The Long Paddock

These stunning autumn trees are part of what we call The Long Paddock.

It is a sweep of land that runs down the eastern side of our house  and adjoins the orchard at the back of the property.
It has been used for football matches, a place to ride motorbikes, a golf hole (par 3 according to Sam and Amy...terrible rough though apparently!), a riding track for Clancy, a speedway for The Moke or just a nice place to stroll around the farm. It also provides access to the woodman who dumps a load of wood up there each year for Winter.

 This is how it looked the day after the fire. The tracks have all been made by vehicles of one sort or another that passed through our property that day. It's quite weird how the trees all seem to look okay. 

This is how the long paddock looks today.

The brown of course is not autumn colouring, just dead. Plenty of green though.We will get our mulching people back to mulch up the stacks of dead material that Bill has made. That way we get to keep the valuable mulch to use on the garden beds.

This is looking back the other way towards the pond.

And today........

 We will always be in awe of how nature works. The largest and  smallest of trees are all showing new signs of life and we couldn't be happier about that. 

Thank you for the buckets Jo. I love them. I dug up 3 huge clumps of daffodils and plan to put them around the pond. Bill has tried digging some patches there for me, but even his brand new fork wasn't up to the task. Thank goodness the trusty crowbar survived the fire because I think that's what we (Bill, that is) will be using!!

Lavender walk and figs

This is the photo that I chose to use for my blog header ( blog speak apparently ! ) I think it was because it all looked so lush and green and pretty and I probably needed a dose of lush and green and pretty when I started this blog. It is the lavender walk....such a quaint name for a row of lavender either side of a pathway, but I love using the term just the same.
My cousin Judy gave me most of the plants that she had taken as cuttings from her English lavender  and I continued to add to that. 
Mind you I have never had any success at getting both sides all looking gorgeous at the same time. You will notice in this photo that there is only one lavender plant on the top left side instead of the eight I planted....case in point! Who would know what happened to the others. They would have all been planted at the same time ........they probably drowned truth be known!!!

And now.......

And no matter how closely I have inspected them, there is not the slightest shade of green or grey to be seen. 

There's a bit of lopsidedness going on here too, even though they would have all been planted evenly.

And now.....

And on a happy note....
we have had 12mm of gentle rain overnight and today 

and these little figlets decided to hang in there after the fire and carry on. They were delicious.... the only fruit remaining in our orchard.  I am quite amazed that they have hung on and ripened.

Dams, daffodils and frogs

 When you drive into our place, one of the first things you will see is the dam, also known as the frog pond. 

It was originally a dam..... hand dug ( or so the story goes ) for supplying water to the deer that lived on the property inside a  high fenced deer enclosure. 

The deer had been removed when we bought the property 20 years ago, but the structure remained.

At some stage, we (probably me ) decided to make the dam a part of our garden and encourage water birds to visit..... so the fence was removed.

This was in 1998....the middle of winter by the look of it!!!

We even bought some ducklings at the market ( Amy's idea) and Bill constructed an enclosure for them to be safe at night. They were gorgeous and would happily wander around the garden.

And of course there were all the other little creatures that love to inhabitat such places too.

This little wildlife warrior loves to spend time around the dam looking for frogs and yabbies and tadpoles and lizards. 

Two nights ago Bill spotted this little froglet just outside the window where I  have a collection of roses and plants in pots that people have given us. 

And then much to our delight he appeared again last night.
.....our little frog population has returned. 
These are some  photos that Bill has taken in previous years.This is an eastern common froglet...

And this is a spotted marsh frog .....

We are so lucky that this is a healthy habitat for them and we will try to keep it that way.

This grim photo is how we found the frog pond after the fire on February 9 later in the evening....

 And this is how it looks today.... the blackness has gone but it remains dry.

We hope that one day it might once again look like this.....

The vegie patch.

Amy has always loved growing vegies. One year she sowed some turnip seeds which took off at a rate of knots and almost covered every bed in the vegie patch. We ended up with buckets of them........and even though we love our vegies, we're not that fond of turnips! 

 This original vegie patch in 1994 was her idea. 

And here it is in exactly the same position...

And with some extensions...

And some little bean planters...

Amy  grows most of her vegies from seeds....just like her Pa. I don't think Pa does this though....

This is the vegie patch the day after the fire.

 And the compost area....

And the tank that collected the precious rain water for the vegie patch...

Last year we had an abundance of tomatoes ....

And  we had many Sunday lunches consisting of  semi dried tomatoes on sourdough bread....

 until the jars ran out!!! And then I would make another batch......

We are now contemplating the design of our new vegie patch..... no turnips though!

The Orchard

The word "orchard" has always conjured up a  romantic image for me. It reminds me of rambling country gardens in England and makes me think of gorgeous fresh fruit collected in baskets in abundance.
We always fancied the idea of having such a space specifically for trees that would provide us with just that......an abundance of fresh fruit.  So we settled on the large paddock behind the rose garden and started to plant one of everything!!  
And all with mixed success, as you might expect. 
There was the delicious apple tree.....

But not looking so healthy now.

The purplest plums you've ever seen.....

But definitely no purple there now...

The lemon tree....

The lemons are not lemon any more.......

The nectarine tree...

And the olive tree....

...are not looking happy...
But the apricot tree....

and the fig tree are very happy with themselves at this stage and have decided that perhaps they might be okay afterall.

These were taken in October 2011. Most of the trees you see in the background are no longer there....all burnt or cut right back.The little stable belongs to our neighbour and was also burnt.

 And I almost forgot this little birdhouse number 2 that we looked at every day through the kitchen window before we replaced it with Bill's Taj Mahal. We had planned to put it back up when the hollyhocks started flowering but it succumbed to the ravages of the fire.

Such a pretty little thing though....I'm a little bit sad about that.