Lighting

Lighting is really difficult! Illumination is like sound; it has so many qualities that finding what you want is more luck on the part of the consumer than anything else. Lights can be more or less strong, more or less directional, and it simply isn't something you can work out in a lighting shop, surrounded by other light sources. Some spotlights, for example, are really for security lighting; others are less concentrated and will provide comfortable light for outdoor dining.

Lighting shops, in my experience, are usually filled with astonishingly ugly fittings. Some years ago we discovered Beacon Lighting. Their shops tend to be at least 60% attractive fittings, and even the unattractive ones aren't that bad, except maybe for this one:

How on earth could anyone think this was attractive? Let alone practical! But I digress.

We ended up with the following, all from Beacon Lighting:

Kitchen	Triple LED spotlights on bracket, LEDS for under wall cupboards
Family Room	LED downlights, stainless steel Typhoon fan
Study	Laconia pendant
Entry	Recycle a fitting
Kids' Playroom	Rocket light
Stairs	Project wall sconce
Patio	Sentinel spotlights

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And here are the problems we encountered along the way.

Choice: it's hard to know exactly what you want, and whether it will provide adequate illumination. In some areas, like exposed outdoor lighting, the range is very small. This can mean you choose very quickly, or that you go away thinking, "None of the above!" Even without the returns we made, several shopping trips would have been necessary just to decide on fittings. On the positive side, Beacon were always very accommodating with returns and so on, and their staff are friendly and helpful (if occasionally short on technical knowledge).

Vue from Beacon, for our kitchen, was an easy decision. Few of these rail-type fittings have such clean lines:


The second was supply: lots of things had to be ordered in for us as the Beacon stores don't hold very much stock. And the most convenient Beacon store is 20-30 minutes away, down the motorway. We had to come back for these Sentinel lights for our patio:


Thirdly, we had a problem due to inadequate technical information. The LED downlights were 62mm, not the standard 80mm. The fact that they had no user-replaceable parts wasn't mentioned either. Seriously -- once the LEDs failed we were supposed to pay an electrician to remove the fitting from the ceiling and throw it away. This sounds very wasteful to me even if the fitting is supposed to last 30 years -- for one thing, what if one light fails long before the others? Is anyone going to gamble against Murphy's Law?


Of course we didn't know about the size until after our electrician had drilled the 80mm holes in the ceiling. He replaced the downlights with standard-size, user-replaceable LED fittings, which were cheaper than the ones we had found. Light fittings are expensive and it's worth seeing what your electrician can get at trade prices, especially things like downlights, which all look the same and which nobody will actually be examining closely.

Next, the Laconia pendant's glass shade was broken when the electrician opened the box. Bad luck, I suppose, but it meant a trip back to Beacon for another one.


Then we looked at the light fitting we planned to recycle, and discovered that the rod kit for the old fitting had disappeared during the building process, leaving us with the bowl. Our electrician, understandably, won't fit the bowl to a fitting it wasn't designed for, so we are waiting to hear back about a rod kit that will fit.

The Domus lights, which we bought from OzLighting, have a transformer which must be set 60cm above soil level. For most applications, this is fine: you attach it to the house wall and run the cables where you want them. This won't work on an island bed, however. Guess where we want it? Our electrician is getting a suitable transformer for us.

This is one of the fittings that didn't cause any dramas. Of course, we haven't tried putting a globe in it yet!

Eryldene

If you visit a garden on a gloomy morning after a rainy week, you can get lucky. We were when we visited Eryldene yesterday. The rain held off, mostly, and numbers were down, so we were part of a small tour of the ikebana exhibition in the elegant house and had the garden mostly to ourselves -- great when a pair of boys need to let off steam after being indoors the whole week!


