Australia · garden flowers · gardening · in my garden · mangoes · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · pets · photography · recipe · spring · Tweed Valley

A Day Spent in the Garden

September 22, 2020September 22, 2020 Joanne14 Comments

There is a hazy film hanging around the valley today. Apparently, a blustery storm travelled across the state from west to east – so to the New South Wales coast – yesterday, kicking up dust as it went. My guess is that this is the tail-end of the dust, and we haven’t had any rain to wash it away.

Tonight my body aches from head to foot, but I’ve had the most wonderful and productive day in the garden. I’ve done a lot of pruning with the garden shears today, so even my hands hurt! By 3 pm I decided to call it a day, but paused to look over what I’d accomplished. Up in the pecan tree I could see several Figbirds, so zoomed in on them with the camera to get a close shot. The light, or rather lack of light, wasn’t in my favour, so it’s not the best photo. If you look closely though, you might notice the ring around the eye of the bird in the fork of the tree – that’s the male, and the other bird higher up the tree is a female.

Those cheeky birds were pinching my mulberries! I went down to have a look at the tree, and some of the fruit are looking pretty scraggly now, as you can see.

I decided to go right down the back and see how the orchard is going. We’ve done a lot of clearing down there during winter. The whole area had been taken over by gamba grass, which is classified as a weed in our area, but we’ve got rid of most of it now. We have to keep a lookout for any new shoots coming through though.

My poor grapefruit tree looked pretty dismal when we found it amid the grass, but look at it now! It’s covered in flowers, and I’m so pleased to see it looking so incredibly healthy. It’s quite an old tree, I think we planted it about twenty-five years ago, and every year up until now it ends up covered in huge grapefruits. It looks like it will be the same this year too.

As you can see, the whole valley has the smoky-haze appearance today. If you look closely at this photo though, on the right there’s a bare-branched tree with more figbirds in it! I think it might be a Jacarada tree, so I’ll keep an eye on it and get some photos when it flowers.

And here are the figbirds closer up! I wonder, are they all after my mulberries?

Another tree in flower is my Pomegranate. This is a fairly new addition to the orchard, but it had some beautiful big pomegranates on it during summer. There’s quite a few flowers on the tree now, so I could be in luck again this year.

Our lovely old Mango is preparing for summer fruit too! I had a great time last summer making Green Mango Chutney with freshly picked fruit from the tree and the next day my eyes were puffy and I had blisters on my face, hands and arms. It turned out to be a reaction to a poisonous substance in the sap of the mango tree that I had an allergic reaction to! But the chutney was great. 😉

While I did my gardening, my son’s dog Forrest – who lives permanently at my house now because it’s the only place she’s settled – and my Labrador, Bronte, followed me everywhere. They are good company, but it’s very difficult to get them to sit still long enough to get a photo of them. This photo of Forrest is a tad blurry, but the best I could get.

The Figbirds often sit atop these bunches of palm tree berries and I’ve often taken photos of them, from a distance, munching away on them. They were too busy with my mulberries today and seemed to have forgotten the berries, so I got a much closer photo of them on my way back to the house.

This is a Prince of Orange in my pool area.

And these pretty Daylilies are in the pool area too.

I absolutely love Evening Primrose flowers. They are such easy plants to grow, they are basically the plant-and-forget variety. And every summer the plants multiply, so I get even more flowers.

I love the closeup detail too, the veins through the petals and the dainty yellow carpel and stigma in the centre. (I think that’s what they are called, so correct me if I’m wrong.)

The only way I could get a photo of Bronte today was when she was on the other side of the pool fence. Every time I pointed the camera in her direction, she would run to me for a pat, so you’ll have to excuse the shadow of the fence across her fur. Actually, I’m surprised the sun shone long enough to form a shadow, it’s been such a dull day. It’s been very warm though, I think about 27 degrees Celsius, so around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a high temperature for a spring day, but cooler weather is predicted in a few days.

So that was my day today, a wander around the garden after I finished my chores there, and it was a wonderful change from sitting at my desk. I’ll have to get back into uni tomorrow, but I think I’ll feel better doing so after having a break. 🙂

Australia · blessings · bushfires · colours · gardening · memories · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · photography · rain · remembering · spring · sugar cane · Tweed Valley

Rain today … and concern over fires in the USA.

