and in late summer

We have been busy during the summer, only partly in the gardens.

We had weeks of hot-dry, which killed some things, weeks of torrential rain, two events of 80mm in 30 minutes at night, with problems of flooding and mulch being washed away. But after the severe drought last summer, we have a water table restocked and we have now also sufficient plant size and sufficient humus in the top layers for the garden to have some robustness against severe weather. Into mid-February, days of very high humidity, temperatures wandering into the 30s at times, night down to about 18 or so.

There are likely deficiencies, potassium is so soluble it is probably much reduced and we need to top up to improve fruiting. I began adding volcanic rock dust several months ago and this seems to have had very good. This being in origin tired cow paddock, negligible soil, with superphosphate induced hard-pan on top of several hundred feet of porous sandstone.

Here some pictures, inventory my place February 2015.

To begin, when I wake to the light from the east, this is the view from bedroom's French doors. I had removed a huge weight of a large tree which hitherto shaded this eastern back garden, because there was risk of it falling and uprooting the back wall of the house. But there still remained a couple of large branches, threatening to fall over time, hence the now red coloured gate-prop to hold up the branch.

and this is a 180 degree landscaped view from the step outside 

click any picture to enlarge

From the front, the other end of the property, you arrive here, among food production with a tiny amount of grass, mainly to tear up for chickens. The house shouts tame-ordinary, the garden however is going wild.

There are guardians. I dream of carving a crouching figure from that stump.

Beyond that large tree, a fruitful lilly pilly is what permaculturists have with some kind of exotic panache, begun calling a hugel bed. In early spring, when we had a lot of logs from pruning, I put these, together with seven bags of horse manure, under dark plastic, after watering deeply. Left until January, the logs are still intact, but surrounded with rich soil full of worms. Too dark for many plants, I have begun to put some rainforest items there. This is a pleasant visual barrier from the street.

There is another small hugel bed by the drive, 

with a flowering plant but also the base for a passionfruit. 

This garden has summer sun but shaded in winter. 

By winter I hope the passionfruit has climbed well up the trees to catch the light.

Right now the sun is intense, so as well as mulch, while these plants are very small and shallow rooted, I have also put some prunings on the top, loose and open and shading the mulch.

Adjacent to that is bare ground, so sun struck I thought geraniums might survive where others have failed. But having watered and deep mulched the geraniums, to my surprise a dead stick of failed tamarillo has suddenly returned to life. Tribute to rock dust, water, mulch, light, heat.

Across the drive is wider garden with full sun, a sun trap for much of the year. When I arrived in 2008 it was all grass, now deeper life.

the mulch we make. Perennial basil, chilli, pepino

pumpkin, blood orange, tomatoes, tarragon, basil

pumpkin, banana

lime and sage: the curtain protects strawberries from birds

Yarrow as a live mulch aka groundcover.

scaevola as live mulch.

this guava is a success and fruit are growing well

This jackfruit really shouldn't be alive here. It was sent to us in a mistaken delivery.
It is a tropical tree and in the last four months more than doubled in size.
It sits between a sun-heated north-facing wall and a fence.
To get through winter I placed a mirror nearby.
Should it really grow to 15 metres I don't know where we will put the house.
It shares space with the washing line. What will happen if fruit reach 30kg each?!!?

enter the back yard past the espaliered lemon,
an essential near the kitchen

also a kitchen essential, the bed of chives under the lemon tree

I recently planted a number of hardenbergia plants adjacent to fruit trees and vines. A handsome additive to the garden, this legume also improves the soil.

Still too young for eggs, these eight month old hens are also soil improvers.

Since the hens came to live around the roots of this passionfruit it has gone mad. Last winter one metre high.

Passionfruit flower. You do not pick the fruit, you collect it daily off the ground. But no fruit yet from this plant. 

Young tamarillo amid golden marjoram and parsley. Tamarillo trees will grow to four or five metres.
They only last a few years. New trees grow from seeds of fallen fruit. We may then move them or give them away.

This bush basil, perennial basil, has a deeper, earthier flavour than the annual basil.
This bush, now six years old, I pruned again recently, it recovers from savage pruning.
From this plant I have seedlings everywhere. 

A view from the back veranda. The bangalow palms were two feet high in 2008, this year grown very rapidly. 

Sunflowers grown along the eastern fence now beginning to bloom
... and of course heads turned east in the morning, a gift to my neighbour.

At last a banana flower!

A raised bed with eggplant, leek, spring onion, other self-sown greens

My neighbour cuts a lot of grass and at my request drops it over the fence - for mulch or compost

The maqui berry plant on the right seems to be shrubby though described in wikipedia as a tree.
On the left, asparagus has now been left to grow up, having been robbed of its shoots in spring.

