Black Dog

I was interested in where the expression "Black Dog" came from because my late husband on the rare occasion he was feeling dark and fretful, would say he had the black dog on his shoulder. It apparently refers to an English myth where the hounds of hell would haze people. I wondered whether I was accommodating a black dog myself last week. My sense of fun and my sense of humour seemed to have left me. So I thought, to entice them back I would offer them freshly baked scones, strawberry jam and cream.... no way.. THEY wanted my black olives, matured cheddar cheese and Hugo's shiraz !! 7 am in the morning?? well , why not?
It is interesting how locked in some of us are to patterns that in the end seem irrelevant. It seems to take some of us a lifetime to shake these off. So let us celebrate life by looking at everyday life with fresh eyes and question everything we were brought up with, discarding all that doesn't make sense or doesn't suit us any longer.
The light outside my window at present is a glorious sunsetting gold with that rare feeling of otherworldniness. I have taken some photos but am not sure it has captured it.
It has been another busy day with a dental appointment first, then our music playing of Teleman and Bach, then the Pilates program my physio has devised for me.It is meant to strengthen the inner core of the body and correct the posture of the spine and consequently feet as well. Older age has spiritual advantages but not physical ones I find.Having lived a childhood during a war where food was scarce has probably left a physical scar on the skeleton.
The share farmer has spread super today and this afternoon the grape harvesting machine was next door harvesting the shiraz grapes. The vines look raped and pillaged afterwards, so sad and droopy.

I know they will be fed and watered after wards but they never seem to recover that beautiful vigorous look of before. Is there a lesson for us here?
Tomorrow we intend to go to the Mt Lofty Botanical Park  and have a picnic there!! We will also call in on a friend who is restoring a lovely old 19th century gardeners cottage belonging to an old estate in Stirling

Rain! Glorious rain!

When I got up this morning early, it was raining quite gently and it persisted most of the day. I couldn't resist going out and take photos of the raindrops falling on the pond and seeing the fish swimming in clear water. It has been so long since the last rain that it is hard to convey the inner feeling of relief at the sight of raindrops on water. The bark too, which is lying around in great profusion, looks so colourful when wet with rain with the red undersides and the silver topsides so bright.  We used to have bearded dragons living under the bark but we think that the grape harvesters have caused a lot of mayhem because the lizard used to sit on top of the trellis posts and would not have been able to get out of the way quickly enough.

 The grape harvest machinery has been a continual hum during the night and the vignerons are probably not happy with this rain as they may have to spray to prevent mildew setting in. The dry grown grapes will produce a wonderful wine with intense nose and flavours this season and our area is famous for its intense shiraz.
The rain has also improved the fig crop . I am still having to beat off the Sulphur Crested cockatoos early in the morning and make sure we get walnuts to last us for the coming year.
I didn't do any pickled walnuts this season as I was too late and they had set their woody shell by the time I got to them. In the photo below I tried to capture the brilliant red colours ot the Canna .

plant. It had been in a pot and didn't like it so we planted it under the Holm Oak where it would have some shade and it does seem to prefer it there, to being in a pot. It is interesting how tricky it can be to find a place for a plant where it will thrive. Even the hardy Geraniums I find will die if the situation doesn't suit it. Yet some will survive and thrive in situations you'd think were too harsh.

Life cycle of E Lehmannii

 It seems we have to start with the Lehmannii seed pod. These turn into very hard conkers and make wonderful fire wood. In the slow combustion stove they will still be glowing in the morning when you get up. In fact the whole tree is excellent firewood, it is very very hard and a devil to cut when dry.

 The red fingers form after the flower has matured and are very sculptural. The covers fall off after a while and can be threaded into interesting necklaces or cords for room dividers.
In fact I have collected some and will organize them into patterns for photographs.
The green flowers are blowsy balls of green and the Rainbow Lorikeets love them and leave our other fruit alone when these trees are flowering.

This morning I also took photos of the erymophila which is flowering but I cannot find its identification in the book. I did find the name for the Melaleuca nesophila which also still had one flower left. The drought is playing havoc with the rest of the garden .I always think of our end of summer as the northern European winter when all the plants have disappeared under ground because they don't want to know about the terrible cold. Here they disappear because of the relentless heat and lack of moisture. They will mostly come back again when the first rains come. So I admire the belladonna lilies which have already popped out of the ground bravely displaying their delicate colours, we have a pink and a white form.

Getting Creative with Lichen Logs

 We will start with  the photo below. Here I have used the Pandorea seed pods as little boats anchored to the lichen covered log, adrift in a sea of mulch.It will be interesting to see if the seeds in the lefthand corner of the photo will sprout when the rains come again. Oh! how we long for rain!!
Guess what the photo on the right here represents
a circle of logs for gnomes and partners to sit on and drink their toadstool beer and tell tall tales to each other?? 









Here the Peppertree berries have been used to fill the gap in charmingly arranged amputated branches of the ashtree adrift in a sea of forest floor litter.

The hot weather continues and plays havoc with my creativity, where does it go, you wonder. So the best thing I find is to start playing with whatever strikes you as unusual or beautiful. These lichen coloured Ash tree logs started me off. After getting a book from the library ( where would we be without our libraries!!!) by Marc Pouyet, with lovely photos of natural materials arranged and photographed, I thought I would like to have a go and see what I could come up with.
 The exciting circular pattern made by more little logs arranged and interspersed with Agapanthus seed heads  give a satisfying result using these dead and discarded materials on the windblown deadfall leaves of a drought stricken landscape.
Speaking of drought, we have started watering trees and shrubs which are looking to shed their leaves. The ground has unbelievable cracks in it, and the crickets are starting to appear and use them as hidey holes.

