Now out from under the paywall… a farewell.
garden
Mourning trees
At risk of being outed as a tragic old hippy, I’m mourning a tree. Again. This tree-mourning, I’ve only just realised it even happens. This time, this tree. It wasn’t even a significant tree, or a pretty tree, or even my tree. Just a big, old tree. My neighbours, I like them, and I think they […]
The common mango
There’s this guy who lives in my street. Called Dutch. Rides a motorbike. Looks like the type of cat who’s already gone through a few of his nine lives. Lives in the front half of a rented place at the bottom of the hill. Dutch, of course, is not his actual name. I don’t know […]
Winter sun
It’s one of those winter mornings when the slanting sunlight is a treasure. Our morning schedule is thrown sideways by the end of school holidays colliding with the 5am World Cup final, so I drop my partner at work over the Victoria Bridge. We are fortunate to spend a few traffic light changes waiting on […]
Crafty
It’s happening. I may be turning into a semi-hipster. It’s the craft thing, see. It started with an innocent workshop at the local library. Crochet your own granny square. I always wanted to do that. There was one space left. And so, braced as I was against an earth-shattering hangover one Saturday, I learned […]
The beeman cometh
If West End has the highest occurrence of native bee hives in the country, it’s probably due to Dr Tim Heard. Tim’s an entomological original: one of the pioneer native bee-keepers who’s been dabbling since the 1980s. He wrote an early article about them in Nature magazine in the 1990s. He’s done time […]
Garden update
The tabebuia is on its way out, sadly, but together with the wisteria, it has reliably heralded spring again. I’m making a little peace with Walter the turkey, but not much. I’ve thwarted his orchid-wrenching by repotting the ones he’s scattered in hanging baskets. His taste for heliconia roots is getting on my nerves, and […]