Thanks to a minor quirk of fate, my life has turned completely around and I’ve gone from cursed to content, all within the space of a couple of months. For the first time in years I’ve got a great job in a prime location. My company values me and goes out of its way to make sure that I can produce the best I can to bring it the results its looking for. I’m incredibly blessed by colleagues, who go out of their way to help me bring out my best. But I have to admit that my entire career…
An amphibious reptile has taken over the Fountain of Strewth, and that’s no crock. Well, it is, but more croc that crock. A large crocodile is occupying the rim of the Fountain of Strewth. Mrs. Kangaeroo bought it and placed it there, using it to replace a tiny replica crocodile she had initially attached to the new lettering on the fountain. We’ve always had lettering on the fountain, but it got a new, metallic upgrade over the summer, in addition to a Beware of Crocodiles replica road sign. Ironically, the solar-power fountain that worked so tremendously well and gave the…
After an Indian summer and unseasonably warm autumn, this morning finally sent a message that winter is on its way, even as the warm weather grevillea in Kangaeroo Corner continued to thrive. We have three grevillea trees in the garden, all of which are fantastic growers. (And a fourth, ground-covering, grevillea that has also done well this year.) Only one of them has ever flowered, though. But, oh how well it has bloomed! The star of our garden began shooting flowers in about April and has not stopped. It currently has about eight buds ready to flower. The onset of…
It’s getting darker in the mornings, already much more noticeably than before the equinox, which was still less than a month ago. But there is some sort of light on the horizon, literally and figuratively. Although we haven’t seen much of it this week, the sun shines over the horizon at certain photogenic points along the Tama River, enabling some pretty impressive photo opportunities. For an instant, too, it seemed like the long wait for new hope on the career front had finally arrived, too, but it doesn’t seem to have turned out how I had sought. But the rainy…
One of my great delights over the past few years has become gardening, and unaccustomedly I’ve taken on numerous challenges, including growing plants from seeds, and the kangaroo paws I wanted to bloom and flourish more than any other plant have started to flower. I picked up dozens of different types of seeds when I last visited Australia in September-October 2022. I started growing them in February 2023. I’ve now got about half-a-dozen blooming in the garden, either in pots or planted in the ground. All but one is orange. Many of the seeds germinated and propagated, but of the…
Spring has well and truly hit and an unexpectedly wonderful day full of sunshine has the Kangaeroo Corner garden and its Aussie plants poised to explode into color as one tree after another buds. Jacaranda leaves are sprouting. And the native hops are ready to show their funny flowers. At least the most fragile hairpin banksia is growing for sure. I suspect the more settled hairpin banksia is growing, too. I wish this would grow faster and give me greater confidence that it is, in fact, growing. The coastal banksia is also growing, albeit with some disconcerting yellowing of its…
Kangaeroo Corner, the name I give to our garden even though it’s not a corner but close enough anyway (which kinda sums up my life) is a little slice of Godzone for me. Gardening had never entered my radar until Mrs. Kangaeroo and the amazing Alex Endo presented us with an Aussie native plant garden just over two years ago. And while much of my life has entered something of a downward spiral since that time, the garden has been a little sliver of great joy. It’s really ironic as mum and dad were avid gardeners and dad even did…
Kangaeroo Corner is welcoming the slow onset of spring with a little shock of violet offering greetings and warmth in more ways than one. At the moment, our garden’s most prominent flowers are some hardenbergia creeping up a frame and showing off a bright shade of purple and specks of white. The tiny blossoms are adorable, but they’re also bringing me the wholehearted joy of being the first-ever flowers I have grown by myself from seed. I’m somewhat amazed by how much effect their appearance has had on me, which is perhaps a little over-exaggerated, but it is what I’m…
I’m notoriously clumsy, making even the simplest task a monumental one, but having 10 thumbs also increased the odds of at least one of them being green, if not a little shade of malachite. Nah…just kidding….I’m still bloody unco, and trying to prove I’ve got something of a green thumb only served to verify that fact. With the weather finally warming–and brightening–I could turn more attention to the garden, and instead of letting things lie, I want to get involved and get things growing faster than nature will allow. So I set my eyes on the kangaroo paw I’d grown…
Spring has sprung (for today) at least, and the garden at Kangaeroo Corner looks resplendent thanks to early morning weeding, a mow and planting plenty of new plants. Weather helped, too, with delightful sunshine and warmth as the temperature topped 20 for the first time this year. I had planned to transplant some plants bought over the winter next week, when we have a holiday, but circumstances conspired against me and I won’t be able to do it that day, so things turned out perfectly by forcing me outside from just after dawn. With last year’s lawn woes in mind,…
