Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
From our verandah lookout at the bottom of the river valley, it often seems that summer storms pass us by on either side. Whenever the weather report says "showers" I assume that means "rain for other people". We look up at the ridgeline of Adnamira and see the clouds tumbling past on their way to... Continue Reading →
Last autumn we planted up five mini enclosures to provide protection for small native birds and to re-establish a corridor from the Mullion Creek down to the Murrumbidgee River. It turned out to be a great way to get a lot of connection done without a massive amount of time spent planting. At the time... Continue Reading →
Fresh, juicy, aromatic apricots are one of the joys of Christmas time in Australia. So I was horrified to see that criminals were in the garden stealing our treasures. I ran out shrieking swear words at them. Of course they think shrieking is just talking endearments in their own squawking language, but the running... Continue Reading →
The problem with hills is that when there's a fire, you can't really see anything. For one thing, there's smoke. Tuesday started with a rolling thunder and scattered rain. Lightning struck somewhere, but who knew where? On Christmas Eve 2012, while we were in Melbourne, there was a lightning strike that hit a log that... Continue Reading →
The ancient trees that stalked across the paddocks when I was a child were my first clue that something was wrong with our landscape. They started to die. "Theý're old" said Dad. "They've had their time. We just need to plant some more." So he planted more. The Goodradigbee Shire supplied Sydney blue gums in... Continue Reading →
For the last couple of years the old windmill by Mullion Creek has been sitting idle, creaking a little when the wind blows. A plumber told me that windmill repair is a great job to be in - because they always need fixing. They have moving parts from the blades to the pump "buckets" that... Continue Reading →
A big attraction of setting up the "small bird stepping stone" plantations on Esdale this year (five 20m x 20m areas that link the Mullion Creek vegetation to the Murrumbidgee) was the promised monitoring of the plants and animals. I'm really interested to see what the changes will be as the trees and shrubs grow.... Continue Reading →
This spring growing season has been a big one. Extra troops in the form of certified Angus cattle had to be brought in to eat down some of the extra grass. Now the pastures have all dried off in the hot winds, in time for bushfire season. Ready to burn. Hay and silage are ways of... Continue Reading →
In my short career as a radio journalist for 2XX in Canberra, I had precisely one news scoop. That was, tah dah, the discovery of a new species of wildflower, weirdly called the "button wrinklewort", at the Queanbeyan Municipal Dump in 1983. It seemed sort of cool that someone had found a new flower, even... Continue Reading →
The most common way I see snakes around here is on the road. Sometimes alive. Sometimes dead, if they've been unlucky enough to meet with a car. On the cool, windy- but-sunny days we've been having lately, I've seen them quite frequently, probably because they're too slow to be gone before I get there. They probably... Continue Reading →
What an excellent idea, lilies that smell like chocolate. Or vanilla, or caramel, depending on your sense of smell (or lack of it, in my case, thanks to allergies). Something to make you smile, anyway. When I saw the first glimpse of purple in the long grass, I thought it was Paterson's Curse ( echium... Continue Reading →
Seeds are such hopeful things. The propagation days have started for the season at Murrumbateman Landcare. I usually go on the Thursday evenings, but this time I went on a Wednesday morning. The seeds all look so enticing in their carefully marked plastic jars. I love the fact that there are neatly printed label for... Continue Reading →
According to Michael Pollan in The Botany of Desire there are plants that, just by chance, have turned out to be something we really want. Potatoes as food, apples for fruit and alcohol, marijuana for druggy highs. Those plants that we like, we promote and encourage no matter how needy and pathetic they are. We choose them... Continue Reading →
Weevils are cute. No, really. Beetles tend to be sturdy and a little alien, flies have those weird multifaceted eyes, but weevils are like the Disney version of an insect, with big eyes and a long ant-eaterish nose. We were out chopping and spraying weeds in a revegetation area when I noticed that many of the... Continue Reading →
Things are blowing and banging around here. Trees lean over, the grass on the Adnamira hills ripples in patterns reminding me of a sandy sea bed. The hatch for our new guinea fowl house clatters every time a gust comes through. The irises in the garden flutter, no wonder they call them "flags". ... Continue Reading →
There's a saying about fences. And it's true. I have an extra one: "If you want to plant trees on a grazing property, you'd better have good fences." Not as catchy. Only a couple of years ago I was naive enough to think that a few star pickets could prop up a fence with sagging... Continue Reading →
It sounds like another fairy story, to have dragons at the bottom of the garden. We have two types, the Bearded Dragons and the Water Dragons. As a child I was always convinced that the water dragons were tiger snakes. Usually all we saw of them in the river was the long striped tail disappearing... Continue Reading →
It's amazing how projects grow. I wanted water for my vegie garden. I wanted a gravity feed water tank that would allow intermittent use of drippers and taps that tend to freak out our heavy-duty sprinkler pump. The result, so far, is 550 metres of pipes and two rock walls. Somehow I thought, when I... Continue Reading →
We saw our first snake of the season a few days ago. The dogs had been barking at the bottom of the steps near the laundry where there's a drainage hole in the wall. I saw a skinny black tail disappearing. Uh oh. Red bellied black. It wasn't a big one, probably around half... Continue Reading →
After the long chilly winter, it seems that finally we've got flowers again. The wattles as always make a show of golden baubles at the very end of winter and the beginning of spring. Up on the hills and down to the river the Early Nancies (Wurmbea Dioica) have been flowering for a few weeks.... Continue Reading →
One Bend In The River 