Social distancing and Isolation II

 Would you like to join me in the room where I spend a lot of my time resting in between chores or just sitting early in the morning watching the sun rise through the trees and over the vines? I also do a lot of reading and contemplating there....
the book case is jampacked with ,well, books of all types and genres, science fiction and murder mysteries (mostly Brian's) classics and gardening in which we are both interested... The hanging in the corner was done as a mourning piece at Springfield after we had to leave our beloved Hughes park. It was done in cross stitch with my handspun Merino wool in natural colours on a rug canvas. The pattern was meant for a table cloth

 and represents a snowflake in the Hungarian tradition. So it was wonderful to see it expand to this size.
On the right , behind the settee is the wine cabinet with a delicately fashioned Celtic cross and to the right of that a tree both done in fine scroll work by my artistic friend Meredyth. They are wonderful to gaze upon and admire.
The glass crab on the serving platter on the wall was created by our local glass artist Glenn who has a studio in the Willunga main street. It was a present for Brian whose zodiac sign is the Crab.

 To the left of the door into the study is my rendition in cross stitch of the Fisherman's prayer. I found this prayer in the hut on Currango in the Snowy mountains where we used to go trout fishing late March early April, between crutching and lambing...it is a lovely prayer and I stitched that when we lived at Inman Valley for Harry's 75th birthday....I had good eyesight in those days.... The pear wood frame I saved up for back in the 60ies and cost 10 shillings.....from a second hand store in Clare. I could become quite sentimental here...

 Well, now, here is the pond Kym constructed for me out of the kerbside timber he found and the bath which has been sitting here which we inherited from the previous owners 30 years ago.
I have put in the native lobelia which apparently came from Warrawong  in the Adelaide hills. It loves water and has the most delicate blue flowers. The fringe lily is there also and the strawberry plants may or may not thrive along the long side. I have caught  five little goldfish and they love the cave I have made for them out of bricks and a slate tile.

The Bougainvillaea has exploded into a riot of colour and I had to cut some of it back quite severely as the thorns on it are intensely sharp and were preventing me from getting to the rainwater tap.
I use that water to irrigate the rhubarb which, I am slowly coming to the conclusion, isn't worth bothering with as it just won't thrive and looks wilted a lot of the time....could be the quince tree is sneaking its roots under it of course, so perhaps I may give it another chance by shifting it to somewhere else......
Do click on the photos to get a closer look...

Social Distancing and Isolation....

Now we are all confined to our homes, I started wondering how other people are managing and living with an unexpected time of restrictions.
I found myself this morning, looking more closely at the every day things we live with. Let me start with my new bedroom...since Brian became very ill last September, I had to leave the marital bed and move into one of the spare bedrooms. I started sleeping with my cello as cellos don't have to get up numerous times a night to use the en suite, nor do they forget to turn off the light  ...and I do so need a good nights rest.....

 The beds in this room once upon a time were the beds John Dutton and his poet brother Geoffrey Dutton, slept in when they were boys living on Anlaby, their parents Merino sheep stud 10 miles from Kapunda. The beds are very narrow, only 80cm wide....and I have to tuck the sheets and blankets in tightly so I don't roll over and fall out.....The large painting of bright flowers I bought for my late sister Attie one afternoon coming back from a walk along Henley Beach beach. A woman was painting outside,on her verandah and I could not resist buying this bold painting for my sister. The little pictures are painted fabric with hand stitching done by moi.....

The recycled bath is sitting in its cage now ready to be surrounded by gravel and  soil so plants can be planted, the bath filled with water and water plants and fish to be put in from the pond..
I love water plants and really like looking at the fish in the pond. These ,by the way, are breeding up at the rate of knots and I see little groups of tiny black fish swimming about among the plants.

The crested pigeons were courting each other in front of the dining room window the other day. You never can tell who is who here, as they both display and fan out their tails,
showing lovely flashes of iridescent colours.
The males can be quite brutal with each other and will whack each other with their wings. This goes on for quite a while sometimes.

The Galah on the right here, sat in front of the window last Saturday and looked as though he was on his last legs. On his own and just sitting there looking miserable, yet an hour or so later he flew off when a noisy mob of his mates arrived.
Was it isolating itself too? did it know something might be afoot? It does come back to the pond to drink on its own from time to time, so perhaps it is an escapee.....seeking quiet, away from the maddening crowd......

Fish and Froglet....

 After a lengthy debate we decided that it might be a better and more useful idea to get a fishbowl and some little fish rather than a rescue dog. You need not take fish for a walk or have expensive Vet bills to keep them. They are however not a cheap item to acquire if you reckon them out at weight for money. At $3.75 per gold Barb which would weigh in at about 1to 2 grams per fish...
We brought home the bowl and a male and female guppy which Brian reckons were going to reproduce at the rate of knots, plus two gold barb which the aquarium man said would live happily together.....They looked very handsome on the breakfast table and are very interesting to watch.