It's one of Sydney's most famous gardens, and the house is the only unaltered example of William Hardy Wilson's domestic architecture. Hardy Wilson felt that the Georgian style of house (from our early Colonial period) was better suited to Sydney's climate than the Arts-and-Crafts style of his day, and with a house like this one can see his point. Eryldene has the lightness and symmetry of Georgian architecture, modernised for 1913 (which, of course, no longer seems modern to us!). The house still has the furniture the Waterhouses used, mainly 18th and 19th Century pieces with an airiness and delicacy that match the house. The proportions are delightful, and the house is complemented by the current ikebana exhibition. (While Professor Waterhouse's gardening fame rests on his detailed work on Camellias, his wife Janet was devoted to ikebana, so it was lovely to see so much of it in her house -- I am sure she would have loved it. )

View from a sleepout to the front garden. This sleepout is now part of a cafe run by the volunteers of the Eryldene Trust. I can recommend the (plunger) coffee and mixed cakes.


View to the side garden from the same sleepout. The Sprig declared this to be "just like a picture," and how right he is.


This temple, designed by Hardy Wilson, is on a side axis in the front garden -- plenty of formal symmetry in this garden...


... but informality too. This path is behind the temple and runs very close to the street boundary -- but you'd never guess while you're walking on it!


The camellia walk runs up the eastern side of the house, and the collection her will interest even non-camellia enthusiasts. (Isn't it funny how sometimes a genus can take hold of a person?) Note the little path off to the side: there are little side-paths throughout the garden, subverting the formal structure. My children are keen to see me replicate this idea at home. A pity we lack Eryldene's acre of ground!


Hardy Wilson designed several different structures in the garden over a long association with the Waterhouses. I love this walled fountain (1921), particularly the low bubbling jet in front. Note the Asian influence: both Hardy Wilson and EG Waterhouse were Sinophiles.


The tea-house, on the edge of the tennis court, was built in 1927. We'd call it fusion, these days.




Somehow, I've never felt entirely comfortable about this moon-gate. I know it's part of a tennis-court fence, but the metal tubing construction always seems wrong to me, no matter how practical it is.


I do love one other feature of Eryldene: camellia flowers floated in bowls of water throughout the garden. I don't know if it is typical of large gardens of the period, but it's pretty.

So is this formal path.


(And yes, that little structure in the background is what you think it is. When the house was built, the area was unsewered.)

Garden tool enthusiasts will be sorry to hear that The Old Mole is closing, as the people involved are retiring to other projects, particularly travel. However, Richard Bird was at Eryldene with his beautiful tools at sale prices, and I picked up a few of them. I'll show them off another time.

Nursery Crawl

While a few interesting things have happened on our house this week, I'm starting to think about my poor half-destroyed garden. My new herb bed is filled with broken bricks and tiles, recycled concrete aggregate and planter box mix, and it's just sitting there looking at me, all ready to go...

Well, I thought I'd just see what's out there* in the nurseries up Dural way, which is where you go for interesting nurseries if you live in Sydney, so last Wednesday I spent a chilly (maximum 11 C) grey day by myself doing just that. Here are all my stops, in order:

Flower Power, Glenhaven. Just like the smaller Flower Power nurseries in Sydney: a full range of plants and inoffensive indoor-outdoor decor, but not particularly interesting or inspiring for obsessives -- Enfield is a better place to go. I also became dubious when I spotted Dietes grandiflora and D. bicolor in the 'Native Plants' section -- they are from South Africa. A nice general nursery, but with all the competition up the road, it might be struggling. The cafe was full. I am wondering a little about the "eight themed display gardens" advertised on the website, as I didn't notice them at all!

Hargraves Nurseryland. A well-known family-run nursery, with a delightful layout on a sloping site. Beautifully-tended plants attractively arranged, and a definite nod to the cooler climate of the Hills District in the selections. Browse and enjoy. No cafe -- the big signs saying CAFE out the front refer to the next-door neighbour, but if you have already parked in the nursery parking area there are signs saying Strictly No Exit This Way (as it would block their In driveway), so it was either tramp down the steep hill on foot or continue the journey. Off I went. (Website warning: contains music)

