 Another Country Diary Links to images and other pages are in blue. After about a week of diary entries, or when the page gets too image heavy they go to the archive. |
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| 3 November -7 November. | ||
 There
were a few blackened tips on the new leaves of the walnut tree when we
came back from WA. It suggested a frost but nothing else seemed
affected. Now there are lots of tiny nuts with soft succulent 'antlers'.
Now that we know the tree is a walnut, these stages are being noted
while in years past the tree was almost removed as straggly and
unattractive.
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 I've
spent a lot of time looking at, and photographing fungi. When I lived in
Gippsland and later in Melbourne, the 25 acre block I owned as a weekend
retreat had a wet forest patch that had great fungi. (And a lyrebird but
that's another tale.)Like bird watchers, who train themselves to see shapes and small movements that are different from the bush around, fungi watchers can spot a small blotch on a trunk or in leaf mould that says 'look closer here'. This one has been very obvious in the grass near the hazelnuts and it was only a week or so later that I became aware of it's distinct shaggy cap.
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Search engines work in mysterious
ways. Because I
wrote about my Fowlers Vacola bottling, if you now do a search
on Google for that, you'll end up in this Diary archive. I've had a
couple of letters from people who read that, and realised that I
hadn't put up any links to helpful web info.
Naomi,
Fowlers
have a very slim (and hence overpriced) booklet called "Secrets of
Successful Preserving". It costs about $17.00, but it
is probably the best place to start if you have their kit already as
it's quite specific. You
can buy it online at
http://centre.net.au/ |
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 The
horse-chestnut flowers are just about finished, the tall cones of white
flowers are now revealing the small spiky fruit that will become the
nuts. There seem to be more this year, last season there were not enough
to pick. We eat them sometimes, but they're smaller and not as tasty as
a true chestnut. A bowl full of the glossy nuts makes a good bench
decoration. They're nice to pick up and handle.
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 We
have two big compost bins, each divided into two areas, with corrugated iron sides and supported by
treated pine posts. We fill one side at a time, and usually it has
rotted down to good dark soil by the time we finish the other side.
We've noticed that the bin up near the herb garden is usually ready much
faster than the other in the back yard. The one that's closest to the
house gets all the kitchen scraps and fireplace ashes and is in a more
sheltered spot so it stays wetter. The backyard one gets more tough
garden waste and the weeds with dirt clods attached.
Each year when we add the compost to the garden beds and dig it in, there's a smug satisfaction at the process of renewal. While spreading the compost and digging over the beds is a hard slog, it's feels good. But there seems to be never enough. You can always use more compost in spring. |
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 Kellie
was walking through Darling Harbour when she came across a promotion for
Virgin Mobile. It was for the multimedia phones and she was prompted to
go up to Richard Branston standing in a silver trenchcoat and say
"Flash me Virgin Mobile', he didn't, but laughed and gave her a
free Nokia phone with the inbuilt camera. It was delivered later by a
girl called E. "That's my whole name" she said "like the
letter E". And I thought my hippy friends were a worry with
their kid's names. Which generation is this? |
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| Fred Harden | ||
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Despite
its round shape I think it's a Shaggy Ink cap Coprinus comatus.
We've had those in other areas of
the garden usually in clusters, but they are more cone like. They're
also called Lawyer's wig, and they're supposed to be edible with a
pleasant smell. I forgot to smell this one. The book says that the
gills change from white through pink to black and then begin to liquefy
lasting 24 hours. They appear late spring, summer and autumn. This one
had been there for almost two weeks I reckon, so I'm not sure it's a shaggy.
I've never noticed the annulus strips holding the cap on the others, so
I'm open to anyone who might help identify it. (A
field guide to Fungi of South-eastern Australia. Macdonald &
Westerman. Nelson.)