seasons

Blazing farewells

by

It is winter, but the deciduous trees and vines don’t all drop their leaves at once. It’s a nicely timed taking of turns to blaze out their seasonal farewells.

This beauty is the very last leaf on the whole Glory Vine. On a misty morning, its bright pink is almost shocking. I want a lipstick exactly that colour. And look at the perfect jewel suspended from its tendril.

The Liquid Amber is the last, and the most spectacular tree, glowing even inside a cloud.

The Crimson Rosellas must relate to the crimson fallen leaves;  they are almost camouflaged amongst them.

Last glories

by

The temperature is dropping to 5ºC to 7ºC of a morning. Autumn’s not over but my verandah colour effects almost are.

The white-flowering wisteria is more gold than green, and when backlit by the sun, it’s an absolute visual gift to me whenever I look up from my computer.

The developing definition of the curving vine stems is a bonus, as is the increased visibility of the small birds who hop about on them.

By the way, the lilac-flowering wisteria elsewhere is still all green.

The flamboyant Glory Vine is dropping its last red leaves to lie crisping on the grass; the western lattice is almost see-through once more. The long low afternoon sun now reaches across the verandah and brightens the house.

It feels like winter and I like it, cosy enough here in the house with the slow combustion wood heater banked down and on duty 24 hours.

Autumn flower

by

There’s little flowering right now in my forest, but this pink one caught my eye. Hadn’t seen it before, and there was only one. 
So, naturally, I got the camera and went closer.

Which is when I realised it was a fungus, fleshy rather than flowery, fat-stemmed, the cap splitting into ‘petals’, lightly frilled, with a gill-fluted white petticoat.

And I have tried to find out what it could be called, but failed. Neither my books, nor Gaye’s Fungi site, nor the web, have revealed its identity.

One of the mysterious aspects of fungi is how a single specimen can appear, delight and confuse me, and disappear, never to return in that spot– or not for the decades I’m around.

Easygoing rednecks

by

As the damp and chilly days increase in frequency, the Eastern Red-necked Wallabies really appreciate a sunny spell, to dry out — and to doze.

I counted thirteen lazing about on this sunny aftermath morning, enjoying that I’d finally mown some more of the orchard.

Some stick to their regular spots nearer the cabin, like my washing mother and joey duo featured last week. I love the demure way they cross their black-gloved paws, like good convent girls. Although the nuns would have been telling them to cross their legs too, in my day; the sprawl is most unladylike.

As the leaves yellow and fall from the Nashi trees, I am noticing the wallabies like to munch on them.  Either I was unobservant last autumn or they hadn’t developed the taste — or they are just being as unpredictable as ever.

They can’t reach the leaves on this tree when they’re green and attached, so now must be like manna from heaven!

Colour journey

by

Even from inside my cabin, Autumn leaves are adding colour in an everchanging wealth of combinations. I really have to keep my eyes open — and camera ready — for new effects every day.

I step out on to the verandah, and the effect is quite different, between the wisteria’s green and gold and the Glory Vine’s red and pink. The yellow chairs seem more at home and the table demands a green tablecloth.

I walk to the steps and find the older leaves are so ‘wine-dark’ as to be almost purple, stunning against the butter-yellow (left). I like the way the wisteria paces itself, retaining bright greens as backdrops for their more mature yellows.

I leave the steps, and the small Chinese Tallow Tree (right) flashes the full gamut of colours at me, sometimes all on a single leaf, sometimes having a bet both ways, half-summer, half-autumn, and the deep pink stems holding it all together, artistically, and adding to the riot.

With a month of Autumn to go, I know I’ll have more visual treats ahead. As a colourist, isn’t nature amazing?

Oyster and tomato fungi, anyone?

by

Being Autumn, alternately damp and cold, then dry and warm, I’m on the alert for more weird and wonderful fungi. 

These fleshy tree-huggers are new to me. I was taken by the way their lightly frilled skirts droop into points like nippled udders. 

I think they are a type of oyster mushroom, Pleurotus ostreatus, which would be edible, but I wouldn’t dare try them.
Perhaps someone will identify them for me.

A few days later, these two isolated individuals showed up on the forest floor. Tomato-red, I think I have tracked them down to be Stropharia aurantiaca.

They don’t have a common name, so Tomato fungi they will be for me. 

They aren’t noted as edible, but given my cowardly nature in such matters, I’ll just enjoy their cheery appearance on a bleak day.

 For me, common or not, all fungi are magic — sudden appearances, startling colours and shapes, as much appreciated for the surprise, the element of discovery they provide, as for the visual treat.

Autumn decor

by

I love, love Autumn. The few deciduous vines and trees offer enough colour to keep me delighted; their sparsity keeps me from being complacent about their offerings.

The Glory vine on my verandah changes its dress daily, and every change of light brings new interest. It has the western side all to itself.

