• Daily Life

    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…

  • Daily Life

    南天は難点…Or, Farewell Heavenly Bamboo!

    Kangaeroo Corner, our garden, is basically filled with Aussie native plants, but there were a few trees and plants there when we came to live here, and they have largely remained, including the nandina, also known as heavenly bamboo. Unfortunately, her presence in the garden proved far from heavenly. The nandina, or nanten in Japanese, is a very popular plant in Japan, where it is native, as it is throughout east Asia. Despite its name in English, it’s not a bamboo, but a shrub. But it grows like a bamboo–fast and powerfully–and that’s why we’re saying good-bye to her. Today…

  • Daily Life

    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…