Swane's Nursery. Possibly Sydney's best known nursery, again a family business. Swane's staff will always say hello, even if they're not in customer service. Signs indicate which plants have been "grown by Swane's" (ie, on-site) and note their lower carbon footprint. The retail nursery looks pretty big when you are in it but is only a small part of the Swane's site. I remember walking right down to their dam when I was a child, past plants being readied for sale, but these days there's a gate with a No Admittance sign (when I was a kid it was just obvious we weren't in the retail section). As usual, the rose garden out the front -- guess the Swane's speciality -- is in apple-pie order and there was a vast selection of bare-rooted cultivars for sale. July is our coldest month, the time to plant and prune roses. With few people braving the bleak day, the wrens happily flitted through the garden, chirruping away, just as they always have. It might be the nostalgia factor -- I used to come here regularly with my Dad -- but I find it hard not to buy here. Lunch in the cafe, which used to be their sales office: leaf tea in a plunger (hooray!) and rustic vegetable-and-bacon tart with salad. (Website warning: poorly-organised and buggy)

Dural Garden Centre. All that's visible from the road is pots, because this is also the premises for Pots Online. There is a wholesale nursery at the back and the retail stock I saw was mainly herbs, though there was a greenhouse for shade plants. I was not quite sure whether I was supposed to be in the back section or not, as it had a wholesaler's look but there were prices up on the rows. There were a few herbs officially for sale. It also had a big cafe of the type that doesn't put the prices on the blackboard. I didn't try it, but it looked appetising, and was warm and buzzy despite its size.

Engalls Nursery. The website says they specialise in fruit trees and roses, but I would have said fruit trees: five types of fig alone! And I didn't count the citrus, but it was obvious that much of their land was devoted to it. A small nursery with an impressive array, and I'll be back here next time I want a fruit tree.

Geranium Cottage Nursery and Cafe. Another small specialist nursery which imports new geraniums and pelargoniums from Europe. I admired their display of scented geraniums; I think the full set were there. But the really lovely thing about it was the cafe with the fire in the grate and the Devonshire tea (leaf tea again, hooray!) I had while sitting beside it. I think the local jams, honey and eggs on sale in the old shed are another reason to visit it again, even if I'm not after any geraniums.

* One brown boronia, one echium, two different strawberries to trial, then from the 'priced to clear' area a couple of pansies, a lobelia and a veronica. All from Swane's. I was GOOD, I tell you.

Melbourne Botanical Gardens

I knew I wanted to see the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, but didn't realise that I would feel like I hadn't left Sydney!

Bits of the Royal Botanical Gardens, and Centennial Park and Vaucluse House, look pretty much like this. Apparently there was a peculiarly Antipodean muddling of the Picturesque and Gardenesque, and here you have it: meandering lakes and shrubberies, but specimen trees and elaborate borders included as well. (No, I can't quite conceptualise how people muddled Gardenesque and Picturesque together, but they did. It seems to be an Australian habit to pick the bits they like out of disparate ideas and mix them all together without regard for consistency.)

The garden, like the Sydney equivalent, is a lovely place to wander through but not so easy to photograph. Some of the borders were lovely:


How about these contrasts in texture and colour?


I took about half a dozen photos of Echium candicans, with stunning electric-blue spires of flowers. We wants it, my precious, we wants it! And I've seen Echiums growing in Sydney, so I know they can cope with our humidity. Now it's a matter of finding the plain Echium candicans, rather than a cultivar.


With the recent drought the Gardens staff have focussed more on water-wise plantings. I particularly admired this bed, on a steep bank overlooking the Yarra. I would love to know what the red-and-white bulbs are; I don't think they are tulips.


I definitely wanted to see the redesigned "Guilfoyle's Volcano". The famous director and designer of the Gardens had a reservoir built and designed a "volcano" garden for it as a kind of folly. The introduction of town water for irrigation led to the old reservoir being ignored for years, but recent drought has prompted a redesign. The new garden is very modern in style but still reads like a folly because it is so different from its surroundings. I loved it but felt I couldn't do it justice in photos. It is planted with thousands of different cacti and succulents in great drifts, and the red rock-mulch makes it quite startling on a grey Melbourne afternoon. The number and size of Golden Barrel cacti was also quite startling, and how often do you see a mass planting of Jelly Beans?


