Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
For my last birthday Craig gave me a new pet, a wonderful planter with insect-eating plants. It was made by his old friend Dave who has shifted from researching spiders to growing "interesting" plants. During the spring and summer we sat the planter out on the verandah table and watched as the sundews collected tiny... Continue Reading →
While we were collecting last year's corflute covers and drainage discs down in last year's Big Gully planting, we found the young trees mostly well grown, a few bowled over by wombats, a few being chewed on by insects - those I'm hoping will provide food and attract birds in the future. The thistles were... Continue Reading →
Bloom of rust on an old disc I love the texture of old rusty iron, the subtle ripples of its surface where air has nibbled it away over decades. I love the red-orange colour which is earthy and natural, a far cry from primary colours and shiny galvanized silver of new metal. I have quite... Continue Reading →
One of the things I love about gardening is the unexpected arrivals. After being away for three weeks we had a predictable explosion of spring weeds - sticky weed, nettles and grasses especially. Many of them arrived with the sheep manure dug up from under the woolshed a few months ago. Also expected were the... Continue Reading →
This is the time of year for walking in gardens, when they're often at their most beautiful. They're also the most work if you want to choose a particular look, rather than just take what comes. Out on the hills, "what comes" is pretty good right now. I'm particularly pleased to see flowers on... Continue Reading →
The Big Wilt has finally come. Every year when the frosts arrive, the summer plants die back and make way for the ones that can take the cold. This year we waited a long time for the changeover. In some ways it was a vindication of my messy, lazy style of vegetable gardening, the one... Continue Reading →
In the last couple of years we've netted the most accessible of the peach trees that have naturalized along Mullion Creek to keep the cockatoos from eating them. The whole operation is worse than trying to get a giant bride and her veil through a forest. Four people were needed (one of them tall) and a lot of... Continue Reading →
I get a certain amount of flak for my untidy veggie garden. I let things go to flower and seed and see what comes up from them next year. I love that I can grow carrots without having to do anything at all but throw around a bit of compost. I enjoy the flowers.... 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 →
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 →
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 →
One Bend In The River 