Out in the Garden
All this time at home is giving me plenty of time to appreciate our garden.
Our kitchen and dining windows remain an excellent place to observe bird life.
The resident Raven brought a friend. The second raven is a little more timid and doesn't like to be around if I'm outside, but from the kitchen I get a good view of all they get up to. Taking photos is trickier.
Raven #1 drops by daily to see if the chooks have been fed, and sometimes seems cross if I'm late going out. After helping themselves to the chooks scraps for a couple of weeks, the two birds started collecting nesting materials from the cypress trees. I'm not sure where the nest is, but I'm guessing one of the neighbours yards.
Recently we are back to one raven, so I guess #2 is sitting on eggs. #1 is looking quite well fed.
The other regular visitors at the moment are a pair of spotted doves. They appreciate seed on the bird feeder.
Less frequent visitors have included a couple of King Parrots, Rainbow Lorikeets dropping by on their way to the flowering tree nearby, ducks on the front lawn, Magpies, and Currawongs. We get to see Galahs when we go out walking in nearby streets.
Recently the Noisy Miners have turned up again, chasing most of the other birds away. I need the magpies to return and put them back in their place.
Meanwhile, the chooks seem to be healthy and content. I've been letting them roam a bit outside our back gate. No one is using the path there now, and they do a good job of keeping the grass under control. Apparently I need to keep a close eye on them though, they are wanderers and will go all the way to the road and visit the neighbours if left for too long.
We were averaging about 2 eggs a day for a while, but are mostly back to 3 again now. As long as they are happy they lay their eggs in the right spot, but if I haven't given them enough roaming time they protest by laying them somewhere pooey.
In the garden beds, things are starting to flower. The Hellebores that have survived the chooks are doing well, Camelias have their first flowers, and at the moment the Magnolia still has flower buds intact and uneaten.
Something has been eating one of the Camelias for a number of years now. I assumed it was possums, or birds. This year I finally tried putting some netting over it, which seems to have been no help at all. I can't see anything on the leaves or stems, but tried spraying liberally with pyretheum, based on the effect this possibly made the leaves even tastier. Not sure what I'm going to try next, but it will be completely devoid of leaves and buds next year if I don't find something effective.
The lawn remains very much a work in progress.
The front garden beds have seen the most changes over the last few years, and are now starting to look more established. Everlasting Daisies and the Happy Wanderer are in flower, along with a Grevillea in the chaos that is the front bed (the one with the triple-trunk Pittosporum, Ivy, a weedy flower that spreads by runners, and another weedy plant that spreads by bulbs).
Bulbs present with permission are also doing well. So much so that I'm going to have to try and thin them out a bit this year. Apparently I'm not very good at digging them up.
There are a few Daffodils, Cornflowers, and a lot of Jonquils out now. Assorted others I've forgotten the names of have their foliage out.
The mailbox bed is looking better for having some attention during lockdown. Seadaisies and Roses are back under control, and the tree has been moved.
That bed is home to some weird roses that stick skinny stems up everywhere, so for many years I thought it was just another rose bush, didn't notice it hadn't flowered, and pruned it back with the rest. It was really only last year, when it must have got its roots established in the clay, that it suddenly grew fast and it became obvious it wasn't a rose.
Having established the tree was probably going to be very large, it had to go. However it looked so healthy, we didn't like to kill it. I was prepared to be tough on the grounds that it probably wouldn't survive being dug out anyway, but David wanted to try and move it.
So he did. By some miracle it actually seems to have survived the move and is putting out lots of new green leaves now.
Not that we need another tree. The mostly-dead eucalypt nearby is now unrecognisable from a couple of years ago, looking very healthy and vigorous.
In this photo, you can see the new tree in the foreground, tall eucalypt in the background behind the Zombie Rosebush of Doom and beside the Pittosporum That Will Not Die.
In the shady patch under a Camelia, Bromeliads are thriving. Violets are taking over one half of the bed, and the black flowering bulbs the other half. Some time soon the shall meet in the middle and an epic battle will ensue.
Found a massive dead rat out the back gate recently. A brown rat, apparently they can grow to about 25cm or so in the body, and this one would have been all of that. Not sure if our cats had anything to do with it. On the one hand, they are slowing down a lot and it was a very big rat. However if it was also old and slow then maybe they could have done it.