This Gymea lily by the compost has grown slowly but out there in other places I see the bases of some are huge
... will I have to move that gate?

Under a banana a young volunteer palm tree lurks. We will watch it grow and ask it to explain itself.

This raised bed, in a former life bed for someone's large dogs, has had a spinach crop scared to death by heat.
But a fine tomato vine has taken over.

Rhubarb does not like the heat, but it has survived and will crop well in winter.

A view of the door from which the first photo in this blog entry was taken.

Parsley under a palm tree, such a wonderful edible mulch.

landscape with sunflowers and happy cockatoo

The sulphur crested cockatoo tends to come around alone to gardens, though found in trees, on wing and fields in flocks. They come for lemons, to rip apart for seeds, they come for passionfruit occasionally, again for seeds. They come especially for sunflowers. This is a window view of a happy sunflower seed breakfaster, looking northwest, 7am Sunday 1 February.

click on photo to enlarge

a season of birds

At this time of year I have a number of bird species migrating, or making flighty swift visits to my garden. I have not succeeded in photographing them in my garden, but visitors have included the once-common elegant, unmistakable bulbul, thought by some to be a pest but far more common fifty and sixty years ago, when I was young.

Absolutely not a pest, the Wonga Pigeon is audible wonga-wonga-ing and comes for a quick look and seed hunt before wisely scooting back to the bush, having in earlier times, because it's fat and walks around, been hunted and eaten near to extinction. Here is a little sound bite of its voice that I made in 2007 at my former farm. There it grew tiresome, same voice all day. Here, sudden, brief, unexpected, it's a huge pleasure.

There have been rain events of one to two inches of rain, a week apart, with heat between. Growth luxuriant and at my house with many ponds, at least three species of frog at noght. At Helen's house, the bird life and lizard life abound. A 30cm lizard has come into the house and it's not easy to see how to get it out.

A juvenile magpie has decided to be Helen's kitchen window friend. You can tell it's a juvenile both because it is fearless and has not learned any hostile responses to humans and also because the black and white feathering is not sharply defined yet. Alas I did not get the camera in time to record three young magpies on my neighbour's lawn one afternoon, either in play or in reality engaging in vigorous puffing, pouting, pecking and flapping competition. But here is Helen's friend, a regular visitor to the window. He does not seem to be using the window as a mirror but curious about life on the inside and happy to be talked to... and to gurgle back.

Meanwhile out the front, in the damp morning, corellas gather on the powerlines. Since recent inland droughty years, they seem much more common on the coast. 

and fly away... (click on any photo to enlarge)

When there is a storm coming out of those hills to the west out there, these birds come screaming ahead of the storm in large numbers, shouting "who's got the map, where's the map, which way to New Zealand??!!" 

But in this quiet cool damp morning, it's different, quiet, social.

I realise that hanging out on the power lines in the morning has simple explanations. They are very social, there's quite a bit of healthy allopreening going on. But also, if you've been in safety in trees in the night, you are wet and you need somewhere in the open to dry. We don't hang our washing under trees, same reason. 

ecological complexity: spring, rain and a red-bellied black snake

We have had much rain. Then a couple of very hot days. Late yesterday having watered heat-shocked plants we sat at the table outside Helen's kitchen window.

There is a black snake, said Helen. And indeed there was. Slithering up from the strawberry bed at the top of the first brick wall, up the bricks into the garden. This photo from the kitchen today, no snake... and we have not seen the snake today.

It's quite small I said, impressed by how slender it looked (about 3 or 4cm diameter.
But quite long, said Helen.

Yes, I said, perhaps 1.2 metres... we both were surprised as this slender creature continued to reveal more of its length, coming up from the strawberries. Still young, we thought.

I've hoped to have a snake in the compost, said Helen. But I had in mind a diamond python.

source wikipedia: wikipedia says these snakes are 'not generally fatal'.

Well, the lizards are abundant today and Helen saw one looking very pregnant. So the snake has not been able to predate all her wonderful lizards. But if a snake were resident, it would feast well.

We are both very familiar with red-bellied black snakes, and we agree with the Australian Museum which advises:

This beautiful serpent shares our love of sunshine and water, and is a familiar sight to many outdoor adventurers in eastern Australia. Attitudes towards these largely inoffensive snakes are slowly changing, however they are still often seen as a dangerous menace and unjustly persecuted. 

On the farm, the startled black snake hastens away towards water. And you talk to the dog and distract it away from seeing the snake.

