After barricading it out of the vegetable raised garden bed the brush turkey disappeared, gone as if it had never been here. As the plants grew I lifted off the mesh and turned it down towards the ground, not wanting to remove completely just in case the interloper returned. But it didn’t. Then on one… Continue reading Where is the turkey?
Tag: Inner West Sydney
“The jasmine has popped!”
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!”
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
The gate is padlocked
My neighbour, Matthew, (no.38) has all but abandoned his garden. It’s been years now and the garden has become more and more overgrown, re-wilding. The grass has disappeared. Bracken (Pteridium sp.), Tradescantia fluminensis, Madeira vine (Anredera cordifolia) have replaced it. Self-seeded trees are growing, forming an arcade along beside the path. The species of tree,… Continue reading The gate is padlocked
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
Channel-billed cuckoo
The squawk, squawk, squawk of a baby bird begging for food itches in my ear… squawk, squawk, squawk. But it’s rougher, more irritating, scratchier than squawk, squawk, squawk. I go out onto the veranda because I know this baby bird is in the jacaranda…squawk, squawk, squawk. I search for it. First I see a currawong… Continue reading Channel-billed cuckoo