The reservoir holds water again, this time collected from local stormwater, rather than pumped in from the Yarra as it was originally. The surface has a number of circular planting-rafts floating on it, but they were empty. Enlarge the photo for a better look at the clever fencing. The boardwalk is a double-spiral around the top of the reservoir.

Unfortunately, I had somehow missed out on hearing about the other Botanical Gardens, at Cranbourne. I saw it as we headed for Phillip Island, but there was no time to investigate it. Next time...

The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden

Some gardens are so full of ideas, so full of joy, that it's hard to take everything in. The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden is one such garden, and you know it's going to be good as soon as you see the gate. How many different implements can you see?


Then there are these mysterious creatures outside the gate. They make me think of Patricia Wrightson. The curve on the path is part of a spiral that falls both inside and outside the gate. (By the way, I've never seen Asparagus Fern looking so respectable before -- it turns into a hideous weed in Sydney!)


All the parts of this garden have names. The first thing the boys saw -- and ran straight into -- was the Tunnel, made of Leptospermum laevigatum (Coastal Tea-Tree) saplings planted a metre or less apart and woven together. I presume that the same method could be used on Babingtonia virgata (which has softer leaves) or some of the smaller Melaleuca species. The tunnel was long and curved enough to be fun, and formed the boundary of the Children's Garden.


This fountain is the head of the rill that runs through the garden. I think it's a rather ugly-but-safe thing, but the significance of its "bubbler" style became apparent as soon as children came near. It's fun to put your hand over a jet and spray someone! Also note the bare-bottomed toddler: the garden information says, "For safety and hygiene reasons, children must be clothed at all times." But the Australian tradition of letting small children dabble naked in water continues regardless. The rill, by the way, meanders through the garden to a large pond, which would be very unsafe indeed if it didn't have heavy mesh just below the water surface.


This wonderful ancient redgum stump was extracted from the Murray, where it had lain undisturbed for years. It is raised so children can crawl underneath and look up through the hollow.


Across the campsite from it is the stone bridge/tunnel, part of a "ruin". My children loved this area as there were cut logs that could be moved around and stacked, as well as various hiding places to enjoy.


But I admired The Gorge the most. A path wends through standing basalt shards, surrounded by Snow Gums (Eucalyptus pauciflora) and tussock grasses. I could imagine playing hide-and-seek here, and aren't the colours wonderful? It evokes the gorges of Central Australia, but uses different species -- I doubt Ghost Gums and spinifex would cope with the Melbourne climate.


Nearby are the Magic Pudding and his mates. And a few more mates. Behind are some Gymea lilies used as a screen, and the popular picnic area.


New Zealand flax, Gymea lilies and what looks like Dianella are mass-planted as screens between the various "rooms". There was a whole area of bamboo, delightful to walk through, and a lookout tower. The only plant that puzzled me was this one. It looks horribly like an Equisetum, but I suppose it can't be.


The children's vegetable garden is off to one side, appropriate as its formal layout does not suit the rest of the space. There is a sand-pit in one of the boxes, and plenty of watering-cans to enable children to "help". I love the way the trellis crosses the beds to form tunnels.


The boys could probably have spent the whole day here and so could I. Now I'm preoccupied with working out how to realise some of the ideas from this garden in my own.
The Ian Potter Foundation Children's Garden is part of the Melbourne Botanical Gardens, which I'll deal with in my next post.

Mazy Days

If you are going to take a couple of boys on "another boring garden visit", it's always a good idea to have something you know they'll like planned for afterwards. So after our Heronswood visit, we drove ten minutes up into the hills behind Dromana to The Enchanted Maze Garden (except I didn't mention the word "garden"!).

The owners must be nuts about topiary, which is far too exacting for me. They have put in an application to the Guinness Book of Records for the world's longest relief topiary, on their front hedge (I couldn't manage a good photo of it). I had never heard of relief topiary before, but here is an example from within the garden:

The first maze was the classic hedge maze, made even more interesting by the need to find five Buddhas and two Japanese gardens. The second was a labyrinth.

But what was that in the middle?

I think Nessie is wonderful! And I loved the dolphins and waves across the dam.