On the northwest side it shares with the wisteria, whose leaves are slowly turning butter yellow. I have only to raise my head from this keyboard to enjoy the tapestry of colours and shapes that they make together, even more interesting for being backlit.

As for the overall clothing, the shading and decorating, that these riotous vines provide — who could invent it but Nature?

Perfect pods

by

The small details of the plant world often make me wish I’d become a botanist. In my day, if they were ‘going on’ after high school, girls did nursing or teaching — to tide them over until they got married.

I have been unable to decide whether, had I been born later, I’d have studied botany or industrial design. I see similarities between the two – functionality and beauty.

The young indigenous Native Frangipani trees (Hymenosporum flavum) that I have raised and planted are themselves seeding now. A new generation. The pods look like green four-lobed fruit until they brown, split in two, and fan out their channels of round, rimmed seeds like decks of cards, or stacks of coins.

These delicate and quaint beauties made me think of Leunig’s Mr Curly cartoons, of swans, of shy creatures unknown.

I couldn’t draw a more exquisitely curving line than they each have. The seed pods are woody but feather-light, carrying one black seed each in a shapely niche.

The shrub they are from, a hakea, is not indigenous and to my shame I have forgotten what it is called, but it had creamy fountains of flowers and the butterflies loved it.

I usually note down everything I plant, so if someone can please enlighten me, I will remedy that omission!

Bare-skinned gum trees

by

Late summer, and the smooth-trunked gum trees here have shed their bark clothes– perversely, just as it’s getting chilly. This  one near the path to the outdoor loo astonishes each time I walk by with the amount of bark strips from just one tree. No wonder we build up such a good fuel load for bushfires.

I always want to stroke the new bare trunks, cool to the touch, and yet warm too, with their slight dimples and bumps.

It was only in the photo, not the flesh, that I noticed this engaging detail (right) — an arm and hand, rather Gollum-like, pensively poised on the chin of this emerging face.

Even the saplings contribute a lot of bark to the forest floor, rising shamelessly bare and beautiful from their shredded skirts (left). The bigger ones here are often multi-trunked — the only reason they weren’t logged 50 years ago. The early morning sunlight has tinted this one with apricot, which I am admiring when I spot yet another detail.

Backlit spiders’ webs on a nearby Angophora, a complex of levels and patterns, given solidity for just a few minutes until the sun rises higher. What a world of surprises!

Orchid events

by

Every summer the tussocky forest floor becomes decorated with the pink and magenta spires of native Hyacinth Orchids (Dipodium punctatum). Every other year I have seen only solitary spires, and mostly that is so this summer, except for this clump of four. Their combined pinkness was so noticeable from a distance that it drew me to investigate.

Closer to the cabin, my rescued and relocated clump of indigenous King Orchids (Dendrobium speciosum) did not flower at all this  summer. Instead it seems to be putting all its energy into fat new leaf shoots, about a dozen in all, stretching up and out of their papery white sheaths.

I especially like the way the small pale green mouths first open, like baby birds, tongues ready to lap any moisture that falls. Their timing is perfect since we have had rain, and an extreme drop in temperatures — from 30ºC one day to 15ºC the next.

Green Glory Vine

by

Noticing that the first reddish tones of Autumn were appearing in some leaves of the Glory Vine that clothes the western ends of my verandah and mud walled cabin, I decided I’d better celebrate its green stage before I lost it for the year.

I am always astonished at how vigorous it is, how far it grows over summer from being totally cut back to woody stumps each winter.

Despite — or perhaps because of? — the wallabies nibbling the lower shoots and trying to get at more from my verandah, it was even more far-reaching.  As you see, I netted the bottom vines, barred my verandah access, and off it took!

As it reached higher I strung more wires for it, which were greedily seized, enveloped and looped about, gradually  greening and cooling the afternoon light through the windows.

Don’t worry about it blocking that door — there’s a bookshelf on the other side anyway!

The door is there because the cabin was only ever half-built, one wing of the original — and still intended — ‘V’ design. One day.

Once on the verandah the Glory Vine takes second place to the Wisteria, threading its broad fans through the finer fronds, adding texture as well as pattern and of course, more shade, to this western corner.

So before I start waxing lyrical about the riotous colours of Autumn — glory to the green Glory Vine!

Sunshower power

by

Tropical storms, fruit splitting, grass growing faster than the wallabies’ appetites, ground squelching underfoot, leeches on the march as soon as I leave the verandah… this is not how summer is supposed to be here.

I am confined to the cabin and the verandah most of the time, and can only peer through the veil of rain at the wallabies keeping the roses stripped. They seem to have lost their taste for oregano, so it’s racing to bloom and seed before they attack it again.

I don’t mind the rain so much, as I must work at the computer every day. So I need power.

And, despite all the rain, I get it. The odd weather creates lots of sunshowers, and while there may be lumps of moss growing on the solar setup, the sunpower keeps charging the batteries.

Convenient magic!