JINGLE BELLS….. You could decorate a Christmas tree with the sweet, native bell flowers that flourish in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. In fact, I have done this in my garden at Blackheath. I used correas, cinnamon bells and apple berry blooms to adorn a
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HEAVENS ABOVE….DUCKS! I wandered out into the garden one spring morning and heard a soft clucking coming from high in a gum tree. It was a goose like duck, which was soon joined by a wooing male. Such handsome birds. They are Australian native wood ducks, and
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Perhaps the most entertaining and interesting bird in my Blue Mountains garden is the Australian Satin Bowerbird. The difference in appearance between females and juveniles and the adult male is hard to believe. Initially the birds are olive green, with cream and brown scalloped chests, bronze wings
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THE FEAR OF FORGETTING As a Baby Boomer I can only hope that a vaccine against Alzheimer’s will be developed before my alarming short-term memory loss blossoms into full blown dementia 😨. Meanwhile, I practice spelling ‘world’ backwards, and counting back from one hundred in sevens. I
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THIS IS A TRIBUTE TO LYCOPODIUM – A PLANT YOU CAN PLAY TRICKS WITH. 😎 A few years ago I discovered a most extraordinary Australian native plant thriving in my Blue Mountains garden. Mind you, for some time I did my best to eradicate it. My worry
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THE YELLOW ROBIN AT HOME It lives in the mountains where moss and the sedges, Touch with their beauty, the banks and the ledges. D.F. Thomson Australia’s Eastern Yellow Robins are as trusting as the English redbreasts, although they are not related. They will hop about your
Read more →Well last week I went on a holiday to Tasmania in search of two special little girls called Ellie and Ash. My elderly guardians Pauline and Rob are their great auntie and uncle. I reckon this might make me their adoptive fourth cousin thrice removed. OK, so
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GOLD IN THE BLOOD? Many years ago one of my elderly Larcombe aunts sent me a yellowed newspaper cutting of a famous gold find in Western Australia, It was The Golden Eagle nugget, discovered in 1931. I can only presume that the Jim Larcombe in the article
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Dementia has become an epidemic in our society. This is a story about my mother-in-law Jean, but it is also the story of countless others in the same situation. CIRCA 1945 A CALENDER OF DEMENTIA APRIL 2015 This calendar had become a lifeline in my mother-in-law Jean’s life.
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WIRE IN THE BLOOD Growing up on a small farm in Tasmania, I often felt that the whole place was held together with barbed wire and binder twine. Most of our fences were made of wire and wooden ‘droppers’. My sister and I quite enjoyed collecting snagged
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