Flora

Sauntering along

November 8, 2007

echnida_07

Now that spring is here the cute echidna has come out of hibernation and can be seen sauntering along in its hungry way looking to terrify any ant colony she finds. A walk along the “Peace?” path reveals upheaved ground where sharp claws and a pointy snout have wrecked havoc on the peaceful ants who, until the echidna’s devastating visit, were simply going about tending to their community’s needs in their highly organised and well thought out manner.

When the marauding echidna brings catastrophe to the ants, how long before they regain sufficient hope to rebuild what was lost? When an earthquake levels a village how long before the villagers find sufficient courage to pile stone upon stone again to wall out danger?

It is not possible to live forever safely out of harm’s way. One can, though, learn to appreciate the terrifying teaching beauty of earth’s awesome intricacies.

And in spring’s profusion of colour, what of the sweet lives of the bees who dart daringly and innocently from flower to flower?

squarosa

Black Bear in the Orchard

It was a long winter.
But the bees were mostly awake
in their perfect house,
the workers whirling their wings
to make heat.
Then the bear woke,

too hungry not to remember
where the orchard was,
and the hives.
He was not a picklock.
He was a sledge that leaned
into their front wall and came out

the other side.
What could the bees do?
Their stings were as nothing.
They had planned everything
sufficiently
except for this: catastrophe.

They slumped under the bear’s breath.
They vanished into the curl of his tongue.
Some had just enough time
to think of how it might have been —
the cold easing,
the smell of leaves and flowers

floating in,
then the scouts going out,
then their coming back, and their dancing —
nothing different
but what happens in our own village.
What pity for the tiny souls

who are so hopeful, and work so diligently
until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw.
Someday, of course, the bear himself
will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.
Nature, under her long green hair,
has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even
when there are many,
as people, in a town or a village.
And what, moreover, is catastrophe?
Is it the sharp sword of God,
or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear
blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,
slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,
and saunters on.

Mary Oliver

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Mutual protection

November 9, 2006

Below is a photo of the two structures I have had to build over the years to protect the vegetable seedlings so that they can reach their highest, fullest and most delicious potential.

garden_domes

Yes, protect them with a covering of chicken wire from munching possums, wallabies and the larger birds. Protect them from the drying effects of winds out of the north and salt laden winds from the south and west with a covering of clear plastic around the sides.

It’s interesting that “protect” comes from the latin protegere—the cover in front; the shield.

Here, though, I’m protecting more than just the front. The whole dome is covered.

And, if dome comes from domus (house), than I am protecting my house.

The treasures being protected inside this house are beans, spinach, pumpkins, parsley, rosemary, squash and six varieties of tomatoes. At the end of the growing season I’ll harvest around $100 worth of vegetables. The cost of the domes to date is over $1,500.

Worth it? You bet. Because I’m also protecting, besides my health, my sanity. I will remain more sane whenever I enter these two domes to water, weed and nurture. Self serving? Possibly. But I intend to share the wealth.

bird_bath Just ask this little bird perched on the far right of the edge of its own swimming pool. It looks straight at me and chirps a big thank you for protecting its little life with plenty of fresh water.

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Mellow Yellow

August 31, 2006

I know that I’ve recently written about the struggles encountered when planting trees, but don’t get the impression that Windgrove is a barren landscape. Yes, there are former pasture areas that need replanting, but there are other areas that are pretty well full of trees. Walking around the property at any time of the year is a joyfull experience, during late August/early September it is an experience in yellow. And not just “yellow”. I’m talking about “pale yellow”, “green yellow”, “yellow yellow”, “white yellow”; you name it, it is here in abundance.

blackwood_f_2006 blackwood_2006_1
The above photographs give a hint of the blackwood tree with its masses of very soft, lightly delicate, almost deceptive yellow. I say “hint” because there are hundreds of these trees in blossom now and it is next to impossible to convey the full magic of their presence. To stand next to them or under them or within them is pure delight.

