In My Garden After the Rain

There's a little bit of magic that falls with long-awaited rain. It's there in the way it turns what was so brown and dry into that which is lush and green. It's there in the way freshness and energy return to what was wilting and listless. And it's most definitely there in the way it draws us back out into the garden.

A sweet little bird ornament nestled in a leafy nest.

Out in the garden this morning, barefoot on green grass no longer crunchy beneath my feet, it was almost sloshy in some places! I eagerly pushed aside the sugar cane mulch and found that the rain has soaked in well, replenishing the Summer-sapped soil. The rain and storms we've had this past week have brought much needed water to our backyard landscape. What a joy!

Fragrant and lush Mother-of-Herbs border.

After such good rain, there's quite a bit of work that needs doing in the growing-again garden. My first job this morning was to trim back this thick Mother-of-Herbs border. I have grown this in my top garden from a single cutting given to me by a friend. It has spread along the front edge of this garden bed quickly and keeps the soil well contained. It can take over though if not pruned back so this morning I gave it a good haircut. This was a lovely and fragrant chore as cutting it back released it's pungent scent into the air. I breathed it in deeply!

Ceylon Spinach is growing well now.

The Ceylon Spinach (Malabar Spinach) has taken off with the rain and this morning I wove and twisted it around a spare triangular frame I usually use for cherry tomatoes. I am really pleased this plant is growing well as it is very nutritious and provides a good source of greens when other leafy veg might struggle in the heat. I haven't used it in my cooking before so will need to find out best ways to prepare it. 

 A tiny mandarin on our tree.

The mandarin tree, branches drooping with lots of raindrops, has many little green fruits forming now. The promise of our own juicy mandarins to come!

Lovely little load of worm castings from our worm farm.

We raked back the sugar cane mulch from the mandarin tree's drip line and sprinkled over a layer of worm castings from our worm farm before replacing and topping up the mulch. I did the same with the orange-flowering hibiscus that my once-three-year-old son chose for the garden.  It is covered in its vibrant flowers right now. 

Bright orange hibiscus flower.

There are quite a few more butterflies flitting around in our garden now that the rain has returned. This morning I caught a flash of powdery blue, from the wings of a Blue Triangle Butterfly as it fluttered past. 

Nibbled leaves and stems on pink pentas.

Where there are butterflies though, there are caterpillars and it seems where there are caterpillars, there are magpies!

 A hungry magpie seeking out a caterpillar for lunch from leaves of tiny Pentas.

Caterpillars are munching on the leaves of my pink Pentas and I am leaving it up to the magpies that visit our garden to deal with them. I watched this magpie seeking out a plump caterpillar from the leaves of a little Pentas plant that has sprung up in the front garden. There's no need for spraying in our garden because I find that creatures like birds and ladybugs take care of imbalances when they happen. I know too that a few caterpillars will probably escape the beady eyes of these magpies and that just means more butterflies!

First bromeliad.

Our last job in the garden this morning was to plant up this bromeliad. I have not grown a bromeliad before and so I will need to learn what conditions this particular one grows best in. As it's in a pot, I will be able to move it to different parts of the garden before I decide where I'll plant it permanently. I do like its red flower spike!

It was so lovely to spend the morning out in the garden again. While it was humid and hot in the sun, we didn't come back inside until nearly eleven o'clock. Not long after, another brief shower came through bringing more  longed-for rain to our garden. 

Meg

Rejoicing in the Rain

It's been pattering on our roof, trickling into our tanks and soaking into our soil. Oh, how happy I am for wonderful wet days after so many dry days. I suspect there are others rejoicing too in this much-longed-for RAIN!

A jewel-like raindrop on the tip of a leaf.

Our new rain gauge (a rather hopeful Xmas gift from my son to his Dad) finally has some water in it. Some drought-affected areas had precious rain fall too. It was just wonderful to see footage of rural folk and farmers celebrating in the downpours of rain in their towns and on their parched paddocks. Like these happy station workers in this video, I'd be jumping for joy and splashing in muddy puddles too if I hadn't seen rain for as long as they haven't. (I fully intend to jump in a puddle or two when I take Sir Steve dog for his morning stroll a little later on. I expect he'll find a puddle to loll about in too!)

Precious water in our rain gauge.

This beautiful rain will bring relief too for our native wildlife who are impacted by lack of water in the landscapes they call home. They've been thirsty too! At our place, these two rather wet Pied Butcher Birds perched up on the railing of our back verandah yesterday to fluff up their feathers and sing. They broke out in bursts of rather enthusiastic trills and whistles which I imagined was in celebration of the "wet stuff" falling from the sky. 