There are a number of other mazes I haven't mentioned or photographed, as well as some outdoor puzzles and display gardens, even a small kiddy farm. We must have spent about four hours there, but we had already had lunch and didn't see the animals or follow the whole Sculpture Walk. A great place to go if you are concerned about your children being inside too much.

Cowan Creek Bushwalk

Last Saturday our family went on a bushwalk from Berowra to Mount Kuring-Gai Stations via Cowan Creek. Cowan Creek is a tributary of the Hawkesbury River. It was a perfect winter's day with pale blue skies.

The path down from Berowra to Waratah Gully is rather uneven and we were puzzled by the amount of fallen timber. The trees weren't big, but it seemed like a lot of them had been knocked over. Something to do with burning off? The undergrowth was at most hip height, and at the start mainly a kind of grevillea (I think; a lot of our healthland plants are hard to tell apart) and a sweet-scented plant with small five-petalled white flowers (Woollsia pungens, the Snow Wreath). The only flower I saw that I knew was Epacris longiflora, the Native Fuchsia.

As we came closer to the gully floor we could hear water running over rocks. Such a lovely sound! We crossed the creek where once there had been a bridge, and continued alongside the creek into a patch of rainforest. Some of the trees here had the distinctive bark of coachwoods (Ceropetalum apetalum, which have smooth bark blotched white, grey and chestnut. Again, all the trees seemed very young, with diameters under 10cm. I suspect that this gully might have been entirely burnt out by the 1994 bushfires; most of Kuring-Gai Chase National Park was damaged.


We had out lunch on Waratah Bay, not far from the abandoned barge. The sun was welcome after the cool of the rainforest.


Afterwards, our walk continued southwards, up Cowan Creek (which looks more like a river to me, being a couple of hundred metres wide). This was the view north, towards the Hawkesbury. The vegetation is the dry sclerophyll forest typical of the Sydney region.


This was the view upstream:


It was lovely to walk along the creek. Most of the track was about 10m above the waterline. We stopped at every inlet to fortify ourselves with chocolate, and eventually we reached the uphill track to Kuring-gai Station. It was a stiff climb for the children (and, truth be told, for the unfit parents), but there were good views from a resting point halfway up. We ate more chocolate, and I annoyed the family by exclaiming over various flowers.

It was on the latter part of the bushwalk that I noticed NSW Christmas Bush growing everywhere. Unfortunately we also saw an unknown weed plant everywhere. No idea what it was, and my photos didn't come out, but it was doing very well indeed, growing on long canes to 2m with pointed leaves, and very hairy. On the other hand, there was a cream wattle (probably Acacia ulicifolia) flowering in great swathes near Mount Kuring-gai, scenting the air.

This pairing of weathered sandstone and gum trees is typical of coastal Sydney:


The walk was about 9km and a bit strenuous, but our five-year-old and nine-year-old did manage without whingeing until we were almost finished. The hill at the end is not difficult, merely long, and paths are generally in good repair. It is a popular walk and is impossible to get lost on, there being only one track for most of the route. The water views and variety of vegetation make it very enjoyable. A good family day-walk, with easy access by public transport. I'd suggest going in another month. It was really too early for most of our spring wildflowers, but the Boronia was out. The mauve-pink really stands out against our grey-green bush!


Note: While I've marked the photo as B. mollis, I now think it might well have been B. ledifolia -- the leaves were long rather than round.

Review: Sylvan Grove Native Garden

Yesterday we took our boys for a picnic and "bushwalk" at Sylvan Grove Native Garden in Picnic Point. This pocket native garden slopes down towards the Georges River and is a lovely spot to wander in for a few hours. I heard that it was open through the newsletter of the Australian Plants Society: the hours vary through the year, so check the website before you set off.

The first plant I saw was this lovely white waratah. Orchids were blooming everywhere, though the gardener on duty told me we had missed the peak season. I suppose we did miss the showy Sydney Rock Orchid, but there were smaller pink, white and cream orchids in profusion, mostly Dendrobium kingianum. There was also a species of Greenhood. The Prostanthera family were certainly making their presence felt in all the dryer patches. It is a pity that I can't stand the smell of the foliage as the white, pink or mauve blooms are so showy (see the bottom picture).

