Life and Wildlife on the Banks of the Murrumbidgee
Once we've got our trees planted, we usually walk away for several months and hope for the best. But eventually we come back and check on them. On the Easter weekend we had a whole crew of helpers to strip remaining covers from the 450 trees and shrubs planted in May 2013 near the cattleyards.... Continue Reading →
The Easter Bunny this year brought friends and excellent company - and the planting of 182 trees and shrubs . Generally, our method of planting trees and shrubs requires lots of water. We pour on 10 to 20 litres per tree to give them a head start in our dry landscape. We add mulch... Continue Reading →
We regularly see mistletoebirds (Dicaeum Hirundinaceum) around the house and around the hills. They're a flowerpecker with a taste for mistletoes. Mistletoes grow all over the world, not just at Christmas for romantic kissing purposes. Unlike the area north of us, near Lake Burrinjuck, however, our eucalypts have few mistletoes. I'm not sure why. Maybe they're... 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 →
Mum and I were having a walk around the garden checking out all the growing things when we passed the callistemon bush that grows on the edge of the lookout. I'd been seeing the flowers from a distance but it wasn't until we were up close that I realized it was amazingly alive with insects... 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 →
For the third time in three years, many of our trees are looking like ghosts of their former selves. The immediate, obvious, culprit is the Christmas Beetle (an anoplagnathus species of scarab), a bit of seasonal joy in a shiny suit. If the weather's right, it digs its way up from underground in November or December,... 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 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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
A cattle ramp is the first thing you see when you enter most farms. They're easy to drive over, when they're not buckled and bent by huge trucks, but they're not always great at keeping sheep and cattle from crossing. The old entry ramp at Esdale was particularly bad. It was strong. No truck could... Continue Reading →
A late addition to the collection of trees we've been planting this year has been a group of trees that have just graduated from the Australian National University. They're now decorating the slopes of our box-gum woodland plantation with tasteful stainless steel pendants and copper necklaces identifying them. The concept of the research (by Tricia... Continue Reading →
One Bend In The River 