in the vicinity of little dip
From two mornings of Lesley’s walks on Long Beach, with Joey.
The house from Roland and Angie’s block, walking up the track Roland cleared up and around to the back ti-trees.
The ti-trees are in flower–they are diecious, male trees and female trees–here is a boy.
This has been an ongoing debate all summer. The native grasses that Lesley has planted and watered around the house–some of them relatively rare and difficult to grow–turn out to include some which are like chocolate for wombats. They have had no difficulty getting through the fence–they are like little tanks and can dig. Putting rocks and timber in the way doesn’t stop them.
As the summer bush feed has disappeared with the heat and lack of rain (very dry here) the garden has become increasingly attractive to the wombat tribe. With the help of Roland and the boys we put in an outside rail low to the ground, but as you can see here it hasn’t deterred them–this is probably the fiercest of the various strategies, clearly by a determined and annoyed wombat who moved both the stump and the rock aside and then dug in.
The solutions seem to be (1) dig mesh into the ground off the bottom rail–but their burrows run down to a considerable depth, sometimes to underground water, so I’m thinking that is probably not going to work; or (2) accept they are going to eat some of the grasses which, one hopes, are adapted to it (or maybe not); or (3) plant only grasses wombats don’t like–although that theory hasn’t been tested and at a pinch they may like them all.
On the other hand we like wombats and are happy they are about.
Here are some lovely spring flowers–Mesembryanthemum, Kunzia (muntries) and another that I haven’t identified yet. The first two, of course, are edible bush foods.
Spring is moving along and the grass with it–so mowing and slashing is the order of the day. I belong to the ‘slash twice’ school–early spring, early summer, before the fire season–because I like to get on top of it and get it as clean as possible. There is also the issue of spring snakes, who tend to be irritable after winter and mating, and so on–best to see them coming. There is a ‘slash once’ school–late spring–but we twicers regard them as mere penny-pinchers, trading off quality. . .
And finally the old windmill has come down! Lesley is pleased as the squeaking wheel has stopped–fair enough. It’s going to a good home–the young mechanic in town, Edge, and his lady Kelly are taking it off to put on their block when they purchase it. In exchange Edge is advising/demonstrating/fixing tractor maintenance/repair, and given that he is a tractor-whisperer this is a very fair exchange. So now I’m just using the submersible pump at the bore, run off the generator, but the idea is to move to a solar panel operation before too long.
Taking the windmill down was quite an event–me, Edge, and Gary. I was for the conservative option, dismantling it piece by piece from the top, but Gary came through with the radical option, lower it in one piece and dismantle it on the ground. There was the inevitable conversation, “Can’t do it that way, need a rope over there. . .”, “you’ll wreck it if you don’t”, and so on. But it got done and without wrecking the wheel. Edge flew a drone over the event as it was happening and has video of it–I’ll post the link when it’s up.
The last shot here shows the new view–bit of a shock to the system, I know. . .
You’ll see an old wrought-iron bath sitting there–it belongs to Lesley–you will need to consult her for information about it. . .
And here are some spring lights:
Spring orchids under the old ti-trees:
First slashing with the rehabilitated old tractor. You can also see some posts around an asparagus patch that Lesley has planted.
In the middle of this polar blast we’re currently experiencing I thought it would be good to record the fact that the bush is going into its early spring flowering–which may turn out to be somewhat premature, but given that it has tens of thousands of years of evolution packed into it is probably going to turn out all right. So here are some pictures, taken before this latest turn in the weather:
It’s Anzac Day–always a challenging day in Australia. Here is a piece I wrote for our family, about Dad/Poppy, and Mum/Nanny–something of a record for younger generations and a little bit of speaking truth to power, perhaps.
Out and about. The Casuarinas are in full pollination, rivers of gold. And the boundary path (with Joey)–you can see the Melaleucas in the background, still flowering.
Here are a few scenes from recent walks on country–not ours, the Boandik people’s, which we are holding in stewardship for the time being.
This first group is from a grove (what is the Australian equivalent–mob?–probably) of Casuarinas, or Sheoaks–old trees whose lineage goes back to the early evolutionary times. They are diecious–which means that there are male trees and female trees, with wind-blown pollen–it seems very inefficient but it must have worked because they have been on the planet a lot longer than a great many other plants.
At this time of year the male trees are pollinating hopefully, which accounts for the yellow tinge you can see here. The dark green trees are the female trees, hanging around waiting for something to happen. Today it’s calm so probably nothing exciting on at the moment.
The kangaroos like the seedlings so it’s quite hard to get them to grow–you have to protect them–but here in the wild the young trees are doing very well together. Maybe clustering together like this gives them some kind of protection.
If you click on a photo and run the slide show the details will show up better.
A couple of days a front came through, with the rain drifting across. Dylan Thomas wrote somewhere (I think “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”) of the rain “shawling down”, a lovely and evocative phrase, and just right here.
One doesn’t really want to be anywhere else.
