garden

Wallaby takeover

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As you can see, Eastern Red-necked wallabies rule here. They know it; males, females, joeys — they do as they please in my yard. I simply add more wire netting guards to protect what pleases me. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not have flowers unless they are specific inedible bulbs, or above wallaby reach.

So I have placed a large pot on my verandah and planted seeds of what I hope will be a deep red nasturtium — pretty and tasty. The seedlings have just emerged.

The very day they did, I happened to hear an odd thump on the verandah steps. I looked up and there was a youngish wallaby looking at me from the top step. My first thought was ‘cute’, my second was ‘not a good idea’ — thinking of the nasturtiums to come. So I went out and shooed it back down the steps.

I had assumed it was a more inquisitive wallaby than the others. But it came back several times in the next few days — definitely the same young female — and I reprimanded her and sent her back down the steps.

I finally realised the appeal when I caught her eating the new shoots of the ornamental grape vine. At ground level they have already done so; I’ve been meaning to get around to putting netting across them or I won’t get enough summer shade.

Now I might have to put a gate across the verandah, or I’ll get neither shade nor nasturtiums. Quolls, possums, pythons, black snakes, lizards, bush rats, antechinus and the odd nesting bird have all taken advantage of my verandah. It’s bit much if the wallabies want to make a takeover bid too.

Our place

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I know that the wallabies truly feel at home in the yard now by the way they sleep here in the warmth of the late winter days, letting me walk past so close to them. Some of the very newly outed joeys are skittish but they soon learn I’m no threat.

This mother is so unconcerned that she is fast asleep, not even pretending to keep watch through half-closed eyes, as they often do.  Note the well-stripped rose bush behind her!

The joey stays close, in physical touch with mum. This endearing joey is, I think, the first one I made eye contact with, when it was a pouch-dweller. It often has one floppy ear.

I mildly regret the roses and all the other plants they eat, but how can I not be delighted that such beautiful and gentle creatures now think of my place as as ‘our place’?

This what a Wildlife Refuge ought to be — a place of trust, of safety.

Wallabies at home

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The wallabies took very little time to adjust to my moving back in to their domain. There are lots of mothers carrying young in pouches. Some of the joeys are very small and pink, and some, like this one, are really too big.

It is so cramped in that low-hanging pouch that you can see that its hind foot is protruding, but it stayed inside where it was warm. After all, it could reach grass and milk from there, so why not?

The mothers seem most trusting of me. Some of the others look at me quite imperiously, ears pricked, as if to say, ‘ So who are you, and what is your business here?!’ 

I have no idea why they haven’t eaten these self sown greens — as they hop in and eat the parsley in this old tank that I need to fill to be a raised bed for root vegies. Unfortunately, since it’s really a compost heap at this stage, a red-bellied black snake moved in at the end of last summer.

But if I can overcome my disappointment in the wide range of my once-treasured garden plants they are eating, they are a treat to have around to watch.

Only… I just noticed that they have started on the citrus trees! Now that’s going too far.

Return to Wallaby World

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Home on the mountain at last, I was greeted by a heavily pruned garden ruled by wallabies.

Of course it was lovely to see the wallabies, but… they have been eating plants I had never expected to appeal to their taste buds. Strongly aromatic plants like rosemary and lavender have been stripped, and are regularly re-stripped. I had struck lots of lavender cuttings, thinking that I’d at least be able to have those in this new wallaby world.

They are not eating the bulbs, the jonquils or snowflakes — yet — and they can’t reach the wattles, so I do have some flowers. But they are now attacking my camellias, all of which are low enough to be totally munched into nothing but stems.

I had accepted that roses are no longer anything but sticks, except for the very tops of the taller shrub roses.

However, in one of these, the defoliation has revealed two nests, one small lichened cup and one large grassy tunnel. They are old ones, I assume, but I wonder if any tenants will return, now they are so exposed to predators?

An old garden’s treasures

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The quaint Rosebank cottage where I stayed ( courtesy of Mary Delahunty and the Victorian Writers’ Centre) was surrounded by introduced trees and garden plants – and did have a bank of roses.

The king of the garden was this giant oak, whose bark was dappled blue with lichen and whose branches reached 15 metres in every direction. A tree to inspire awe, but not for the many immature Crimson Rosellas who daily raided it for acorns. The generous oak dropped shiny acorns, knubby caps, brown leaves and endless twigs for kindling.

Rosebank’s old garden added two new plants to my botanical knowledge.

The first was  a tree bearing a strange sci-fi fruit, with its pronged antennae. It turned out to be a Medlar, Mespilus germanica, a fruit popular in mediaeval times, able to be eaten only when soft and half rotten, a process known as ‘bletting’. Then it is like spiced stewed apple — reputedly best accompanied by port. I had no port, but wasn’t keen on the fruit’s texture. However, medlar liqueur sounded tempting.

The other plant was a tall and wide shrub with arched and drooping slender branches, bearing only a few autumn leaves, but masses of trailing bunches of small hot pink flowers with orange centres.  Close up, I saw they were more like pods, beginning as quadruple pockmarked globes that split to show the four orange ‘seeds’, which were also rough-skinned like mini cumquats.

When the Woodend nursery identified it for me as Spindle Bush, Euonymus europaeus, I learned that the pink is the fruit and the orange are the seeds, and that they are poisonous. The flowers were described as ‘insignificant’ so I need not regret missing the Spring for them. Common in the Northern Hemisphere, it was named for its hard wood, used for making spindles because it can hold a very fine point.

Victorian gold

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At Devonport, waiting to board the night boat, Tasmania farewelled me with rain, as it had greeted me a fortnight before, then withdrew its forces to the now familiar lowering dark clouds over its mountains — and turned on a perfect double rainbow. Day or night, Tasmania, your wild skies have won me.

In the Macedon area of rural Victoria, where I had won a three-week writers’ residency, it was colder than Tasmania, and the long low clouds often found it hard to lift off the land. 

I had missed all the showy Autumn reds and burgundies, but it was still more autumnal — and European — than I’d experienced. 

Roads were lined with elms that had dropped the top half of their yellow leaves to carpet the road edges, but held them on the lower branches — as befitted the cusp of winter. 

I loved that so many fallen leaves were yellow, not brown. I had thought they died — ‘sere and brown’ — before they fell off the twig, if you’ll pardon the pun.

The bicycle track that ran beside this road was thickly edged with the clear bright  yellow leaves, saved by the grass from being scattered to and fro by the winds.

At Rosebank Cottage, the tortured willow filled the lap of the forgotten summer chair with pale lemony gold, and generously strewed it over the lawn. The quince leaves hung on to glow a deeper yellow.

In the morning fogs they joined forces to catch the first of the struggling sunlight, steal it from the rest of the cold and dripping garden, and warm the spiders in their webs.

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.

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.

Post-rain passers-by

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As soon as the rain stopped I got stuck into digging while the clayey soil was diggable. I am finally excavating for a bathroom!
With ABC Radio playing and my eyes watching what I was doing, it was mere chance that I looked behind me.
About a metre away was the black snake, minding its own business and poking about near the earth I had just dumped. Damn! I could not continue work with it so close.
I ceded the territory and went around the house to the verandah to watch where it went. Having satisfied its curiosity, the snake continued up the slope to the gate.

It occurred to me then that the wild creatures have stuck to this same path, once a wallaby track, and sensibly diagonally across the slope, despite my erecting a fence straight through it.
For that day I had also seen the echidna following the track, now barely distinguishable to me — but clearly not so to them. Like the snake, it detoured to investigate what my digging was turning up.

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.

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.