The garden, as I mentioned, is on sloping Sydney sandstone country. Most of the plants are native to this area, and 'foreigners' are given sunnier or shadier spots depending on temperament. The path wends back and forth across the slope, making the garden feel considerably larger than 1.5ha (3.7 acres). Traditional bush gardens in Australia tend to take a 'stroll garden' style, and this spacious feeling is one of the advantages. Many plants are named. Species of particular interest (rare and endemic species, bush-tucker plants) are numbered so that you can refer to details in the little guide-book.

The boys enjoyed zooming along the path to the next number; they have not developed an interest in plants yet (come to think of it, I hadn't either, at their age). In fact, the Twig lectured me at the start: "Now Mummy, we aren't here to study every plant in detail. The purpose of this bushwalk is to get exercise!" Well, they exercised and I wandered!


There is a cool, shady rainforest gully with lots of different types of ferns -- including one I hadn't seen before. The Geek commented that it looked as if it had been made in China; the leaflets had a peculiar flatness to them, as if stamped from a sheet of green plastic! The boys also had the chance to feel a sandpaper fig. The rough leaves were used by Aboriginal people to smooth spears and the like.















I was also impressed with the enormous flowers on this Geraldton Wax -- they're about 3cm across! Not sure if it's a cultivar or just really well-cared-for.

















The endemic Boronia mollis, with its musk-stick-pink flowers, shows up clearly in sandstone country in spring.















I was very impressed to see a big Chorizema cordatum (Heart-leaf Flame-pea) in dry but heavy shade near the top of the slope. This small open shrub is a native of the very different climate and soil of WA. I'm afraid I haven't done very well with the colours -- the flowers are much more shockingly orange and pink than you see here. And as they prefer shade, the colours are quite eye-popping!

This garden is an excellent place to get a good look at both sandstone flora and Western Sydney species in an afternoon, as well as a few others. The majority of plants are clearly marked and the garden is lovingly maintained, though I felt some shrubs could do with pruning to improve the shape. There are a few parking spaces at the entrance, or you can park in the street. There are toilets at the top of the block and a selection of useful gardening leaflets is available there, along with a visitor's-book. While there are seats scattered through the gardens, it's a place to take your sandwiches rather than the full picnic spread as there isn't much open space -- certainly no lawns or barbecues. There is no kiosk. The garden is quite shady, due to good tree cover and its easterly aspect. The duty gardener told me that the shade is a little too heavy for really good flowers on some species, but it is therefore more comfortable in the summer months. While the garden has no steps, a person with mobility problems would still find some undulating parts difficult to negotiate. The Sprig managed to take a tumble on a sloping path, and now has a grazed nose -- but that's what four-year-olds do. If your children are a bit young to go on proper bushwalks, this garden will satisfy them for the afternoon. It is a pity Sylvan Grove Native Garden is not better known. Highly recommended.

Recognising Autumn

How do we recognise a change in season? I note that North American garden bloggers count Spring as arriving at the Equinox. Autumn officially starts here on the 1st of March, and if you go by your senses, it arrived quite close to that date.

We have had some rain, in fact it is raining now. The dew is heavy on the grass, the air cool in the mornings. The sky is no longer deep blue, but electric blue, and there are interesting clouds, a change from the fair-weather cumulus or harsh clear skies of summer. Today, we have cirrus. The light is softer and shadows bluish.

The grass is cool and bends under my feet, no longer sere. The pumpkins are waxing, their vines waning, and it is the time to sow all sorts of things. We planted our sweet peas before St Patrick's Day, as is traditional here. I could be planting, but it's the wrong time to do it in the lunar calendar, so I will hold off a week. In the Blue Mountains, the peach season is definitely over and the apples are ripe (we picked up some delicious jam and a few bags of apples on a trip last weekend). My Scribbly Gum has been flowering.

How do your senses tell you that the season has turned in your locality?

I ask because I have been reading a beautiful book, D'harawal Seasons and Climatic Cycles*. The writer is Frances Bodkin, a knowledge-holder of the D'harawal people, whose traditional lands probably include Chookie's Back Yard. Originally written for children, the book intersperses Law Stories, such as "How the Parrots Got Their Colours" with information on the daily, yearly, and longer weather cycles. I have seen, heard and felt some of these cycles myself.

