Garden Visitors 2

“Fig jam this year,” I thought last week, as I surveyed the figs developing on my fig tree. I have to admit that I’ve been quite proud of this three-year-old fig as I grew it from a cutting given to me by a friend, but  I haven’t been able to identify it. This year it…

Garden Visitors

We are very fortunate to have two Australian Magpies as visitors to our garden. In a recent poll taken by The Guardian (Australia) newspaper, the magpie was voted Australia’s most popular bird. This was in spite of the fact that a magpie can swoop on an unsuspecting passer-by and inflict serious damage. To an Australian,…

Challenging Weather

We are having a brutal summer. In Australia we have a tendency to think we have a monopoly on hot weather, and of course, we don’t, but just now I’m feeling a bit put-upon in the garden. We’ve had a string of days in the high 30s and only 9.5 mm of rain in January…

In Praise of Perennials

I love all plants, really, but the ones I love most of all are the herbaceous perennials.  They seem to be the plants that are best equipped to deal with the climate here on the western edge of the New South Wales Central Tablelands where the temperatures can reach forty  degrees plus in the summer,…

Hillandale

Driving anywhere from Mudgee (I’m including Gulgong and Rylstone in ‘Mudgee’)  is a reasonably lengthy business.  We’re slightly isolated here and it’s at least an hour and a half of driving before we reach anywhere else. This is nothing, I know, compared to the distances people all over Australia drive, but it sometimes seems a…