I guess I really have been living in drought most of the time I've lived in Brisbane. This summer is Mango Season. All the mango trees have been covered with far more mangoes than I'm used to. The tree in our own garden still has ripening fruit that hasn't been taken by fruit bats, while other mangoes lie half-eaten on the lawn (usually we can ( Read more... )

I went away on Cycle Queensland. Overall, I had a great time ( Read more... )

One of the points I've now seen raised once too often in the Thirteenth Child MammothFail is that you can't call it genocide to prevent Native Americans' ancestors even arriving in the Americas in the first place. The people are still alive, just somewhere else! They haven't been killed ( Read more... )

I believe the native raspberries in the Canberra region are Rubus parvifolius. In any case, they look like this:


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Our aircon downstairs has been acting erratically, until finally last week it was acting so erratically as to be not working at all. It's still under warranty, so we called in the repair guy. He discovered that the cause of our trouble was a gecko that had crept into the unit, and ultimately shorted out a component in there. He doesn't think it' ( Read more... )

Dear Riverpath ( Read more... )

... and I could probably do it just from our garden for a good while.

Some elkhorn (or possibly staghorn) ferns are attempting to start on a tree that's so far not had any ferns. I'm not sure how successful this is going to be considering how close to the ground they are. And I don't know remotely enough about how to move these.



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There's this large cactus that grows up a gum tree at the end of Mt Ommaney Drive. I was thrilled enough when I discovered that in spring it had big yellow flowers.  But this year the flowers actually led to fruit.  And then I realised Saturday week ago that some of the fruit were not only turning pink, they suddenly looked an awful lot like ( Read more... )

I found myself ranting elsewhere, but it crystalised something for me ( Read more... )

Since these events have been noted recently: that I want to wear footwear other than sandals; that jeans are bearable to wear again; that ceiling fans have been turned off; that polar fleece dressing gowns are again in evidence; that rain is actually cool, rather than steambath conditions; that I actually need moisturiser; that the doona is needed ( Read more... )