Birds

One of the things we loved when we stayed at Mum's was watching the birds in her bird bath while we were having breakfast.   Because they kept emptying the bath so quickly, we helped Mum set up a new bath at the other end of the verandah. Because he set it up, R decided it was better than the one Mum already had.  But the birds didn't seem to agree.  So, Rodney gave them a prompt:

I'm not completely sure how, but this was the beginning of a wee bit of competition between Mum and R about who has the best birds frequenting their bird bath.  Only, our bird bath is now at our new home and not the second (now second rate!) bird bath R set up at the end of Mum's verandah.   R has delighted in phoning Mum every time we get a new bird in that he thinks she might not have had visiting her.  The biggest win for R was when we spotted Red Eared Firetails which hung out at ours for most of last Summer.   But he has been able to gloat about many other birds as well (lots of which Mum does of course have).  Somehow he still manages to get homemade lamingtons from Mum, freshly made just for him. What the????

We are dangerously close to turning into full blown twitchers I think. We've literally wasted hours just watching the birds splashing around in the baths.  Such a pleasant way to while away time when, really, we should be doing something or other in the garden. Or housework even. Boo hiss to housework I say!!   There's a balance to all things right!  Anyhoo, the birds we've spotted so far (or at least, the ones we've been able to identify) include: Red Eared Firetail, Fantails, Golden Whistlers, Scarlet Robins, New Holland Honeyeaters  (not as many as Mum has, it has to be said), Wattlebirds (not many of those), Splendid Fairy Wrens, Red Tailed Black Cockatoos (which nest in the forest across the road), Western Rosella's, Willie Wagtails, Red Capped Parrot, Varied Sitella, Silver Eyes, White Throated Honeyeater, White Browed (spotted) Scrub Wren, Western Spinebill, Yellow Rumped Hornbill and Western Gerygone. Weevil, Rufous Whistler, Grey Shrike Thrush (Western), Brown Honeyeater, White Naped Honeyeater. and Richard's Pippit (not completely convinced of that last one).  Of course there are the usual suspects in Magpies and Crows.  I love a Magpie chorus at dawn, even when they think dawn is 3 am!!. 

Photographing the birds is easier said than done.  But R has done quite well I think.  Look away now if you find photographs of birdlife boring.   I love the way they get all fluffed up after a bath and there are some great shots of that, amongst other great shots.   

Looks a bit shabby but he has just had a bath.

I'm sure there will be many more photos to come.  Hopefully one will be the elusive Red Eared Fire Tail.  But we've only seen the briefest of glimpses of those this year. So far!! Watch this space. 

An Orchard?

I read somewhere recently that only five trees are required to create an orchard.  Earlier this year, we planted twenty trees in the ginormous shade house that came with our new home.  I'm a wee bit reluctant to call our planting an orchard. That implies we might actually know what we're doing.  Which isn't quite the case.  We know a little bit. We've gleaned some from the grower we bought the trees from, other gardeners (including my lovely mum who grew up on an Orchard, very helpful) and ABC Gardening Australia. But we're a long way off being experts.

The previous owners of our home (a most lovely couple) grew veg (lettuces and cucumbers mainly) and raspberries which they sold to the local restaurants and small, independent green grocers.  The shade house (which is bigger than the house we live in) and the hot house (equally as big) were both set up for hydroponic growing. And I can honestly say, M grew some of the best raspberries I've ever tasted.    This is what the shade house looked like when M ran his very productive business:

I'm pretty sure there were some local chefs and grocers who shed a few tears when M closed his business. Look how lush those lettuces are.

One half of the shade house is now full of fruit trees and all the hydroponic racks, bar one, are gone.   Let me see, we've put in: Bramley, Pink Lady and Yates apples, a quince, something called an FB (I'm pretty sure it's an apricot but for the life of me, I cannot remember what the FB stands for), a Prune d'Agen, a Satsuma and Rosella double graft, a Trevatt apricot, Golden Queen peach (I have such fond memories of those), a Fantasia and a May Grand nectarine, Hickson and Imperial mandarins, two  cherries - a Lapin and a Stella, a Yuzu, a Loquat and an English Mulberry.  

I can't wait until we start picking fruit from that lot and we can start enjoying the fruits of our labour. We have got a few nectarines. The gardeners (those folks who know what they're doing) said we should take the fruit off in the plant's first year.  And, we did take some off but we couldn't bring ourselves to take it all off.  Oh dear. 

Planting was a huge effort. We bought bare rooted trees because they're way cheaper. But that meant planting in winter.  While we live in an area that is renowned for it's loam soil, there is none in the shade house.  It's clay.  So we had to dig out twenty holes in wet clay.  We had a post hole digger to help (thank goodness). But the day before planting rained pretty much non-stop. So, you can imagine the challenges. It's really difficult lifting your foot to push the spade in with at least a kilo of clay clinging to your shoe.    But we got there.  We created mounds so the trees roots don't rot in winter. Each mound has soil and lots of other goodies mixed in with the clay.  The end result is that all of the trees survived. Yaaaaay.  And we got some great exercise.  Way cheaper than going to the gym. 

Here are some pics:

We're not sure what happened to the leaves in the middle section of this Pink Lady. It's leafed up at the top and at the bottom but the middle stayed bare. Hmm, I wonder what will happen next year.

We feel extremely lucky because M left some of his raspberries behind for us.  This year, we planted some out into the ground. They were all in grow bags which they can stay in for several years apparently. But we wanted to try them in the ground. We also planted some cuttings that we took when we pruned the raspberries.   About half of the cuttings survived which I think is pretty good going for novices.  

This picture is a mix of the raspberries we transplanted from the grow pots and the cuttings.

These are the ones we left in the grow pots. Just in case our transplanting and cutting were a complete failure.  You can see they've grown more vigorously than the others. But they're producing about the same amount of fruit. 

At the end of this season we'll do more cuttings from the prunings. Our goal is to have a big bowl of raspberries to bring to the Christmas table.  Hopefully we'll have mulberries too. Oh boy, I am seriously missing our mulberries.  We'd have been having mulberries every day by now, back in Greenmount.  I hope the new owners love mulberries and aren't just leaving them for the birds.  Not that I mind the birds sharing them.

That's about all I have for the moment.   Just in case I don't get time to do another post in the near future (or can't think what to write about more like), HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE.  Stay safe and well.  See ya for now. 

 

Raspberries

We've just picked the first of the raspberries for the year. 

With last years raspberries we did some of this.

And some of this.

This year we hope do lots of both. Oh, and R hopes there will be ice-cream involved. 

Wilting in the heat

We had a sudden burst of very hot weather towards the end of November and early December this year (as most of you will know).  We wilted in the heat. So I guess it's not surprising that our roses did too😔

This is the pile of petals we came home to after a hot, windy day.

This is the rose next to the garage.   

And it wasn't just the roses.  All of the satsumas and a lot of the peaches also dropped.  Didn't bother the avocados though. We still have gazillion of those. Avocado jam perhaps? No...that just doesn't sound right at all.

Guess I'll be snipping off all of those dead roses this weekend. In the hope of getting a second flush.  

On a much more positive note, the rose cutting we planted from Mum's rose has put on a huge amount of growth this year. It has two buds on it.  Excited to see those open up.  I will post pictures just as soon as I have some.