This was how a fellow student at my yoga class acknowledged the arrival of spring. Though it wasn’t the jasmine I noticed first but a cherry blossom tree (not sure about the ‘cherry’ though) on Douglas Street with the full moon rising. It was early September so the flowers were right on time. Also the… Continue reading “The jasmine has popped!”
Category: Zone 2
Wildlife on the streets
I’m walking to Leichhardt along Crystal Street. There are two women in WIRES fluoro vests standing below a street tree. In the tree a possum is clinging. Broad daylight for a nocturnal animal must be frightening, perhaps terrifying. The women armed with a stick and banana are trying to coax the possum down. It will… Continue reading Wildlife on the streets
Elkhorn has landed
I spotted it back in July, an elkhorn fern on a Podocarpus elatus, a street tree on the railway line side of the road. The elkhorn’s base was already the size of my hand with half a dozen leaves so it was rather like it had landed like a space ship or UFO on this… Continue reading Elkhorn has landed
The promise of figs
There is a triangular garden with the house on the wedge-shaped corner of Douglas Street and Gordon Crescent. The house faces Douglas Street. The trees in the garden lean over the 6 feet colorbond back fence. Walking down to the shops or the station ducking slightly under the branches the smell of figs (Ficus carica),… Continue reading The promise of figs
Lolly wrapper
Bright as a lolly wrapper it was impossible to miss. But how did it get there at the base of the Brush box (Lophostemon confertus) across the road on the nature strip between the road and the railway line where the council workers mow and whipper snip diligently. Small and nestled against the trunk of… Continue reading Lolly wrapper
Hackberry joy
The Hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) is a ‘reluctant’ deciduous—that’s how I think of it. Reluctant because it loses its leaves without any colourful fanfare. Leaves slough off in such a way that you think, perhaps it is dying? Even towards the end of winter the trees along the railway line, where they proliferate, still hold onto… Continue reading Hackberry joy
Rain
It seems to me that since the drought broke in 2020 it rarely simply rains—rather it pours with a weight and drenching urgency. Water. Cloud. Rain. How can there be so much water in the sky? The thousands of litres floating, defying gravity until it doesn’t. And falls. It has been called a sky river… Continue reading Rain
What lies beneath
Fungus, they appear seemingly out of nowhere. But this nowhere is not nowhere but the life-full earth. Neither plants nor animals they have a kingdom all of their own. They web the earth with a super network of connectivity and partnership, unseen, until the rain calls up a fruiting body, sometimes elegant, sometimes delicate, sometimes… Continue reading What lies beneath
Let there be yellow
The wattle is flowering, the skinny one in my garden, bending itself to get around the jacaranda, and the half a dozen trees out on the street, which were planted by my neighbour, Kevin. There is something wonderful about this unabashed, overflowing abundance of bright yellow against the blue sky. The scent sweetens the air.… Continue reading Let there be yellow
Shelter
The tree as shelter; the branches of the tree weep down instead of rising up, reaching down to the water, down to the ground. You can pass through into this sheltered space, behind the green curtain. Then you feel like you are in a room enclosed but not entrapped. The veil of leaves is dense… Continue reading Shelter