seasons

Back on the mountain

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After almost a month away, I half-expected the critters to have taken over the last bit left to me, the cabin.

They hadn’t, really — just the usual antechinus invasion, persistent but not escalated.

The verandah wasn’t so lucky. The spiders had tied the cane chair to my dad’s coffee table, with a densely woven zig-zag mesh. No room for even a skeleton to fit their legs in between table and chair.

The possum had knocked the pot of the flourishing red Wandering Jew-type plant right off the railing to crash and empty on the ground below.  One of its trailing arms hung like a decoration, caught in the climbing rose.

The destruction is particularly aggravating as this was one of the few plants that the possum doesn’t eat.

But down on the ground most of the bulbs had bloomed while I was away. Snowdrops and yellow jonquils in their large naturalised clumps had joined the Erlicheer jonquils that were, as always, first out.

The tuberoses, strongest smelling and longest lasting when cut, were flashing their incongruous pink (left) amongst all the white and yellow and green.

Up in Queensland, it had been spring, with fruit trees in blossom and deciduous trees in bright green bud. Here we are usually about six weeks behind.

Fearing I had missed the brief bridal show in my orchard, I am relieved.

The change of seasons is still an anticipated pleasure!

However, as this is my particular Eden, the warmer weather also brings out the snake in the grass — or the snowdrops!

Wallaby wipe-out

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We all know how mothers have to be on the ball to keep an eye on the young. This was borne home to me afresh by my wallaby mates lately.

After days of dreary chilly rain, the sun came out.

The only wallabies that seemed even half-awake were the mums with toddlers.

This one had a very young joey, still mostly pink and hairless. I have since seen it hop out of the pouch for brief second or two; it’s all legs!

 

But as for the rest of the gang? Lolling, lazing, drying out, cleaning up — or just snoozing. En masse, apart from the mums needing to have their eyes open, they were wiped out by the morning sun, laying out the tails and warming those pale tummies.

They are very good at doing a total flop in a sitting position. I wish I could!

Winter warmth

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Much of this winter has been spent at the computer, writing more book talks. It’s cosy inside my cabin, with the slow combustion wood heater going all the time but fully banked down, as once the mud brick walls have heated up, they hold the warmth. No heat transfer at all.

But I am also out and about giving those talks, and was lucky to see this fabulously fiery grand scale sunset as I headed up through the Hunter the other week.

At home, in between deluges and dreary dampness, the Liquid Amber tree continues to hold all the colours of a sunset in its leaves. It glows even on the greyest of days.

I’ve enjoyed seeing that the roo family has been hanging about a lot lately. I took the photo on the right the other day, thinking how pretty the carpet of fallen leaves was.

But on the other side of the tree, in that same carpet, I spotted the red-bellied black snake whom I’d been blithely assuming was safely asleep. It was moving quite briskly too. Not fair! Winter is supposed to be my time of ease of mind when walking about in the bush, let alone the yard.

A  visitor to this site had said they can wake up if it gets warm, interrupt their hibernation.

So I want this slight winter warmth to go away, back to really cold for at least another month. And the snake to go back to bed.

Last Autumn colours

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As the last red leaves fell from the Glory Vine, this exquisite little nest, round as tennis ball and about the same size, was revealed. It was knitted with gossamer threads and moss onto three twigs, like grandma making a sock by going round and round on her three needles.

Quite empty, it and its twiggy frame now adorn my verandah collection.

The other verandah drapery is the wisteria, the leaves now mainly butter yellow, edging to amber before they fall. It fills the window behind my desk, and as the afternoon light behind them sets them aglow it helps me bear having to be in here at the computer instead of outdoors on such beautiful still sunny days.

But yellow is also the adamant all-year-round colour of the NO GAS groups in many areas, like Bunnan and Merriwa in the Hunter.  The T-shirts are bold and un-missable, with the simplest of messages worn defiantly centre front.

This photo was taken at the May 1 Rally by friend Sandra Stewart, and sent on to me later. It’s me and my two good friends Alyson Shepherd and Doug Blackwell; although they’ve moved to the north coast from the Merriwa district, they came down to join old mates at the rally.

Yellow definitely predominated on that Autumn 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.

Mountain wishes

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Before the holiday season starts, on behalf of all the Mountain critters and myself, this jonquil-happy kangaroo joey is here to wish you all a safe and peaceful break from routine.

Hope you have some quiet time to unwind and smell the roses — if you are somewhere wallabyless — or just lie back and watch the clouds.

Whatever you’re up to, it’s better if Nature’s involved — and I don’t just mean the mossies.

And wherever you’re going, please drive there safely!

Spring hits

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My stone fruit trees agree with the snakes; they reckon it’s Spring. The apricot declared it first, prematurely, and lost most of the blossoms in a rainy spell.