And in cahoots with the blackwood tree there is the coastal wattle. Both belong to the acacia family with distinctive prominent longitudinal veins on their leaves, but their blossoms are definitely different.

coastal_wattle_2006
The eyes certainly have had a field day, but….

The sound.

Hundreds of little wings are busy propelling bee bodies from flower to flower.

And the fragrance.

Close your eyes and slowly fill your nostrils up with honey butter.
It is all a sensory extravaganza.

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The usual sequence?

January 18, 2006

three_surfers What is the natural order of things? Who or what follows whom? Is there a correct sequence to events in the world? Do things move along a prescribed path?

Take, for instance, fruit on a tree. The botany class I had as a youngster taught me that trees flower in spring, get pollinated by bees and other insects, bear fruit as a result of that pollination, and hidden within the fruit is one or more seeds to move the generations along.

cheesewood_3 Today I stood in front of the cheesewood tree (pittosporum bicolor) and something wasn’t quite jellying with my boyhood lessons because the tree’s fruit was behaving more like a flower.

Let’s go back a few months. In early spring the cheesewood brings forth an abundance of small, yellow, bell shaped flowers. Once pollinated, the mysterious workings of the world set about to transform this sexual encounter into bearing fruit. So far, so good. The laws of nature seem to be on track.

Today, hanging like luscious apricots (but much smaller), one might think that this particular cycle of the story is almost completed with some animal or bird soon to eat the fruit. Later, defecating out the fruit’s seed elsewhere, the seeds will germinate, thus, starting the process all over again.

cheesewood_4 But something magical happens with the cheesewood. The fruit, it seems, likes remembering when it was a flower and, therefore, splits itself open and turns itself into two flower petals. Presented on two plates of yellow is a sticky red secondary fruit with seeds within it. Why the extra step? Why the throwback into being a flower? Who knows?

When one begins to look closer into the workings of nature, things just get curiouser and curiouser

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Partnerships

January 7, 2006

Many lichens are extremophiles.

Great word, isn’t it? Extremophile: lover of extreme conditions.

Whether the hottest, driest, wettest or coldest place on earth, lichens can be found living there.

lichen_stone
Lichens maintain a symbiosis with cyanobacteria which photosynthesise for the lichen in return for safe housing and a supply of nutrients. In terms of biomass, the global weight of lichens is greater than all the biomass in the oceans.

Shows what level of protection living with a partner can provide.

Must mean that partnered living is the way to go. So why am I still single and approaching 60?

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Rent-a-Crowd

November 17, 2005

Here’s an interesting fact: If all the 6 billion people on this earth were to be placed in Tasmania (about the size of Ohio or Ireland), every person would have the equivalent space around them of a small back yard in which to live. Considering how over populated the world is, this almost seems an impossibility. Just goes to show that the problem the world faces isn’t so much the numerical number of people, rather their consumption habits.

If humans were equally spread around the globe, there would be so much space between each human that they wouldn’t see each other. They would then, should they desire company, be forced to make friends with all the other “people” in the animal and plant kingdom.

echidna_young Yesterday I went for a walk around the Peace Path in order to visit my nearest neighbours and said hello to around 50 wallabies, one echidna, 2 blue tongue lizards, 3 yellow crested cockatoos, 2 wedge tailed eagles, 2 kookaburras, 12 pademelons and a wombat in a burrow. And this was just the animal kingdom.

soccer_day The deck (with picnic table) on the ocean side of the house looks out to Storm Bay through about 75 wind shaped silver-peppermint gum trees. These “tree people” with their dancing arms doing a mass South American salsa, are alive with individual personalities and whenever I walk among them or sit on the deck with them, it is hard not to feel a real presence.

soccer_night Little wonder, then, that last evening when Australia played Uruguay in the final match for a qualifying position for soccer’s World Cup, I took my TV out of the closet and onto the deck.