tree fern

  • 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 we will call in an arborist and ask him to…

  • 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…