Of them all, my favourite is the Santa Rosa plum’s simple white blossoms, their stamens topped with gold, and set in softest green. The bees like them too.

I still haven’t pruned this one so will have to share the plums with the King Parrots and the Bower Birds.

Pink is a colour of so many hues they ought to be distinctly named. The peaches and the nectarine are quite different blossoms, in progress, in composition and complexity, as well as ‘pinkness’.

Which is as it should be, given that their fruit is so different.

The cherries are yet to blossom; then will come the pome fruit: the apples and the nashis. Lucky bees and birds — and lastly, possibly lucky me!

Verandah birds

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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.

Frosty treats

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At my altitude frosts are so rare that I note them on my rain chart. They do little damage and give me new visual pleasures from their special effects.

As always in nature, closer observations repays with small and extraordinary details — like this crystallised wallaby dropping!

‘Green’ is often overrated, and the new white overall coating throws existing objects into new relief. My favourite lichen-splattered rock, as round as a bowling ball, and fancifully considered by me to be a mini-meteorite, now fits right into its surroundings.

Winter browns

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Brown is not a favourite colour for me; I never wear it. I don’t even particularly like chocolate.

My dad — and many others — was fond of a paint called Mission Brown. He also grew beans for market, of a variety called Brown Beauty, which I was allowed to help plant when I was little, and felt obliged to help pick when I was older.

Lately I have seen some fungi that could come under the category of brown beauties.

These little helmets shot up in the leaf litter of a non-indigenous tree by the Goulburn River. Two days later I went back to see how they had opened but  they had disappeared, eaten I assume. Cappuccino brown, with an overly-eager barista shaking the chocolate over the centre, leaving the frothy edge untouched?

As for their name, I can’t say, given they didn’t open — but at a guess, Macrolepiota clelandii??

Back home, with 295mm in the rain gauge, I’d say it’s been pretty wet. The perfect time for this solitary little Earth Star fungus, Geastrum triplex, to appear.

They depend on raindrops for spore dispersal, the downwards sloped rays of the star increasing the chances of the central ball getting wet. Not that with 295mm it had much chance of being missed!

 A Field Guide to the Fungi of Australia by A M Young describes an event I’d love to see:

‘Large, mature colonies of this species can be spectacular in light showers of rain; the falling raindrops produce an obvious cloud of ejected spores floating in the air several centimetres above the colony.’

Birds of a different feather

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A chilly early morning at Goulburn River Stone Cottages, the moon still high in the sky and the three peacocks still perched in their night-time tree.

They are ridiculous birds for flying or perching, one would think, with their disproportionately long tails and heavy bodies.  There are three show-off males here, two ‘peacock blue’ and one white, and a silent white female, with a shorter tail. She roosts down lower to the ground by herself.

These ridiculously gorgeous birds hide their brown and white wings under the iridescent finery. The back and tail feathers are amazing, bronze in some lights, green in others, and their shimmering chest plumage must have been the inspiration for velvet, shot silk and shantung fabrics.

They wander about, cocking their coronets, dragging those painted eye tails in the dirt, and flashing their pale pantaloons.  The blue ones were spending part of the day sitting on the sunwarmed roof of my blue ute parked in the open shed — until I realised they were covering it with large droppings. The ute is now parked out in the open; I hope they drop me a few tail feathers as compensation.

They get some of the chooks’ breakfast and afternoon tea feeds, sharing it with the blow-ins — the currawongs, choughs, wood ducks and plovers. The chooks here are of many different colours and patterns, but the roosters are — of course — the most spectacular.

The white male likes to promenade up and down the sunny brick verandah of the house, looking in the large glazed doors.  I assume it’s his own reflection he fancies. I have to remind myself it’s not a female, so like a bedraggled and rather hung-over bride does he look!  A tiara never looks right for day wear — but then all these peacock males live in evening wear.

Like kids playing dress-up in Mum’s old satins and furs — in the sandpit.

Fashion fungi

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Under the big stringybark tree the leaf litter is deep. It is home to a whole world of bugs and grubs I am sure, but also an incubator for some astonishingly beautiful fungi. The winter colours in vogue this year are striking — and both are new to me.

This solitary smart purple number poked its head through the other day. It is quite small.  From my book I can only guess it might be a Cortinarius, but is it C. archeri or C.aff.violaceus, or another variety not in my book? Is the stem pale lilac really?

There’s only one so I’m not going to break it to check its gills or flesh to be able to get the name right!

Under the same spreading tree, about three metres away, I spotted several of these; elegantly coloured two-tone, olive-green above a subtle amber yellow. In the surrounding leaves, more are getting ready to make their debut.

Green is not a common colour in our fungi, so I hope I am right in guessing this is Dermocybe austrovenenta.