced as it should be.

 

This one couldn’t be bothered climbing the steps, but for several hours the other warm day, while the shade lasted, lay right at the foot of the steps. As it happened to be a washing day, I went up and down the steps and past the lolling lass quite a few times. My stepping over her tail occasioned no more than a flick of an ear.

So far none of them have jumped over the gate, so I am enjoying my beautiful Crepuscule climbing rose, blooming in profusion along my verandah ‘windows’ once more, munched bare though it is from below.

Exotic whites

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Whilst I live in the middle of 165 acres of natural bushland, a huge ‘native garden’, I appreciate my small pocket of exotic botanica, introduced plants that don’t want to go walkabout.

From my desk I am treated all day to the ethereal beauty of the white wisteria on the verandah, flowering for the second year, after 15 years of refusal. It has a light perfume, well worth keeping the window open in front of me.

On my way to the clothesline I detour around the long arches of the May bush, its clusters of simple flowers adding honey scents to the spring perfume mix in my yard.

The bees like it, but not as much as the pretty flowers of the enormous Nashi trees, although they smell rather unpleasantly like bleach, not honey.

But once past those, I can compensate with one of my favourite scents, from the friesias around the fig tree. Even better, I can pick some to take the scent inside. 

None of these exotic beauties will last long, so I make sure to look my fill while they are here. As you may have guessed, I like white flowers.

Flower roos

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Beneath the new green leaves of the birch trees, the fading yellow jonquils and Erlicheers and the fresh yellow and white daffodils — whose name I’ve forgotten — quietly clump and multiply and delight each year. The iris aren’t so prolific.

I was amused to see the kangaroo family choose this little grove of flowering bulbs for a munch and a snooze in the sun. They are quite delicate in eating the native grass between the bulbs without flattening much.

I am so grateful that they don’t fancy bulb leaves or flowers!

The joey had been asleep in the centre of the flowers, but popped up to peep over and check out the world as I watched. Not too tough a life in this refuge.