Our kitchen and dining windows remain an excellent place to observe bird life.
The resident Raven brought a friend. The second raven is a little more timid and doesn't like to be around if I'm outside, but from the kitchen I get a good view of all they get up to. Taking photos is trickier.
Raven #1 drops by daily to see if the chooks have been fed, and sometimes seems cross if I'm late going out. After helping themselves to the chooks scraps for a couple of weeks, the two birds started collecting nesting materials from the cypress trees. I'm not sure where the nest is, but I'm guessing one of the neighbours yards.
Recently we are back to one raven, so I guess #2 is sitting on eggs. #1 is looking quite well fed.
The other regular visitors at the moment are a pair of spotted doves. They appreciate seed on the bird feeder.
Less frequent visitors have included a couple of King Parrots, Rainbow Lorikeets dropping by on their way to the flowering tree nearby, ducks on the front lawn, Magpies, and Currawongs. We get to see Galahs when we go out walking in nearby streets.
Recently the Noisy Miners have turned up again, chasing most of the other birds away. I need the magpies to return and put them back in their place.
Meanwhile, the chooks seem to be healthy and content. I've been letting them roam a bit outside our back gate. No one is using the path there now, and they do a good job of keeping the grass under control. Apparently I need to keep a close eye on them though, they are wanderers and will go all the way to the road and visit the neighbours if left for too long.
We were averaging about 2 eggs a day for a while, but are mostly back to 3 again now. As long as they are happy they lay their eggs in the right spot, but if I haven't given them enough roaming time they protest by laying them somewhere pooey.
In the garden beds, things are starting to flower. The Hellebores that have survived the chooks are doing well, Camelias have their first flowers, and at the moment the Magnolia still has flower buds intact and uneaten.
Something has been eating one of the Camelias for a number of years now. I assumed it was possums, or birds. This year I finally tried putting some netting over it, which seems to have been no help at all. I can't see anything on the leaves or stems, but tried spraying liberally with pyretheum, based on the effect this possibly made the leaves even tastier. Not sure what I'm going to try next, but it will be completely devoid of leaves and buds next year if I don't find something effective.
The lawn remains very much a work in progress.
The front garden beds have seen the most changes over the last few years, and are now starting to look more established. Everlasting Daisies and the Happy Wanderer are in flower, along with a Grevillea in the chaos that is the front bed (the one with the triple-trunk Pittosporum, Ivy, a weedy flower that spreads by runners, and another weedy plant that spreads by bulbs).
Bulbs present with permission are also doing well. So much so that I'm going to have to try and thin them out a bit this year. Apparently I'm not very good at digging them up.
There are a few Daffodils, Cornflowers, and a lot of Jonquils out now. Assorted others I've forgotten the names of have their foliage out.
The mailbox bed is looking better for having some attention during lockdown. Seadaisies and Roses are back under control, and the tree has been moved.
That bed is home to some weird roses that stick skinny stems up everywhere, so for many years I thought it was just another rose bush, didn't notice it hadn't flowered, and pruned it back with the rest. It was really only last year, when it must have got its roots established in the clay, that it suddenly grew fast and it became obvious it wasn't a rose.
Having established the tree was probably going to be very large, it had to go. However it looked so healthy, we didn't like to kill it. I was prepared to be tough on the grounds that it probably wouldn't survive being dug out anyway, but David wanted to try and move it.
So he did. By some miracle it actually seems to have survived the move and is putting out lots of new green leaves now.
Not that we need another tree. The mostly-dead eucalypt nearby is now unrecognisable from a couple of years ago, looking very healthy and vigorous.
In this photo, you can see the new tree in the foreground, tall eucalypt in the background behind the Zombie Rosebush of Doom and beside the Pittosporum That Will Not Die.
In the shady patch under a Camelia, Bromeliads are thriving. Violets are taking over one half of the bed, and the black flowering bulbs the other half. Some time soon the shall meet in the middle and an epic battle will ensue.
Found a massive dead rat out the back gate recently. A brown rat, apparently they can grow to about 25cm or so in the body, and this one would have been all of that. Not sure if our cats had anything to do with it. On the one hand, they are slowing down a lot and it was a very big rat. However if it was also old and slow then maybe they could have done it.