When approached, they freeze, stick their heads in the air and shut their eyes. Mostly this form of disguise works because their plumage matches the bark of the tree and their shape is almost indistinguishable from that of a branch. But the pair that has taken up part-time residence in my banana tree hasn’t caught on to the fact that brown stands out quite well against a background of green!
These two de-camped when their roosting spot, a huge old turpentine tree on my neighbour’s property, was cut down. I won’t get into the “which was there first the tree or the house?”, or even the “should you have built your house under a massive tree with branches as thick as a small human?” arguments …
Anyway, their loss is my gain. So I mow, clatter around with my wheelbarrow and even use my leaf blower a mere three metres below them, and apart from a few reproachful looks, there they sit with eyes resolutely shut.
This morning my outside thermometer read 3 degrees !!
This is the coldest morning I have recorded since moving to my new house four years ago, and the first time that I have ever seen frost in my “bottom paddock”. For people who live in colder climates, 3C is nothing much to complain about, but this is supposedly sub-tropical Bellingen, and when you consider that one day last week we recorded 29C – one of our hottest ever August days – it’s all a bit of a shock.
Last week lorikeets were hurtling around the garden feeding on early blooms, the mango had started flowering nearly two months prematurely, and I was busy pruning and tidying up in anticipation of Spring. But this morning my family of kookaburras, who usually visit the veranda for a breakfast snack, were hunched up high in a eucalypt trying to catch the early morning sun. As for me, I’m eating my muesli in a patch of sunlight warming myself like a lizard.
Bromeliads used to be on my list of ugly scruffy plants, to be politely rejected if offered as a gift. But I’ve changed my mind. I now realise that they were just un-loved or in the wrong spot.
In the interests of economy, I’ve rescued them from a friend’s skip, dug up a weed choked clump at the back of my property and picked them up from the roadside where they have been discarded by other gardeners. Given water, early morning sun and food, they have rewarded me with pups and in many cases surprised me with beautiful technicolour flowers. Some have even flowered in winter bringing a touch of colour to an otherwise dreary garden and, dare I say, rescuing me from a touch of post Sri-Lanka holiday depression!
Little Wattlebird
And if that wasn’t enough, frogs hide and breed in the pools of water between their leaves, and honey eating birds drink from the flowers. I’ll never say another bad word about bromeliads.
Depending upon which map you consult, Bellingen is either just inside, or outside the sub-tropical gardening zone. Either way, I knew that trying to establish a sub-tropical garden this far south was always going to be a bit optimistic. The problem is that I am drawn to the lushness of tropical foliage. Perhaps this is due to spending my formative years living in the outback desert town of Woomera ?
Unfortunately, it wasn’t an ideal summer to start the sub-tropical part of my garden … three months of spring drought, followed by a month of hot weather, then a severe wind-storm, a flood, then weeks of daily rain and no sun. Our rainfall total for the first three months of the year was 1084mm!
Rubbish Skip Bromeliad
Many plants have been un-affected by the weather, others have sulked and refused to perform. The Ylang Ylang, which finished winter looking like a dead black stick, burst into life again, but other even more optimistic plantings just well … croaked !! The beautiful Barbeletta bamboo I purchased for $150.00 is stone-cold dead, whilst the bromeliads I rescued from a friend’s rubbish skip are looking fabulous and producing pups and flowers. Is this a lesson? The more expensive the plant, the more likely it is to die?
Thai Beauty ginger
Some of the best performers this summer have been the gingers … the bees love them, they have flowered enthusiastically and their perfume has turned mowing from a chore into an aromatherapy session. The Thai Beauty which died down over winter, produced beautiful fragile blooms, but the torch gingers that I planted after falling in love with them in the Singapore Botanic Gardens, must have known they were doomed and didn’t even bother to raise themselves out of the ground.
Musa Velutina
As always, the bananas can be relied upon to go absolutely bananas !! The pink Musa velutina have flowered their heads off, and provided snacks for the honeyeaters, and the not-so-dwarf Cavendish provided me with a huge bunch of small sweet bananas. The Abyssinian has finally settled in and is producing spectacular leaves. ( I have five Abyssinian seedlings ready to go in the ground, and I suspect that these will be next summer’s stars.)
So now that summer is over, I should be having a sensible talk with myself … but next month I am indulging in some more masochism. Three weeks in monsoonal and truly tropical Sri Lanka and the opportunity to drool over plants that I couldn’t possibly hope to grow in my garden. Or could I …. ???
A Bellingen Diary 