The D'harawal count six seasons:

Ngoonungi, Time of the Flying Fox: Spring, which is a short season in Sydney, about September-October. The waratah and many other flowers bloom and flying foxes gather. Mating season of many smaller marsupials. Shellfish form a large part of the diet. As the whales migrate down the coast with their calves, important ceremonies are held to wish them well.

Parra'dowee, Time of the Eel: Begins with the flowering of Acacia binervia and covers roughly October to December. The freshwater eels begin their journey to the ocean to mate and die. It is also mating season for egrets, turtles and lace monitors. Fish and prawns are a large part of the diet.

Burran, Time of the Kangaroo: The hot season, January-February, begins with the blooming of Acacia implexa. The staple diet is fruit, seeds and tubers. Meat and fish are forbidden, partly because such food spoils so quickly and partly because it is mating season for kangaroos and wallabies.

Marrai'gang, Time of the Quoll: Mating season for quolls, roughly March, April and May. A wetter time of year. Quolls are quiet and secretive, except during the mating season, when they call to each other. Lilly pillies, good eating, drop from the trees. Young male animals may now be eaten, and fire prevention work is undertaken. Golden orb spiders spin their beautiful strong webs.

Burrugin, Time of the Echidna: The Eucalyptus tereticornis flowers, and the weather is cold -- this season covers June and July. Shellfish is forbidden (in fact, Sydney Rock Oysters are known to be poor eating at this time of year, as it follows spawning). As the Gymea Lily flower-stem begins to redden, women sing the whales north to their calving grounds. Nesting season begins for many birds, including the magpie, which can be aggressive in protecting its nest.

Wiritjiribin, Time of the Lyrebird: The days are growing longer, but the weather is still cold, and the winds of August begin as the Acacia floribunda flowers. The lyrebird builds his dancing mound and sings his mating song. It is also mating season for antechinus, pelicans, booboook owls and willie wagtails. As this season ends, the winds end with it and the scented Acacia decurrens blooms.

The D'harawal perceive a Mudong Cycle, roughly twelve years long. It has eight phases, which are of variable lengths: hot and dry, then cooler and wetter, cold and wet, warm and wet, hot and wet, cooler and drier, cold and dry, warmer and drier. Could this be related to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation and similar effects?

There is a Moon Cycle, about twenty years long. At its start, the moon rises at its southernmost point and food is plentiful, so the great Law Gatherings are held. There is also a Fire Cycle about 60 years long, with the peak being a time of terrible bushfires. I wonder if we are passing through that peak now?

The longest known cycle is called Garuwanga (Dreaming), and has four seasons, the Time of Fire, when sea levels rise until South Head is an island; the Cooling Time of Renewal, when sea levels fall; the Time of Cold, when the seashore is three days' walk east of South Head and the ground is frosty every morning; and then the long Warming Time of Renewal when the seas rise slowly again. The entire cycle lasts about 12-20,000 years.

The knowledge-holders all believe that there is a far larger cycle that acts upon the Garuwanga Cycle, because the variations recorded in the stories (for the D'harawal remember at least four Garuwanga Seasons of Cold and four of Fire) indicate that the severity of Cold times has been decreasing, while the severity of Hot times has been increasing.

Beautifully illustrated and easy to read, everyone in the Sydney Basin should buy a copy to extend their understanding of our environment and of indigenous culture. A poster of the annual seasons is also available.


*Bodkin, F. & Robertson, L., (2008). D'harawal seasons and climatic cycles. F. Bodkin & L. Robertson, Sydney.
ISBN: 978-0-9804810-1-3

From Laura Ingalls Wilder

This is a lightly edited version of Laura's column "As a farm woman thinks," from November 1, 1923.

