Yesterday there was a choir of kookaburras in a nearby tree laughing their heads off.
By the time we got our camera out they were silent and flew off except for one lone kookaburra who sat silent in our aged liquid amber tree, just pondering and enjoying the moment, on a quiet sunny autumn afternoon in Adelaide.
We save seeds to plant out in our next seasons garden.
We let plants go to seed so they self seed and reappear in our gardens as the seasons change.
We save seeds to give to others.
We save seeds so we have nourishing food next season.
We let things go to seed to enjoy the beauty of the flowers and seeds.
We let things go to seed so bees and birds and other insects are attracted to our gardens.
These visitors pollinate, eat bugs and keep our gardens healthy.
SEEDS, SEEDS, SEEDS!
Tell us a tale of your seed saving adventures!
We made this video this week when we were walking the dogs in the early evening.
This palm tree looked like something you would see in the tropics rather than dry old Adelaide.
It was so much fun to see masses of bees and rainbow lorikeets having a supper feast we raced home to get the camera.
We hope you enjoy this video it gets a bit blurring in places but comes clear at the end.
Today, Monday the 1st day of March 2010, Adelaide welcomes thousands of people from all over the globe as it hosts a myriad of amazing events.
Some of the events in Adelaide this week include The Adelaide Festival of Arts, The Adelaide Fringe Festival, Adelaide Writers Week, Artist’s Week, Womadelaide and The Garden of Unearthly Delights.
A highlight for us as gardeners is the magic of woven garden materials created by the very talented members of Basketry SA in their Warp on the Wild Side exhibition, including Deb Cantrill from Nirvana Organic Farm.
This is a contemporary basketry exhibition which reflects a diverse range of techniques displaying intricate patterns, flowing lines, expected shapes and sculptural forms using plant fibres found in Waite Arboretum. Besides the beautiful woven items in the exhibition there are also many items for sale.
Deb’s dragon fly and gnomes house are amazing and can be seen at Urrbrae House from 11 to 4pm daily.
More excitement for us today is the appearance of the beautiful turmeric flower seen above and the yummy cheese and zucchini pie we had for dinner.
If you are in Adelaide and would like to meet up with some of us Seedsavers, Kate, Deb and I shall be at Urrbrae House, or wandering around the rose garden or walking the newly created wooden tree trunk labyrinth in the grounds from 1:30 pm Wednesday, please say hello we would love to meet you.
Water is a serious problem here in South Australia but one local council is doing something about it. In fact, they are leading the world in storm water treatment and re-use. Many years ago they began to use some dry and dusty land as a series of holding ponds for storm water runoff. It was then a rough and ready arrangement which has now grown to be a showcase for water conservation.
Stormwater is water that runs off surfaces such as roofs, roads, footpaths and driveways when it rains. Much of this water flows into stormwater drains and then into creeks and rivers, eventually making its way into the sea. About 160,000 million litres of polluted stormwater was being released into Gulf St Vincent each year, much of it into the Barker Inlet.
In the 1990's the City of Salisbury defined a vision that it would seek to eliminate the flow of polluted water into the marine environment of the Barker Inlet of Gulf St. Vincent. The Barker Inlet is a delicate marine environment of mangroves and sea grass meadows serving as a nursery for a majority of the State's fishing industry. However, years of neglect and polluted inflows have reduced the Barker Inlet to a delicate state.
The creation of wetlands to cleanse stormwater was Salisbury's key strategy to help the ecological rehabilitation of the Barker Inlet while providing cheaper water to local industry and other users. Nutrient and pollutant loads are typically reduced by up to 90 per cent and the treated water salinity is less than 250 mg/L. The system is designed to hold stormwater for around 10 days to ensure optimal treatment efficiency.
Stormwater is treated and harnessed in a series of more than 30 wetlands along urban stormwater paths to slow the flow and allow pollution to settle out. The wetlands cover an area of 260 hectares enhancing the landscape and creating habitat diversity.
All the wetland plants are propagated at the Council's nursery and they play an important role in the treatment of polluted stormwater. The nursery has developed a high level of expertise in propagating various wetland species, and it sells wetland plants to users all around Australia.
As drought hit our state, demands for water also increased and the council researched storing cleaned stormwater underground in aquifers for re-use later. Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) is the process of injecting water into a suitable underground aquifer for storage and later reuse, and it can be a means of artificially recharging depleted underground water supplies.
ASR is a modification of the natural system that has been occurring for millions of years. Natural recharge occurs by filtration of rainwater through the soil profile, past the vegetation root zone and down to permeable rocks known as aquifers.Aquifers can store large quantities of water without losses from evaporation and with reduced risk of contamination, both of which are problems associated with surface water storage areas such as reservoir.
In March there was an excellent talk given at the Rare Fruits Meeting, by Colin Pitman, the Director of Projects at the Salisbury Council. He explained that they have now mapped the whole of Adelaide and made plans for supplying enough water to Adelaide to make it independent of the River Murray. The wetlands and aquifer system is suited to Adelaide's winter rainfall and underground geology and can hold the best solution for all our water needs, relatively cheaply and will return a profit, as it does for the Salisbury Council. I would be very happy to dispense with our current, antiquated water authority and buy my water directly from such a system as this.
I have a CD of the talk which is inspiring and full of information. If anyone would like to borrow it please email me.
Last week I went for a walk at what is now called the Greenfields Wetlands and found it to be not only useful but full of wildlife and photo opportunities! It is amazing to think that what once a dry, barren and awful part of the outskirts of Adelaide, in a triangle between 2 major roads, is now home to thousands of birds, frogs, lizards and insects. It is worth the drive.... go and look for yourself.
 | There are many bridges through the Melaleucas |
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 | You can see the oxygenating of the water happening here as nature cleans the water |
 | If I had binoculars, I could see my house on the top of one of those hills, from here. |
There is nothing more beautiful, to me, than what I see and feel around me, out in the garden. It sometimes takes my breath away when the sun breaks through on a grey and cloudy day, magnifying colours and textures for a few moments, just so we don't forget the wonder of the natural world. And the feel of a new yacon leaf is more exquisite than any expensive fabric.
Sometimes it is not until a vegetable is collected and cleaned up that I appreciate its beauty. I found a tiny, old, purple cabbage, squashed into the soil beneath an unruly part of the garden, its outside leaves badly eaten by something and looking sodden and rather unattractive. I worked away at tidying it up for a while then made a cut through it to see if it was OK inside....
This sunflower was blown over in the strong winds recently and looked a wet and dirty mess.... but I removed the stem, let the head dry out then brushed off the layers of dirt and found it to be almost perfectly intact.
There is not much art that I really like other than that all around us.
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 As the rain began to clear, patches of blue highlighted the layers of clouds and the birds took to the skies again.... these clouds are huge but were blowing across the sky in seconds.... |  |
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