September 12, 2020September 12, 2020 Joanne9 Comments

During the past week I’ve heard a few squabbles among the kookaburras and this morning they were fighting for top position on the clothesline! They are such funny characters and as you can see, this kookie is acting quite indignant over being challenged to his top spot!

The rain we have had during the last week has brought the brilliant greens out in the cane fields, so I just had to show you all how luscious the sugar cane is looking just now.

I have been working on a uni assignment today again, but during the afternoon husband asked if I could give him a hand with a few things in the back garden. He didn’t need to twist my arm! So after I had finished writing I grabbed my camera and joined him. He was pruning the tropical pear tree in the orchard, which is right down the bottom of the garden near the rear boundary, so I took a photo of the uninterrupted view of the valley from there.

While I helped with the pruning, I left my camera in the fork of the mango tree, wrapped in a flannelette shirt as there were a few spots of rain about. I had to grab my camera again though to take a photo of this little cutie, perched on the corner fence post, eyeing off the ground for sight of his dinner. (The fence is due to be replaced soon!)

The rain became a tad heavier just as the battery in the chainsaw died, so I headed to the shelter of the bar-be-que area to wait for the shower to pass. It was quite late in the day by that time, but I still managed to catch a photo of the raindrops hitting the pool water in the dimming light.

Over the past few days, my blogging friend, Carol, has been on my mind a lot. She lives in Oregon, near where the horrendous fires in the USA are, and she has been on constant evacuation alert. Carol spoke of the red orb of sun, and I knew what she meant as the sun took on that almost glowing, eerily red appearance during the latter months of last year and early this year in New South Wales, where I live. At that time I wasn’t blogging regularly, so I thought I’d post some photos that I took around that time today.

We lived with this strange yellow sky for about two months during November and December last year. The fires blazed across all of eastern Australia, but by some strange stroke of luck, our area remained safe, even though fires surrounded us for weeks.

This is the sun, taken on the 10th November, 2019. I remember the first day I noticed the change in the appearance of the sun. I was driving home, and I wondered why the moon was so bright, and so big, and in the western sky during the afternoon. It took me a few minutes to realise that it was actually the sun. It sure didn’t look like the sun!

Mount Warning looked hazy, and the sky yellow for weeks. Weeks went by without seeing any blue sky and the sun eventually turned into a glowing red orb. Everything looked so scarily unnatural and surreal.

Looking back on these photos now, they are so unreal that they seem as if they were Photo-shopped! Unfortunately, they are genuine. This is just how the sun looked in December last year.

I am posting these photos today as I don’t image – well, I hope and pray – that we will not have another summer the same as last summer. It was unsettling, to say the least. Complete towns were burned to the ground. During the year though, we have heard that fire trails have been cleared. We have also heard that many Aboriginal people, who understand the benefits of controlled burning to rejuvenate the bush and to prevent bush fires from burning out of control are now being listened to. I don’t know why it took a catastrophic event for the authorities to listen, but at least they are listening now. Also in our favor, we have had rain, after living through drought for most of last year. Also, more rain is predicted.

As for Carol in Oregon, I wish her well, and hope the fires surrounding her are soon under control. Carol can be found at Wanderings of an Elusive Mind. ❤

Australia · Changes · garden flowers · gardening · in my garden · Mount Warning · new beginnings · photography · seasons · spring · subtropical weather · Tweed Valley

New Beginnings

September 1, 2020September 1, 2020 Joanne4 Comments

Today is the first official day of spring in Australia. Everywhere I look on the internet I see “Spring Has Sprung!” talk, yet in my subtropical area of the country I have hardly seen the sun at all today.

The temperature today reached 21 degrees Celsius, so 5 degrees lower than yesterday. I know the heat will return though, so I’m happy to enjoy the cooler weather while it’s here – first day of spring or not!

During the past week I have noticed buds springing from winter-dormant plants all over the garden. I’ve taken several photos and thought today would be the ideal day to share them. That plan has worked out well, as even though I have made a commitment to share a photo of the changing view of Mount Warning each day, I haven’t seen the mountain today! The valley has remained hidden by a layer of misty haze, so hardly inspires an image of the perfect spring day. This is how the mountain, or lack thereof, looks today. It just doesn’t seem right to post a dismal photo today of all days!

