jacaranda

  • Bested by Busyness

    Little things in life have kept me scrambling and stumbling in such a way it’s hard to get much else done. Work is always much busier in the warmer months. This year has been particularly demanding as our tyrant boss drove more staff out of the door and their tasks were often imposed on me. Early morning starts have been the norm and I’m often exhausted by the time the sun sets. Health hasn’t been great and the teeth I neglected for decades have come back to haunt me with a vengeance, which will result in two more of them being pulled out later this week. My garden is a…

  • No Time to Paws

    Work is dominating my life at the moment and I have little time for anything else, yet we are fortunate that our kangaroo paws are leading the way in a thriving summer garden. I’ve detailed my attempts at growing Australian plants from seed. While most failed, the kangaroo paw, the ones I really wanted most to survive, are flourishing now. I’ve even managed to give away a few to neighbors, which was really awesome! I hope to be able to spread the joy even further. All this is even better as I thought that I had killed my original kangaroo paw last year, but one of them remained alive! And…

  • A Fern Native Action

    Some massive changes at Kangaeroo Corner this week, which is pretty apt for the early summer, but there has been some man-made actions, too, with a tree fern poised to take center stage. As mentioned earlier this week, the nandina had to go as it was killing all the other trees. We got a bloke in who meticulously removed the tree. He gently cared for the golden wattle and alpine cedar gum located precariously closely to the powerfully spreading endemic plant. And it seems he has saved these two trees. We then had a powerful typhoon that sent ceaseless rain pounding down on us for about 36 hours. It was…

  • Rav-AGE!

    Getting old is not much fun, nor, as the late, great thespian Bette Davis once famously said, it’s not for sissies. But I’ve becoming increasingly conscious of age over the past few weeks. My eyesight is going: quickly and rapidly. I’m seeing less in the dark and rain, vision is cloudy and peripheral vision untrustworthy. Arthritis in my hands is making even the most minor of tasks a tough one. And my professional life, such as it is, is slipping from disaster to disaster. All these things are adding up to fill me with fear and trepidation, which has become paralyzing, and even worse, kept me away from one of…

  • Saving Things For a Rainy Day

    It’s drizzling and miserable weather today, which provides a wonderful opportunity for an update as my customary lunchtime ride can be substituted. Lots has happened since my last post, but there’s little time to write about it, so this is a bit of a summary of the past couple of weeks. Perhaps most important is the passage of the first anniversary of my garden, Kangaeroo Corner, earlier this week. Amazing Alex, his mate, Mrs. Kangaeroo, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law built the garden as I was out with a broken leg at the time. It has since become one of the great joys of my life. In some ways, Kangaeroo Corner…