A Moment in Time

Another day of tidying up affairs at the other house. As a result I had bags of weeds, grass and the odd plant in the wrong spot that wasn’t really a weed.

There were some useful plants which I have transplanted here at Tillellan. I was surprised to find several fruit tree saplings growing in the ground that was our chook yard. They look like nectarine seeds from a not too distant summer have managed to grow. Which has me thinking, did this happen quite often, only to be scratched out by our busy chickens?

Either way, I am grateful for the gifts,  and given that our apricot tree did not survive the move, they will be nice little reminders of the previous little paradise that I once gardened.

So as I was creating another garden bed with the waste materials that I had brought over I was fortunate enough to make some discoveries.

The Little Eagle was out and about, flying its usual pattern this side of the mountain. It was a typical day for the Eagle, bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

A King Skink was out sun bathing and took off as I approached it, to shelter under some tubs I had stacked up in the yard.

I looked into the little pot pond, curious to know if the Bullfrog was still around as I hadn’t heard him for a number of days. In fact, the frogs had gone quiet and I hadn’t seen the Bullfrog since I caught him down by the house and moved him back up into the garden. I shifted some plants in the pot, but no Bullfrog to be seen, however to my delight I saw a tiny, black tadpole. As I looked further into the pot I saw hundreds of tiny, black tadpoles!

The frogs had done their work. Fantastic! And despite having minnows in the water, the tadpoles appear to be doing just fine.

The last couple of days the weather has been short showers and moments of intense sunshine. The mornings quite often have been light showers and then fine throughout the day, though even today we had a moment of rain, then hail. Hail in November is not uncommon and I am sure that a search of previous posts around November will confirm this.

I collected some of the bunches of seed heads that I hung out to dry the other week and shifted them into the back room to dry a little further before threshing.

I managed to tend to the tomato bush briefly. It has returned from either the same bush last year, which virtually did nothing – or it has managed to self-seed. It is an heirloom tomato and is covered in flowers with small fruit appearing at the bottom.

In an effort to cover more of the ground for summer I also transplanted native geranium, some succulents and some salad plants. Most of the ground is either planted out or covered in mulch so this should reduce the sand lifting with the warm easterlies. It’s just the large expanse of sand at our back door that will need taming. But it is appreciated by the turtles for now.