Sunflowers

It is a relief to arrive at the farm with no more serious a problem waiting than the grounds being engulfed in long lush grass.

Mind you, it is daunting to sweep a glance over all that grass knowing that the time available outside of midday heat is not quite enough to mow it all. So there is a step backwards each trip into grassy chaos until cooler weather arrives in a few more months.

The bluetongue lizard that we narrowly avoided running over as it sat on the wide expanse of tar at the turnoff of our road at the highway, has now slunk away into the cool of our backyard. Mowing that grass will be low priority, so grasshopper hunting can be a safer lizard pastime there than outside the garden. I do wonder though if we are lowering the intelligence in our resident bluetongue gene pool by introducing one rescued off the road.

The sunflowers outside the garden wallaby-fence greet us brightly in the sunshine. They have proven themselves unpalatable to wallabies, but the claim that they suppress weeds is hard to judge. The hoped for alleopathy hasn’t stopped some weeds from growing almost as tall as the sunflowers. It would seem that any advantage over weeds is from shading. But the sunflowers are cheery to have.

Split life

Today I return to our farm. Ahead of me is a drive of 5 hours, considerably more if there has been a fatal accident on the Pacific Highway which is all too common.

Poor sleep with January heat has interfered with several of my attempts over the past few weeks to leave for the farm.

I have usually kept up with the 4-day rainfall forecast. After the New Year heatwave I located online a good graphic site for temperature forecasts.

The forecasts have proven to be very reliable. There is no question about which day I would prefer to be out in the country in an unfinished uninsulated house with no power.



I was packed and poised to travel north, but thus forewarned of the Australia Day heatwave I chose the wiser course of staying home in front of the fan (and the computer). Neurones don't work efficiently in heat; demyelinated neurones tend to pack up completely.

So in Sydney I have been experiencing online Guild Wars with 16 year old enthusiasm with my son, and could participate in the Hobb board BAD, and webcrawl NASA, lemniscates and quantum physics with my daughter.

And yet always in the back of my mind is the wondering about what is happening at the farm. What livestock has broken through fences. What pump equipment has been swept away in a flash flood. What fool has lit a fire.

When I am up at our farm I never want to leave. When I am back in Sydney I find it very hard to get up and go. It has a lot to do with having to split the family -- one teenager staying to look after my now blind mother, while the other accompanies me. Enough food has to be shopped for to supply each pair. Enough clothes washed to supply the sweaty pair mowing and planting.

Water

We had a deluge overnight. A wheelbarrow full to the brim. Tanks overflowing.
After I spent three hours watering 350 seedlings planted down at the river.
The tubestock had to be planted because they could no longer be maintained in Sydney with water restrictions. I admit it is a delicious experience to be able to endlessly blast water from a firehose pumped direct from the river.

The rain is most welcome. Orchards have all had a good soaking.
The river, however, rises rapidly. Will it reach the seedlings planted on the embankment?

wildlife:
a koel calling
whipbirds and catbirds calling at the river
a flock of black red-tailed cockatoos over the rainforest on the hill
a pair of little black cormorants diving and resurfacing on the river
a turtle in the river

Growing hope

It’s a slow recovery for rainforest plants after fire.

Three days of overcast and misty rain are helping our new plantings.

It is three months since the fire.

Our rainforest patch is a species-rich remnant of what used to cover the entire hillside before the pioneering days of clearing. There are 5 acres of glorious rainforest at the top of our property, and some mature rainforest trees in the moist conditions at the river. The rainforest patch is about 8m in diameter -- a shady haven close to our house, a remarkable natural garden.

My favourite tree in the patch did not burn. It is the tall emergent, whose crown survived, providing much needed shade.

Growing plants from seed collected in the mature rainforest, then planting out to extend the existing rainforest patch, is a process requiring much patience. We have been doing this for 15 years. For the fire to spread from the eucalypt woodland, which usually recovers after fire, to the rainforest patch was a calamity.

Arboricide.

What hope when confronted with this?

But surprising regrowth is happening.

Shoots hinting at life in what appeared to be a dead tree.

Small signs of hope.

Suckers determined to regrow what was lost.

Not all of our years of planting efforts gone.

Some species lost, others recovering with strategic watering and weeding.

It can never be the same, but there is renewal.

Almost rain

Today was all blue sky, relentless heat, pumping from the river, watering trees, and more pumping. Someone else got the rain, we just got their rainbow.

A night swim in the river was magic.

The view across our river:

Wildlife sightings:
a pheasant coucal pair
a white-necked heron flying low over the river at dusk

Empty nests

No wildlife to report today. It was so hot that nobody much felt like being wild, including me flaked out inside despairing that the cold change that swept through Melbourne and Sydney was never going to reach the extra 400km north.

Bowerbirds were back in the peaches. They take guilty flight at the sight of my camera.

I found many nests in our shrubs, now that it is safe to bend down branches without disturbing chicks.

All the twittering skittering flurries of little bird families came out after 6pm, in the late evening sun.

At dark the kookaburras had a long cackle at the clouds rolling in from the north east. It is mercifully cooler.

New year’s day

In the heat of the day it is impossible to do anything but read.
The books I read in 2005 were all worthwhile, some very special.

Tanith Lee, Metallic Love
Kij Johnson, The Fox Woman
Kij Johnson, Fudoki
Jane Espenson (Ed.), Finding Serenity
Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing
GRRMartin, A Game of Thrones
Justin D'Ath, Shaedow Master
Kate Constable, The Tenth Power
Cecelia Dart-Thornton, The Iron Tree
Margo Lanagan, Black Juice
Margo Lanagan, White Time
Kage Baker, The Anvil of the World
Steph Swainston Year of Our War
Step Swainston, No Present Like Time
Patricia McKillip, Od Magic
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Jude Fisher, Rose of the World
Michael Crichton, Timeline
Sean Russell, The Shadow Road
Kage Baker, Children of the Company


It is probably worth keeping a record of wildlife visitors other than our regular wallabies, wrens, finches, honeyeaters, willie wagtails, and frogs. Today was quite varied:

2 female bowerbirds getting stuck into the peaches
a pheasant coucal in the back garden
a very fast green tree snake
a bluetongue going to give birth sometime this month
a goshawk flying the midday sky
an azure kingfisher on a branch low over the water at the river
black ducks at dusk on the river
a very large echidna determined to bury itself under a fencepost
a fruitbat visiting the peach tree

The first sliver of moon for the new year.