While driving one day, I passed a wornout farm. Deep gullies were cut thru the fields where the dirt had been washed away by the rains. The creek had been allowed to change its course, in the bottom field, and cut out a new channel ruining the good land in its way. Tall weeds and brambles were taking more strength from the soil already so poor that grass would scarcely grow... as [my companion] looked over the neglected farm he exclaimed, "Oh, it is a crime! It is a crime to treat good land like that!"... It is a crime to wear out and ruin a farm and the farmer who does so is a thief, stealing from posterity.

We are the heirs of the ages, but the estate is entailed as large estates frequently are, so that while we inherit the earth, the great round world which is God's Footstool, we have only the use of it while we live and must pass it on to those who come after us. We hold the property in trust and have no right to injure it nor to lessen its value. To do so is dishonest, stealing from our heirs their inheritance.

The world is the beautiful estate of the human family, passing down from generation to generation, marked by each holder while in his possession according to his character.

Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner? A dishonest greed is shown by robbing the soil: the traits of a spendthrift are shown in wasting the resources of the farm by destroying its woods and waters, while carelessness and laziness are plainly to be seen in deep scars on the hillsides and washes in the lower fields.

It should be a matter of pride to keep our own farm, that little bit of the earth's surface for which we are responsible in good condition, passing it on to our successor better than we found it.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Proto-Environmentalist

A Girlsown friend has recently lent me Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks * (thanks, Sharon!). Laura wrote a column for the Missouri Ruralist between 1911 and 1924 called "As a farm woman thinks," which dealt with a vast range of topics of interest to rural women.

What has struck me is her awareness of working with nature when farming, rather than against it, as well as the keen powers of observation and description which you can see in the Little House books. Take this (ostensibly from Almanzo's point of view) from 1912:

As I never allowed hunting on the farm, the quail were thick in the orchard and used to wallow and dust themselves like chickens in [the] fine dirt close to the tree. I wish this fact to be particularly noted in connection with the other fact that I had no borers in my trees for years.
A near neighbor set out 2,000 trees at about the same time and lost seven-eighths of them because of borers. He used every possible means to rid his trees of them except the simple one of letting the quail and other birds live in his orchard. Instead he allowed his boys to kill every bird they saw. (p. 21)

There is a recurring theme over many years that one does not need a lot of money to farm well, and numerous examples of successful farms where the owners simply couldn't afford commercial fertiliser, but used their brains to work out ways to fertilise the soil with local materials. A number of farmers, including Almanzo, used alley-cropping while their orchard trees were small.

Yet Laura's interest in wise use of resources extends far beyond farming. Her article of September 5, 1919 discusses the alarming loss of forest across the USA and the country's future lack of coal -- apparently the end of the American hard coal supply was in sight back then (according to Wikipedia, the peak of US anthracite production was in 1914), and she wondered what future housewives would use as cooking fuel.

Now if the editor of theMissouri Ruralist thought that this sort of stuff was interesting to rural women, why are women's columns and magazines these days filled with such tawdry rubbish? When Laura wrote about coal and forests, women's suffrage had not yet been achieved (and she had a number of comments about the responsibility of the vote when it did come, in 1920).

Laura wrote about something that all of us in the gardening blogosphere can relate to here:

Now is the time to make garden! Anyone can be a successful gardener at this time of year and I know of no pleasanter occupation these cold, snowy days, than to sit warm and snug by the fire making garden with a pencil, in a seed catalogue. What perfect vegetables do we raise in that way and so many of them!... Best of all, there is not a bug or worm in the whole garden and the work is so easily done. (pp. 133-4)

Well, I tend to do that sort of thing in late summer, when it's too hot to do anything else, and our cold days tend not to be snowy, but the picture is true here too!

Laura saw travel times move from horse-drawn to aeroplane pace, bringing people closer together:

The world is growing smaller each day. It has been shrinking for centuries, but during these later years it is diminishing in size with an ever increasing swiftness, yet so gradual is the change that we do not realize what is taking place unless we compare the present with the past... Theses people whom we have always carelessly bunched together in our minds as foreigners will be our friends and neighbors from this time on.(p. 159)

Wouldn't she have loved blogging!

*Hines, Stephen W. (ed.) (2007). Laura Ingalls Wilder: Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks. University of Missouri Press, Columbia.