In suburbia, the situation is more complex. Fences trap and may make it hard for a snake to flee, dogs may get too adventurous. We have told the neighbours who have children and a young Jack Russell Terrier about the snake. The terrier is the one likely to be silly.

The Australian Museum also advises that:

During the spring breeding season males actively search for females and consequently spend more time in the open and travel further than females generally do (up to 1220m in a single day). As the breeding season winds down males reduce their activity and by summer there is no significant difference between males and females in the amount of time spent in the open, either basking or moving, and both sexes bask less and become less active than they were in spring.

 So it's possible the snake was passing through and took exception to our use of cold water and our voices, heading on up the hill. There is a metal fence on three sides of the garden, uphill, but perhaps the snake could happily climb via trees and passionfruit vines to get over the fence.

The Medical Journal of Australia has some 2010 clinical notes on black snake bites. Which provide comfort that the bite is not lethal. There is a recommendation for use of tiger snake antivenom, but disconcerting advice that more than a third of patients administered the antivenom have severe allergic reactions including anaphylaxis in some cases.

Meanwhile we will depart a little from Teddy Roosevelt's admonition to speak softly and carry a big stick, walking noisily in the garden so the snake knows we are there and moves on. We carry the long-handled weed tool, wearing solid footwear and thick trousers. And rejoice a little at this added complexity, but hoping it will depart for somewhere more sensible soon.

Summer arriving at Helen's garden

 Only a few weeks ago, Helen was up in the mulberry, artfully crafting the launch tube for the Queen of Freedom.

but a few weeks later the artful craftiness has been swallowed by spring growth.


There are several lessons and learnings:

• we despair of the mulberry producing good fruit. Despite its label when purchased, it's not really fruitful... but by golly it's brilliant at vegetative growth;
• The pruning of the upperworks needs followup now in summer, when it's not raining, as it is right now, every day;
• Viewed from above, from the front veranda, third photo, you can see that some under-pruning soon will provide a valuable summer shade space.

DETAIL: In the third photo, you will also see a trap to catch Indian Myna birds. The problem is discussed here, in a 2004 report. The problem has grown since then. This YouTube link is to a discussion of how a cage (of slightly different design) works. We have a problem with getting Mynas into this cage. While a lot of mynas come round, especially when there are chickens here and expectation of stealing chicken feed, the dominant bird at Helen's house is the vicious pied currawong. To get Myna birds into the trap we put dried dog food in the  entrance. While the currawong is boss of the garden, no one gets to the dog food before the currawong. They have no concern for mynas going for chicken food, the currawongs are meat eaters.

Helen's garden is sloping. The soil is rich dark red, volcanic. This is a contrast to the soil at my place, which is shallow and sits on top of a sandstone plateau, through which water is easily lost... mulch and development of a depth of good humus soil requires work. At Helen's place, this single dig with a fork reveals a very different, richer soil:

Which makes everything flourish. 

Helen's garden is packed with plants. 

With the addition this morning of two guavas and a kiwiberry, Helen advises that the fairly small garden now contains 31 fruit trees, bushes and vines, plus a macadamia nut which has its first small crop evident now. 

For the rest there are many herbs and vegetables, seedling trays and a chook house and run (the beach house of the chooks shown at my place, previous story. They need to come to Helen's soon to give their space at my house a rest.

Help today in planting (and shifting locations of a blood orange and a quince because of their sun needs) from Japanese WWOOFers Kanna and Daisuke, ballet dancer/model and engineering graduate... so well equipped! 

For the rest of this entry, a quick walk around:

Up from the street

Along the street

We have difficulty getting the thyme and other herbs established in these front steps,
because this is west facing and very hot in the afternoon.

This needs a bit of a trim. Helen has developed a keyhole in this front hedge,
through which you can see lemons and a chilli bush.

This garden above, beside the steep driveway, has begun to thrive since, with the help of WWOOFer Tatsuya we built a swale in January. 

Water previously just ran away. Now it enters the ground up there below the (grown larger) grapefruit and is retained in the soil below.

The swale is very simple. Most discussion online is about huge swales. But micromanagement of water is very easy. 
Rules 1-10:Get the water under the ground! There is no Rule 11.

Here is a photo from January.

This single passionfruit vine extends over ten metres along the side fence and also feeds the neighbours.
You don't pick passionfruit, you collect them when they drop.
A pleasant thing to do after coming home.
Necessary also to check downhill for the runaways!

healthy cuttings of prostrate thyme, for further reducing grass areas...

on right, banana passionfruit

 Because the house is cut into a slope, there is an area of concrete and a brick wall embankment behind the house, imposing on design, but whose severity of look is reduced by plant vigour.