Happy and wet Butcher Birds on our back railing.

More rain is forecast for today. I hope the mist of this morning, which shrouded the view from my back deck in a cloak of grey, doesn't clear to a blue-sky day but to a cloudy, rainy one instead. Follow-up rain would be wonderful! 

 Misty view from my back deck this morning.

For many people in drought-impacted areas, this rain brings with it, more than anything else, hope. Hope that more will fall to revive their landscapes, properties and farms, to replenish creeks and rivers and dams and to boost their spirits. That's certainly what I'm wishing for too. Xx

Prayer flags along my wet front verandah.

Have you had rain at your place? 

Meg

Sewing for Wildlife

The raging bushfires that have burned huge swathes of our country's beautiful lands have meant that so many people have lost, or become displaced from, the places they call home. So too, our animals. These fires have destroyed so much habitat, their homes, and our native wildlife need all they help they can get.

A sweet joey kangaroo resting on the grass just outside our holiday unit door.

The loss and suffering of so many of these beautiful creatures is immense and I wanted to do something to help and to support those wonderful wildlife rescuers and carers who will try to nurse injured and frightened animals back to health and release them again if they can.

A possum pouch lining made from the flannelette of old pillowcases.

 A soft and warm place to rest.

On the WIRES website, I found very simple instructions for how to make little liners for possum pouches. These are a soft inner liner that go inside the larger outer pouch that holds small and recovering native animals like young possums, wombats or bandicoots. These liners have to be changed much more regularly than the outer pouch they line and so, from a pair of old and soft flannelette pillowcases, I made a set of them. They are simple to make and anyone who can sew a straight line can make them.

 A set of stripey bat wraps.

My mother-in-law gave me two more flannelette sheets, soft with age and many washes, to make bat wraps with. Rhonda, on her Down-to-Earth blog, which many of you will be familiar with, wrote about the work her nephew does as a wildlife rescuer in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. He needed more joey slings and bat wraps to transport and care for animals caught up in these terrible bushfires so I sewed some bat wraps from stripey strips of my mother-in-law's gifted sheets. The little bats' wings are protected as the fabric is wrapped, sausage-roll style, around them. The bat wrap pattern that Rhonda linked to, with photos of little bats all wrapped up in them, is available here. They are simple to make and anyone who can sew a straight line can make them.

A little bundle of home sewing for wildlife.

This sewing is one small thing I can do in the face of a big crisis but there are many, many people right around our beautiful country, and the world too, who are doing what it is they can do to help. Just one example is this inspiring news story of crafters in the far north joining a sewing bee to sew for wildlife affected by the bushfires. I think that's a wonderful example of community and compassion. 

A protective Bush Stone-Curlew with her little chicks 

in the garden of our holiday unit home.

My little set of pouch liners and bat wraps doesn't look a lot on its own but it is something and, when joined together with everyone else's somethings, that then becomes a lot! And our animals need a lot of help right now.

Meg

Making Meals in my Kitchen

I grew up eating my mother's homemade food. It was rarely anything fancy but it was good and filling and nourishing and there on the table every day. Now I cook for my own family. The food I make isn't that fancy either but it's fresh and wholesome and there on the table every day. 

This past week there was one roast dinner and lots of salads among other homemade deliciousness. I planned out our meals for the week, substituted what I did have for what I didn't have, shopped for what I needed and made the most of the ingredients I bought. Nothing was wasted; the compost bin got the peelings and my enthusiastic Labrador "supervisor" got the tidbits with roast chicken and leftover gravy being one of his favourites ... among his many favourites!

A lovely roast dinner.

On the one cooler evening we had this past week, I roasted a whole chicken (I had one left in the freezer that I did not cook up for Christmas lunch) with lots of roasted vegetables and made pan gravy from all the goodness stuck to the bottom of the roasting tray. We had leftover chicken wraps for lunch the next day too. Yum!

An oven baked frittata filled with roast veg.

From the leftover roast vegetables, I made an oven-baked frittata for dinner the next night. It stretched to lunch, accompanied by a summer salad, the following day.

Mmm ...  Macadamia & Mango Rice Salad

Salads are on our plates often during these Summer days. They are quick to make, full of revitalising colour and healthy goodness, taste amazing and there's always leftovers if you make a big enough bowlful to begin with. 

