My two weeks in Western Australia - Part Two

Good morning or evening!  If you have been a reader of this blog for a while, you will know that I live in a very treed part of Melbourne in the outer Eastern suburbs.  It is very beautiful here but I can't see the sunrise/sunset or the horizon.  So when I go back to visit my parents on the farm in Western Australia, I soak up all the wide open space with a 360 degree view.

My brother doing some farm work on the tractor.

I love the tall trees that grow in this part of the world, the one in the centre of the photo is Salmon Gum, Eucalyptus salmonophloia.

This is the track my siblings and I use to walk or ride bikes down to get to the school bus.

 When I first started school at age 5, this track seemed to be so long (it's about 1/2 a mile from the house to the road), so I would break up the walk/ride into sections.  The first section about 1/3 of the way down was the very little gully you can see in the photo above.

There is a creek about two thirds the way along the track which is mostly dry, this was the second section to break up my journey.  As you can see there are an abundance of pink and grey galahs flying around.  They are very noisy but I love them.  I don't see them very often where I live now but when I do it gives me a great deal of pleasure.  Crossing the sandy creek bed was always difficult for me.  Even a good run up down and into the creek wouldn't enable me to get across.  It was big brother's job to get me started on my bike again after stopping as I hadn't learnt to get going again without a push off.  Oh how he suffered waiting for me and my spindly little legs to get to the creek.  I hated those southerly head winds that made me feel like I was going no where.

When the creek runs the water is salty (unfortunately).   Many areas of farming land in Western Australia now have salinity problems which is quite difficult to manage.  But with some planning and help from Landcare, the problems of salinity are being addressed.  Work has been done on the creek banks with plantings of  trees and shrubs indigenous to the area.

In the photo above in the distance, you can see some small trees and shrubs growing which are a part of plantings that have been done.  More about that in my next post and the bird life that is flourishing there.

Not only did I enjoy natures garden when I was home, I enjoyed my Mum's garden too.  I spent many hours pruning roses, grubbing out errant lawn roots and vine that had taken over some of the roses.  Jade is a plant that thrives especially well in the hot dry climate where my parents live.  It stays green when everything else  not watered well in summer will die.  So I pruned some of the Jade as well.  Now there is a big garden rubbish pile behind the chook house to burn when is dries off and is safe to burn.

My eyes have turned to my own garden now and it is still too cold and damp to do anything very productive outside.  So I've spent some time crocheting and cooking, baked egg custard and peach crumble was our dessert last night.  I rarely make dessert, so there were happy people in our house last night.

Have a lovely day everyone.  Part three coming soon.

Anne  xx