Early Autumn?

Last week we thought autumn may be around the corner. The grapepicking machinery was going past two weeks ago and evidently picking the sparkling wine grapes up the road. This morning more activity with machinery trundling past lit up like Christmas trees.Some one did tell me that vintage is two months ahead of itself, early February instead of April. So I hastened to take some photos of our neighbors shiraz grapes before the are harvested.And they look and taste very nice...

This afternoon too, I cut some of our table grapes which the blackbirds and spoggies have not eaten!! What a thrill, normally the birds eat the grapes before they are anywhere near ripe, so am not quite sure why they are not getting them all this year. I am having great trouble keeping the Sulphur crested Cockatoos off our walnut tree as the nuts are not quite ripe yet and the birds nip them off rather than eat them. This is so frustrating.
The gumtrees are shedding their bark in great quantities also, yet another indication that autumn is not far off. Today though it was fiercely hot and we are battling to keep the vegies and front garden alive. We have had no rain to speak off for months and our soil is cracking badly every where to the point where our house is moving and the backdoor will not lock anymore.I hope there will not be any marauding bands of Visigoths for the next few weeks!

I was trying to show the bees nest in our sugar gum tree by the gate but it does not show up. The bees were quite active tonight. We have some rather stunning lichen covered logs of Ashtree which had to be cut down as they were overhanging where we want to walk. The colours are lovely and it inspires one to do something with them.

These photos seem to have a mind of their own. I would like a lesson in how to manage the inserts better. Another sign of autumn approaching is the bantam hen moulting and she looks so scruffy, poor little darling. Since the other big chook died she is very shy and I think she may think I did away with her...do chooks think???

Native and Exotic Trees in our Garden

On the south-east corner of our block, right at our gate, is this enormous Sugar gum,(E Cladocalyx).
It has several stories of foliage and beautiful bark which shows up wonderfully in the morning sun. Unfortunately it doesn't show up so much on the photo. It is a great place for all manner of birds, we had a whitefaced heron last year hatch it's chick in there as well as magpies and Murray magpies. It also has a wild bees nest in one of the hollows.

The very tall tree on the left was a seedling I just let go because it was in a suitable place not far from a tree I expected to die but didn't. The seedling tree shot up at an enormous rate and is as straight as an arrow. Gumtrees are notoriously promiscuous so I have no idea who its parents are and it is now so tall we would have buckley's hope of getting a flower or seedpod from it to identify it.Some of the gums are flowering at present and we have a lot of noisy minors in them as well as flocks of rainbow lorikeets which chatter and "carry on like pork chops". I wonder where that expression came from?
The Golden Rain tree(Koelreuteria paniculata) now has these lovely golden seed pods . It is a lovely shady tree in the summer and it will turn a lovely colour in autumn. The pods rattle when the seeds ripen and they too will change their colour in autumn.

They are an easy care tree and will grow quite quickly and other than having to pull out the numerous little trees they produce they really are no trouble at all.
I have started cutting back the lavender and daisy bushes, they are finding things tough at the moment as we have had only a sprinkling of rain so far this year, December was dry too. The irises will be next.Our gardener has dug up the medium agapanthus for me , split up the clumps and replanted some back in new soil.




The days are starting later too, now it is quite noticeable in the morning, the sun rises a minute later each day which means at the end of the week it is seven minutes later rising. I am not a fan of daylight saving and always find when we revert back to normal time, the days seem longer and I get a lot more done!!

Oh! the Vagaries of the English language!

In the new Adelaide Review for February is an article about the renowned Catalan viola da gamba player Jordi Savall. My cello teacher also is a viola da gamba player and this morning I had my cello lesson with her which is always a delight for me. We have been discussing how to improve my playing and develop a more emotional content in the music. It mostly comes down to better bowing.
So imagine my delight when in this article Jordi Savall mentions the fact he has followed a book called: The Sacred Art of Bowing:Preparing to practice by Andi Young. Right, I thought , this will be the book for me! The Onkaparinga libraries didn't have it, so I looked it up on the web.
When I found it, the Bowing relates to the religious practice of "bowing" down before a Deity, in other words nothing to do with using the bow on the cello!! I did laugh to myself.....
The weather has been exceptionally kind this week.It almost has an autumn feel to it, yet it is much too early for that. The Golden Rain trees  are bearing the lovely Chinese lantern seed pods now and rattle prettily in the breeze. The Japanese bamboo has also changed colour as has part of the Morning Glory vine. I have been putting out the compost our gardener brought with him last Thursday and it does seem to improve the look of the plants. The Penstemon in particular has us intrigued as the cuttings from the same bush have resulted in different coloured flowers on the same new cutting! Red and pale mauve on one and pink on another.

I also shot some new photos of the Bronze wing Pigeon near the pond. I find his monotone call quite soothing but Brian can't stand it and neither can my neighbour, they both wish it would go else where.
Our nectarine tree has finished now and lovely and fragrant they were too. Now we can start on the Greengage plum and the D"Argant or prune plum. Brian's cucumbers are slowly coming good but the tomatoes are a dead loss as are my Queensland Blue pumpkins.I don't know why they will not grow for me anymore, the zuchinis too , we used to have them by the bucket load , now I am lucky if we have enough for a meal.