This Macadamia and Mango Brown Rice Salad is full of flavour and crunch! I bought the mangoes and raw macadamia nuts from Aldi and I have enough of both to make another big bowlful of this over the coming weekend. Besides roasting the macadamias and cooking the rice, there's very little else other than chopping up some fresh veg, throwing in a handful of currants and whisking up a two-ingredient dressing. So simple and so good!

Macadamia nuts roasted in my oven.

I roasted beautiful macadamia nuts for the salad while I was toasting a batch of homemade granola. Granola, or toasted muesli is so simple to make and so versatile. I added dried cranberries and chopped almonds and shaved coconut to this one. My husband loves coconut-everything (me, not so much) but you can add in your own favourites be it coconut or dates or dried apricots or pecans or sunflower seeds. That was breakfast taken care of!

Toasty homemade granola.

While the oven was on, I baked a lovely lemon slice using more of the rolled oats I bought for the granola, a tin of condensed milk I had in my pantry and some lemon juice I had in the freezer. I should have photographed that slice before putting it out for afternoon tea because it was gone before I remembered ... and I don't think the aforementioned Labrador had anything to do with that!

Meg

Weekend Walk at Wellington Point

On the very warm weekend just passed, we sought out the cooling sea breeze that fans the narrow peninsula of Wellington Point. 

One view from the Wellington Point peninsula.

Jutting out into Moreton Bay, the tip of the peninsula that is the Wellington Point Recreation Reserve, is lapped by ocean on both sides. There are huge, old Moreton Bay Fig Trees that offer up wonderful tree-climbing opportunities as well as shady picnic spots. Most welcome on a hot day!

A younger Moreton Bay Fig

North Stradbroke Island in the distance.

Off its Eastern side, there's a distant view of our much-loved Straddie island, from which we have not long ago returned. We jokingly talked about heading for the barge!

A low-tide sand bridge.

At low tide, a very special walk emerges from under the Moreton Bay waves. A sandy "bridge" forms a path out to tiny King Island or Yerra-bin as it is called by its traditional owners. There are photos here of the sand bar at low tide.

View of Yerra-bin (King Island) from the Wellington Point shore.

Though not quite low tide, we were able to wade across the sand bridge and out to the island. It's about two kilometres there and back again. The water was so very warm, bath-like in places!  I did not take a camera with me as I knew we were going to get wet (and, knowing me, I would also be likely to drop it in the sea) but you can see photos of this tiny island here. 

People walking out along the sand bridge towards the island.

Now a conservation park, circled by mangroves and visited by seabirds, a plaque on the island tells how it was once home to a family who lived there for a couple of years in the very early 1900s. I wonder how often they walked back across the sand bridge?

A photo of the sand bar taken around 1895.

(Photo taken by H. Adler and held by State Library of Queensland.

Image now in public domain.)

It had been many years since we were last out at Wellington Point. It's nice to return to places after such a long time.  The cooling sea breeze did not disappoint either!

Meg

A Country Ablaze

Just days into this new year and our country is ablaze. The beautiful bushlands of Australia are tinder dry and going up in flames on a scale that is just unfathomable. Each day brings news of more land burned to a blackened crisp, skies shrouded in smoke, lives lost, people missing and thousands displaced, whole townships and many hundreds of homes destroyed, livelihoods gone and animals perishing and suffering.  Each day brings news of more to come. 

Map image from Digital Earth Australia Hotspots

(Source:  Geoscience Australia https://hotspots.dea.ga.gov.au/)

Bushfires have been raging in areas along our Eastern Seaboard for months and there is still so much of this very hot and very dry Summer to go. On the map above, the larger the dot, the higher the probability that the hotspot detected by satellite represents fire. It's a very sobering image and even more so given that so much of our population lives along the Eastern Seaboard. 

Today, very dangerous bushfire conditions, with soaring temperatures and strong winds, are forecast in the states of New South Wales and Victoria and in the Australian Capital Territory. I just hope, come the end of this day and into tomorrow, that no more lives will be lost.  If you live in one of the warning areas, I hope you are somewhere else and safe. Xx

Our iconic Aussie kookaburra in a bushfire-blackened landscape.

(Photo credit:  Adam Stevenson.)

After these fire emergencies are over; after the weather cools and the rains (hopefully) come and green shoots appear among the cinders, there will be many lives and many, many towns and properties to rebuild. That won't happen in a day, a week or a month but over many months and across years. The scale of recovery is unfathomable too.

May warm and caring arms continue to closely hold those impacted by bushfire. May we all give what we can, if we can. (ABC News Bushfire Relief:  How You Can Help link) May those who have lost everything be supported in finding a way to begin again.

Meg