The Garden at Forster

We are back in Melbourne now.  Our last day with Marius' mum was glorious so I took some photos of her garden to show you.

Ron was a keen landscaper so the garden is very strong on the structure side.  My taste is more for a natural and unkempt look, but that is not their style at all.  Being a seaside garden the plants have to be wind resistant as well as salt tolerant.

I was planning to publish this post on the 20th of July.  The internet service I had purchased failed so I wasn't able to - and since then I have been snowed under with family issues and the collapse of my own health again ...  it appears that I need to get back to having immunoglobulin infusions urgently but none are currently organised.  Ho hum.


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I will be back when I can.

Parents

If there was some sort of universal frequency-of-complaint counter, after the weather, parents would be at the top of the list.  Parents can be blamed for every short-coming, personality disorder, failure, temper tantrum or misdemeanor.  Parents are accused of being too laid back, or too thrusting, overly cosseting or neglectful.  Those of us on the 'have children' register are familiar with myriad charges, while those of us as innocent bystanders can tut-tut and shake our heads at the mistakes of others.

I have a problem with parents in my garden. 

In the first place, the archway of my patio door was a poor choice of location to build a nest where there are resident cats.  Actually, I don't think they built it.  I remember seeing a beautiful peach-coloured 'laughing dove'  in it last year.  She and her partner built it, then surveyed the landscape and sensibly sought a better neighbourhood.  I suspect the current occupants moved in after the doves moved out. 

I don't like the current tenants.  They aren't as bad  as the Indian mynah birds (Marius calls them 'flying rats') and they are not as noisy as peacocks.  What I don't like is their habit of plucking the blooms off my canna lilies and my hibisci.  They don't appear to eat the flowers, or suck nectar from them, or chase little insects, they simply pluck and drop.

The current tenants are white-eared bulbuls, formally known as pycnonotus leucotis.  They have a chick, at least one, but this one is causing enough trouble for the parents and me.

It was very windy yesterday, perhaps the little chap got blown out of the nest;  perhaps his ambitious parents were teaching him to fly.  I had gone out to top up the fountain when I spotted the little grey scrap in amongst the leaves.  Then I noticed the parents, hopping about in the shrubbery, squawking, flapping, jumping up and down.

I dragged the cats inside as I was sure the feline audience wouldn't help.  The parents spent the whole afternoon coaxing the chick back towards the nest.  He could fly a little bit, but clearly the three metre leap to home was too much.  He'd start to hop up a shrub, using the branches as ladder rungs, but every time I looked again he was back down amongst the leaves on the ground.

Last night he'd made it down the garden and was directly under the nest, in a very exposed place, right outside our back door, with two cats watching him through the glass.  This morning he was out on the patio again, his parents cheering from a nearby bougainvillea.  I noticed one had a tasty breakfast morsel in its beak.  They were clearly still caring for their offspring, even if he wasn't in the nest.

I couldn't see any of them for a while, and I let the cats back into the garden, but the crescendo of chirruping told me I haven't got the happy ending yet.  The cats are back inside, cross as cross, and the parents are pulling their feathers out, just like parents do. 





I hope that next time the parents are more careful and keep their chicks well-tied in, with safety lines and parachutes.



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Some treats in the garden

After my miserable display of the suburb I live in (Much Grimness), I decided to show you some of my flowers.

Note the dust on the leaves:

This one is the arbus incognitus, which we call the 'tryffid tree'.  When you go the nursery, also know as the plant souq, there is often a significant language barrier, and most plants do not have labels.  We liked the colour so we pointed and haggled:

After all my lamentations on Written in Exile about the dearth of rain in these parts (What we dream of in the desert), the heavens obliged this afternoon and we had one of our rare 5 minute thunderstorms.  I suspect the reason is that a friend of mine has visitors, one of whom is reputed to be the rain goddess, for obvious reasons.

Look, rain drops on the fountain:

Perhaps that is not convincing, so here are rain drops on the umbrella:

The rain will wash the dust off the leaves so tomorrow morning the garden should be sparkling.

The rain is so rare and generally light that there is no infrastructure to cope with it.  Any road drains (very few exist) are not located at the low point, so roads and roundabouts flood.  The dust combines with grease and rain to make the road surface slippery, awash with ball bearings, if that is not a metaphor too mixed. There will be more crashes and prangs and slow trips home from work this evening.


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The Landscape

Yesterday afternoon, we went to the local shopping centre to buy a few groceries (this endeavour will be the subject of a future complaint ... ) and I took my camera with me specifically for you.  I wanted to show a little of the environment so that you wouldn't think I was making it all up.

This is the outside of our compound.  I am not allowed to photograph the security entrance, complete with chicanes, iron gates, vehicle blockers, security cameras and guards.  In spite of this high presence of supervision, we have had problems with theft and burglary.

Note the veritable forest ...


I am not going to belabour the point. 

We try to time our journeys to avoid the traffic.  Partly because Marius does not like traffic, and partly because it is dangerous.  We have one of the highest road fatality rates in the world.  I took this picture through the front windscreen, on the way to the shops. It is not typical because there is no traffic and not much rubbish.  Note the brightly coloured houses (there is a law regulating colour choice to various shades of beige) and the beautiful front lawns.

I don't know how they got away with the red gate - it is probably undercoat.  The trees are hidden away behind walls, covered in dust.   The coloured shrub past the gate is bougainvillea, which is a hardy vine that seems to survive the heat.


When we moved in to our house the yard consisted of rough grass and a couple of spindly bush/tree things.  In order to compensate for the moon-like landscape outside, we dreamt of a hortus inclusus within.  Now I understand the Biblical focus of paradise as an enclosed garden.   We constructed a fountain (this is what happens with two engineers) to create a bubbling backdrop of sound, which is drowned out by the groan of air-conditioners, sadly; and planted bougainvilleas, jasmine, oleanders, hibiscus, ornamental grasses, papyrus and our arbus incognitus the 'tryffid tree'.

It is not quite Gardener's World, but it is a haven away from the rubble.  In the early morning, I sit at the table and write, drink tea and commune with the cats.   In another month or less, it will be too hot and too humid to sit outside at all.


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