During the last few weeks I have planted a few new plants in my garden. The pretty pink tibouchina flower, above, is the first flower on one of my new plants. It’s only about eighteen inches in height now, but it will eventually become a small tree. Can you imaging the beautiful sight of a tree covered in these flowers?

“White Puffs” is not the official name of this flower, it’s the name I have given to a plant I can’t recall the name of! The flowers are so delicate and pretty, and so photogenic that they need to be shared.

My roses are growing incredibly well this year, and the season has only just begun! I am really looking forward to seeing more of my rose bushes in bloom over the next few weeks and I will be sure to take plenty of photos to share. My husband sneezes easily when around fragrant flowers, but even he loves the roses. He draws the line at having jasmine in the garden though. In the early years of our marriage I planted a beautiful jasmine which grew and flowered prolifically over our front patio. I loved the scent and would go into the garden especially to take deep breaths of the gorgeous fragrance! My husband spent the whole jasmine flowering season sneezing.

I absolutely adore fuchsias! My subtropical climate, however, is not kind to these beauties when planted out in the garden during summer. The solution? I have a fuchsia in a large pot on my front veranda, where it gets just the right amount of morning sun and is shaded and protected from the harsh midday and afternoon sun during the hottest days of summer. This lovely plant has now survived two subtropical summers, and this year has sprouted more new buds than ever before.

Port wine magnolia is another favourite and grows incredibly well in my climate. A few of the buds on the tree near my front door have popped open now, and the fragrance at dusk is amazing! Surprisingly, the fragrance doesn’t bother my husband, well, not too much anyway. 😉

Call me old fashioned – many have! – but to me, a garden just isn’t homely enough without a hydrangea plant or two. During summer I water the hydrangeas every day, remove leaves looking anything but pristine perfection immediately (to prevent any possibility of disease) and prune the old flowers to promote a longer flowering season. I also feed my hydrangeas, as well as several other flowering plants, with a regular dose of seaweed solution which I find improves the health of all plants, either decorative or edible. The start of my first hydrangea bloom only appeared a couple of days ago and I’m keeping a close eye on it to watch its development.

The Prince of Orange (Ixora) is another plant which thrives in the subtropics. The buds have just begun and I expect any day now to see the lovely tiny segments open up in full bloom.

Over the years it’s been a lot of trial an error in my subtropical garden. While there are less “errors” these days, it’s still a “trial” every time I introduce a new variety of plant. It is so rewarding to see so many of my old faithfuls, as well as my new plants, all in bloom even before spring begins this year. 🙂

Australia · gardening · Mount Warning · photography · Tweed Valley · winter

Cane Fires at Dusk

July 18, 2020July 18, 2020 Joanne4 Comments

I spent some time in the garden today, weeding a few flower beds, as well as reading some more of a lengthy novel for one of my university units. It was easy completing the set tasks this week, being the first week of semester. Next week I expect will be more challenging, but as long as I don’t get behind in my weekly work the semester won’t be too difficult to keep up with.

Taking photos every day of Mount Warning will force me to take some time away from study during the next few months. I know from past experience that while it’s temping to keep plugging away at tasks, especially when assignments are due, I am far more productive if I take a break. Keeping a daily photographic journal will force me to take at least one break every day.

It’s worth taking some time out to admire the valley every day at this time of year because there are so many fires now down in the cane fields of the Tweed Valley. Today there were several cane fires, with plumes of smoke billowing then receding throughout the day. Then later in the day, just before dusk, I heard the crackling of a fire starting close to home. Just past the rear boundary of our land the earth drops away suddenly into the valley, so I knew I would have difficulty seeing the flames of the fire with it being just beyond the drop. But just before nightfall I did catch a tiny glimpse of the flames glowing amid the foliage of some trees, which can be seen – taken on full zoom of my camera – between the trunks of two tall palm trees.

Seven minutes later, at sunset, the smoke had dissipated slightly. The sky lit up in pinkish-orange tones and frustratingly, as usual, my camera did not duplicate the intensity of the magnificently coloured sky! I still think it’s a very pretty picture of the sunset though.