However, two mornings later I found one of the gold barbs dead at the bottom of the bowl, poor little thing either hated our breakfast table or just decided enough was enough and he missed all his other mates...The next day I noticed that the male guppy had half of his beautiful tale missing.
He seemed alright but during the following days I started to notice the gold barb was harassing him. Well, the upshot was that the guppy gave up and died also....You can see the gold barb with the black dot on his tail in the photo. The female guppy is below him slightly to the left. He started bullying her also but she wasn't going to let that continue and told him off in no uncertain manner and they seem to be getting along alright now.
The photo with the tub is where the tadpoles from Mt Compass reside and the duck weed that grows in there is amazing in that I take a hand full out each day to give to the gold fish in the pond and the stuff grows back almost immediately. The gold fish love the weed and gobble it up in no time at all.
One evening last week we saw one of the tadpoles emerge as a froglet which was pretty exciting so I popped it in a container and put it in the frog bog where hopefully it will thrive and soon add to the Base and Baritone frogs I hear at night now. Perhaps it will be an Alto to start with.

The last photo is one of how the pond is progressing with all the plants in it. The fish seem to be breeding up, as there are quite a few small gold fish and also a host of black ones which will eventually turn gold as well. I have managed to catch two to put in bowls on the verandah to keep the wrigglers down..
Apparently I have been misleading you sadly, as there is no such word as "froglet" this device keeps on underlining it so I looked it up in the Oxford Dictionary.....well , well , well, you will have to forgive me, but I still think it is a great word....

Koala and the Frog Bog

This is February and it is cold....well, not for long of course, the temperature will rise to above 30*C by tomorrow.We had just over an inch of rain last week which was so welcome.Not only did it  refill our rainwater tanks  but I didn't have to water the garden for at least two days.

This morning the Magpies were giving their questioning call again so I went out to see what had sparked their curiosity. There in the fork of the tree was the local Koala, quite comfortable and not worried about the camera.

Last week, just before the rains started, Ben from the Mt Compass Yarrabee Water Garden, came and brought us the Apricot water lily Brian had wanted as the ones we have are red, white and yellow, so he wanted a contrast. Ben also brought more oxygenating plants for the pond and put in those, as well as a heap of water lilies I had propagated from the old plants which came out of the totally congested pond last September.
I had kept a lot in the old bath stationed under the pepper tree and re-potted them into ice cream containers. It will be interesting to see if they will thrive in those tubs.

The pond is looking so much better with all this new vegetation and we can actually see the goldfish now enjoying the much more spread out cover. For the time being the White faced Heron has given up trying to use the pond as a breakfast bar as there are so many more places for the fish to hide. I have even seen little fish as well now so the big ones are breeding as well. Some of the little ones are quite black but some are showing gold as well. This pond gives me more pleasure than an overseas trip.....it is just delightful

Besides the pond plants, Ben also brought us bog plants for the frog bog so that too is looking much better. There is water parsley, water celery and a buttercup which looks pretty dominant at present. The plant on the right is a ludwiggia and will hopefully grow and hang over the edge to give more cover. I can still only hear two frogs at night calling to each other but today a frog with a very loud call sat and barked most of the day.....
do we have day frogs?....
There are also some tadpoles Ben brought us and they are sitting in a tub growing fat and developing legs we hope, ready to join the night chorus eventually...a Frog Bog Symphony......to look forward to...

Strange Happenings in Our Garden....

I had seen the Leveret in the garden a few times before Christmas and in the early morning it would come onto the patio and have a nosey around , very often loping into the rose garden afterwards. It didn't seem to do any harm there so I let it be. I'm quite fond of hares, unlike the vignerons who find them chewing through the irrigation pipes along the vines. So do the Kangaroos of course and they are very smartly moved on.Mother Hare deposits her young in various places and hopefully remembers where she left them so as to give them a feed now and then.

Imagine my delight when we saw it hiding under the wallflower bush in front of the kitchen window just after Christmas. Rushed to get the camera and went out to photograph it. Imagine my horror when I saw it could hardly move as its back legs were paralyzed but it did struggle to evade me of course , so I let it be. It finished up on the edge of the pond and as it was a hot day I thought it would be the best place for it....
Sadly I have to report it did not survive and I gave it a Christian burial under the Walnut tree....

Two days ago we had a visit from two Wood Ducks, they looked like two males which sat and preened and groomed their feathers for quite a while.
Normally we see them in large groups at the end of our road, probably a kilometer and a half away.
They have been known to raise a family in the huge Sugargum tree on the corner near the gate into our place. Otherwise we don't see them here much at all.

