Tag Archives: Collector

Spring is well, springing

Spring is arriving finally. It feels late this year but as a google remember notice informed me, it is exactly the same time as last year.

Remember this?

Apple trees this time last year

Well, that was taken on the 6th October 2019. This one was taken just 2 days ago.

As you can see, there is not much difference! It is a similar story all around the garden.

The apple tree in the garden is almost in full flower
This is a while japonica
visible from the track.
A few flowers on a soft fruit similar to a nectarine or peach. I actually don’t know because it has leaf curl and has yet tomanage to set fruit.
Maybe this year?.

The lawn is a carpet of yellow yet again. The flowers are Cape Daisies. An invasive species that turns the whole mountain side yellow when it flowers.

The mountain side alongside lake George.

I’ll try for a better photo tomorrow when I get to leave the house again.

The veg plot has almost been reclaimed from the very wild rocket which has flowered all winter long giving one of our nectar feeding birds a source of nectar. Both of us have seen the Eastern Spinebill hovering in front of the flowers gathering nectar.

Raspberry canes and parsley have gone in.
The rhubarb has settled in nicely. In the background is the wild rocket and behind it the fig trees just starting to leaf.

My lavendar is flowering well after a long dry summer. There to the left is a different variety and has yet to recover from the attention of a chicken landing on it. Sadly they happen to love lavendar. It is the smell. They love rolling in it!

After a visit to IKEA recently, I came home with 2 new orchids. Both are settling in well and flowering beautifully.

Time to catch up…

It’s been a while and a lot had happened in that time.

Stuart has been into hospital to have an ankle fused. He’s well recovered now, but still has another to be done. His op was very hard on me with me having to take on everything whilst he was completely non-weightbearing for 8 weeks which turned into 10 weeks because on issues relating to covid-19 and getting medical appointments etc. And as my mother will testify to, both my parents ended up stranded in Australia… what should have been a 6 week holiday turned into a near 6 month stay and instead of/as well as an Australian summer, they had an Aussie autumn and 2 months of an Aussie winter. Not too be sneezed at when you’re this far south and in an area that routinely sees -10°C and snow at least once or twice each winter…

But it has also been an autumn/winter of rain, and fantastic sunsets and sunrises. Since the drought broke back in February with torrential rain, washing away our gravel road in many places (something repeated the day my parents left! ), I now have a new photographic point to capture sunsets reflected in the dam. It has lead to some amazing pictures.

Sunrise this morning.

Like many, 2020 has not been a great year, (drought, bush fires, smoke and worst air pollution in the world at one point, torrential rains (100mm of rain in less than an hour when the drought finally broke), the virus, parents stranded here in Australia, major surgery for Stuart, a shoulder injury, my surgery postponed etc… ) but it has also had some good points as well (plenty of time to spend with my parents, plenty of knitting done, some fantastic sunrises and sunsets – we don’t usually see sunsets here, and the drought finally breaking. In fact we are due rain again today, tomorrow and the next day!

Sunset, just last week

As you can see, there have been some great sunsets to say the least.

We’ve also discovered a new cafe in Braidwood that thanks to the owner and chef being vegan herself has a great range of vegan dishes and most dishes have either a dairy free version or a vegan version available on request leaving me a choice of 5 or 6 dishes to choose from. Sadly only the 1 desert and I don’t like it (a fruit cake slice that tries to be everything. Gluten free, refined sugar free, soy free, egg free, dairy free, vegan and so on…).

We’re just waiting for the new Spring menu to arrive.

Strike that. We’re just waiting for Spring to arrive!