Recently, among my garden branches, lopping tall tips with extended lopping shears. I thought a few prickly leaves had dropped down my back. I was wrong. Venom suddenly flooded my back with stinging fire. Disturbed tree dwelling spiders had attacked me leaving 5 fiery lumps across my back. Lavender oil put the fire out, but […]
Tag: Nillumbik
Our Garden Sanctuary
One windy day working in the garden, I noticed what I thought were swirls of dust blowing up our side street, but it was bees, hundreds of homeless bees in a mass 80 foot long, battling the gusty north wind. I have never been stung by a bee and with no desire to find if […]
Garden Holiday
Many people swap homes for holidays and one year we did this. We swapped for a bush holiday, and a large brown snake swapped the bush for holiday at our place: Returning from our holiday we could hear the phone ringing. It was a neighbour who told me “Before you unpack check your garden. A […]
Eltham Copper Butterfly
The ”’Eltham Copper Butterfly”’ ”Paralucia pyrodiscus lucida” is restricted to a few scattered areas in central and western Victoria, It was discovered in 1938 at Eltham, and a marked reduction in the abundance of the the butterfly was noted during the 1950’s until, eventually, the sub-species was feared to have become extinct. In 1987 the discovery […]
Charles Draper of Charnwood, Arthur’s Creek
Charles Draper of Charnwood, Arthur’s Creek – Horticultural Pioneer by Bruce Draper (2010) Charles Draper (1825-1909), a versatile horticulturist, florist, pomologist, orchardist and viticulturist, was the first large scale fruit grower in the Arthur’s and Diamond Creek districts of Victoria. He became a member of the inaugural Board of Advice for the Management of the […]
A Friend in the garden
One of the gardener’s worst enemies is snails. These merciless eating machines gobble up baby seedlings, climb up trees to strip leaves and live like lords in your veggie patch. But they have a natural Aussie enemy, our native snail. The Aussie snail is the gardener’s friend. It is not a vegetarian. It is carnivorous […]
A Dropping in our garden
One of the first residents in our garden was a spider. It spun a web from our new fence to one of our first plants. It sat motionless all day in full view of the hungry birds. At no time did I ever see it move. It sat with its legs tightly tucked into its […]
Eltham Lower Park
Prior to the extension of European people into the lands of the Nillum-bik in the late 1830s the Wurundjeri people had been meeting for thousands of years at the junction of the Diamond Creek with the Yarra River, in the area now known as Eltham Lower Park. The first European settlers were squatters or leaseholders. […]
Christmas Hills : a safe haven for native animals
Trust for Nature has purchased a property in Christmas Hills, ensuring rare and endangered species have somewhere to call home. Australia’s leading, not-for-profit, private land conservation organisation Trust for Nature has purchased the Reeves Road property because it helps form a cluster of protected bushland. This bushland houses a healthy population of wombats, the cryptic […]
Nillumbik U3A
The U3A (University of the Third Age) began about 35 years ago in France and since then has become a world-wide organisation. The first U3A in Australia started in Melbourne and the Victorian U3A Network has just celebrated its 20th anniversary. There are now over 80 U3As throughout Victoria and in November 2008 we launched […]