They are of course not a duck at all but a maned goose. I have no idea if anyone eats them ever, they are grazers and live mainly on grass which is pretty dry at the moment.
The Black ducks only seem to come at mating time which is September/October here. Then they come regularly and cavort around the pond
making ducklings but never laying their eggs here to raise their youngsters....

Now this morning was a real surprise to see a feral kitten rabbit appear on the patio. Where did it come from? we haven't seen an adult rabbit for months here so how did it get here?
And only the one...unless of course there is a tribe of them under the rainwater tank and they take it in turns to come out and have feed of green kykuyu grass which thrives around the base of the lemon tree.... how would you tell them apart?

I watched him sneaking out to the only green patch available in the whole garden....
So, what to do, we know rabbits breed, well, like rabbits, do we do away with it now? or let it get to a size where it may make a nice rabbit pie.....
Luckily not many people look at this blog else I may be banned from ever writing about the garden again, especially about  rabbits......

Frog Bog as an extention of our Pond

Since our pond was cleaned out, I have become increasingly interested in water plants and bog plants. There are quite a number of water lilies still sitting in an old bath under the Pepper tree waiting for me to tidy up and re-pot.
Next to that bath was another sitting there doing nothing and when our friend came to work in our garden on Friday I wondered aloud if that could not make a frog bog.....Bless him," of course," he said," that can be done" and set to to make it so...
After a while it became a bit hot so he put up the sun shade and went to it with gusto.

He had to cut through some pretty tough Holm Oak roots but in the end the hole was there and he could fit the bath into it.
Some one at some stage had cemented the drain hole shut but he was able to get it loose enough for it to give a little drainage as we didn't want the water to rush out.
We had to get some coarse gravel and on top of that he put some shade cloth we had lying around
(wonderful to be recycling all this stuff) and on top of that came the soil dug out of the hole.

We are on clay soil which is ideal for a bog garden and also to pot-on the waterlilies as they like to be solidly anchored.
I did get some plants for the pond as it has been suggested I don't use the pump and water feature anymore because that only spreads the algae and disturbs the water lilies which like a quiet life evidently....
I don't want a filter either as I would be cleaning that every other day.

We also found a hollow log and some more rocks
and as you can see now that it is filled with soil, I can start planting things in there.  Someone has given me a Lobelia sort of plant and I wonder if that would go in there as it is a bog plant but it looks very delicate with dainty blue flowers.
We have two frogs at present, my bedroom is near the pond so I hear them plonking away during the night and hope they will breed up too, as the murderous white faced Heron has played havoc with both the gold fish and the frogs....
Do click on thephotos to get a better view....

More Tragedies in the Garden

We have had Murray Magpies making their beautiful mud nest in the Holm oak this spring and they seemed to have hatched two chicks. Every time I had to go out the front door the parents would shriek and carry on warning the youngsters we were predators so to be very aware. This gets a bit tiresome after a while as the Willy wagtails take absolutely no notice of us at all. They have raise two separate sets of chicks. Only two survived out of the first batch as I found one chick drowned in the pond because the nest was right over the water.

Getting back to the Murray magpies, it was quite a shock yesterday morning as I was looking out of the window waiting for the kettle to boil for my early morning cup of tea, to see one of the birds dead under the Holm oak. When I went out to see what had happened there was a little chick sitting there quietly as well. This one slowly went and hid itself while I got the shovel to pick up what looked like it's older sibling.This one was added into the little bird cemetery I seem to be creating....I may need to put little plaques up......BIFCUS, Black bird, Willy wagtail.....Later in the day I found the little one dead also.It is a mystery why they should have died really as they are mainly insect eaters I thought.

Meanwhile the Willy wagtails have built another nest in the Wisteria tree next to the Holm oak. this will be their third brood. there must be plenty of insects around for them to feel so full of beans and start another family. They recycled their old nest from the patio would you believe....

On a brighter note, the first figs of the season which are always quite large have made their presence known and wonder of wonders, the birds have not found them as yet. We haven't netted the trees yet but will do so within the next day or so.

 The other fruit which comes early are the cherry plums. Usually the birds get them before we do but I did hang a bright Twenty-first birthday balloon which had blown in from somewhere Sunday morning and hung that in the tree.... it glitters and sparkles and perhaps deters them a bit.
I have saved up all the quandongs from August/September and will now make quandong and plum sauce with them. It is quite a tart sauce but goes well with sausages or BBQ meats.

Last week these cacti were in flower and they always amaze me with their stunning beauty.
The plants sit there all year and you need hardly water them and then they bring forth these lovely blooms...
The diversity of plant life  is a constant source of  awe to me, from huge trees to tiny little plants and even tinier flowers.....
Also all the edible plants we have never heard of before. I didn't know that Nardoo leaves are edible ...but beware its spores, they are toxic I have heard...
Do remember to click on the photos to get a better view won't you......