After the wind and rain of the last few weeks

The sun came out, we came out and this blue tongue lizard came to enjoy a little sunshine.

A Season of Abundance

This season seems to offer a abundance of life.The flowers have been stunning. The chestnuts are heavy in flower and their scent permeates the whole area.Clouds of common brown butterflies form  wavers as they emerge from the cover of the grass to feed on the nectar , chestnuts,buddleias and bottlebrushes are on the top of their menu.The bees are also busy around the same flowers along with hoverflies,wasps and other beneficial insects.
All the fruit trees are laden with fruit which really needs thinning if I could muster the time as the berries are keeping us busy, a bumper crop. A bit of a shock after  a number of drought years but 2 average winters have now produced abundance.The Christmas customers will be happy as we can fill all their orders and more.

The sugar plum in the goose pen was groaning under the weight of the crop but the rainbow lorikeets  are stripping it , the geese,chooks and dogs compete for the fallen ones but I still cant find one ripe enough to eat.They will soon ripen and there will be enough for everyone.
The Rhode Island Red flock rapidly expanded over spring starting with an incubated batch to be closely followed by plenty of broody hens to choose from. Three where selected to sit so now we have 30+ apprentices scratching around in the orchards, wood heap and mulch pile.One hen brought her chicks down to forage in and around the house garden. They were specifically trained to remove the mulch from the gardens and leave it on the footpaths!
As evening falls all the small bats that live under our veranda come out to forage on insects, they too have experienced a population explosion as observed by them setting out each evening and the amount of droppings left on the veranda.
On the negative side a family of kookaburras have lost their home (no doubt many other species also) to more greed where  a bush block (around 3 acres) a few doors up  has been levelled including the house, no doubt to be to be replaced by a ‘Mac Mansion’
While the opposite occurs with  our  neighbouring property which carries a ground fuel load of around 10+ tons per hectare (max limit  4 tons) and they only bother carry out token maintained when forced to by local government, which don’t have the political will to enforce fuel reduction and suitable fire breaks and just accepts token attempts by landholders year after year.So every time their is a major fire we have to have a royal commission and then nothing changes , another fire ,another enquiry nothing happens!!! Meanwhile in a season of abundance the fire risk is also increased. So now everyone has a fire plan? Most will leave rather than carrying out their responsibility to the land, endangering wildlife, vegetation,our orchards and income and other resident and their properties.

Small Encounters

....are what makes working with nature all the more special.
As well as encountering protective(not aggressive) goose parents and their fluff ball yet fast growing offspring’s ,a day in the gardens can bring many often interesting surprises.
The other day while weeding with Ting we met one of these.


Large & beautifully coloured but would give you a nasty bite if you upset it.
Just before lunch a decided I needed to visit the outside dunny. Hebe beat me in as she new the resident ring tail possum was sleeping in the basket there. All curled up looking very cute.

Latter on, the air was alive with swarming bees, such energy as they move along!



Back at the tasks at hand i.e. weeding the currants, I noticed that a blue wren family had become very noisy and excited, Frank had noticed as well and had gone over to investigate, he barked once so I went to investigate and sure enough there was a beautiful red bellied black snake. We left it to get on and went back to weeding.

Today another interesting encounter. We were sitting on the veranda and watching the activity of a pair of eastern spinebills who were working as a tag team speeding off down the hill and back again in seconds. On return they flew very low into the front garden, then in seconds they were back again off down the hill. We figured they were feeding young and by following them with the binoculars we could see they where getting moths.


Late in the afternoon I was off to the vegie garden to get dinner when I heard eastern spinebill type noises coming from the camellia tree on investigation I saw two fluffy fat juveniles calling out, next an adult arrives feeds one then off again, the other arrives feeds one then off again, They were very busy feeding them but at the same time encouraging them to fly to get there food.

Such encounters make everyday special!

You know it's Spring when

These guys appear

I have noticed that the flowering bushes and trees are especially vibrant and abundant this year.


Have you ever noticed that in some years the different qualities of the plant world seem to be accentuated? Like a year of blossoms, a year of leaves, good cabbages, a year of fruit, when pumpkins and cucumbers grow to profusion. Or a good root year when the parsnips and carrots grow to perfection. Do these phenomena follow a rhythm? Is it the rhythm of the sun from year to year that influence the plants? What do you think?