Creek Flows and A Tree Falls.

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Yesterday was an interesting day. Firstly, we had a cracker of a thunderstorm right over us very early this morning, at about 3.00 am. It woke us up.

The lightning was brilliant and lit up the sky. The thunderclaps shook the house just a little and made me jump! We had a very heavy downpour during the thunderstorm, around 20mm, and then when we rose again later in the morning, we could hear our seasonal creek flowing.

Our Seasonal Creek Starts Flowing

I’m sharing this video taken at around 7.00 am and you can clearly hear the water rushing along the creek bed that sits at the bottom of the gully in the bush paddock. You can also hear some rolling thunder in the background, right at the end of the video.

It’s been many, many months since we last heard the creek running. As I said, it’s a seasonal creek and there needs to be a very decent amount of rainfall before it flows.

The remainder of the day was very, very humid. During the morning, I attacked the jasmine creeper that sits atop the pergola, but had to take quite a few breaks just to cool off.

I did manage to give it a decent haircut and removed nearly all of the debris that had collected in amongst the branches – dead leaves, broken branches, birds feathers, decayed fruit from the Sterculia tree and discarded snake skins!!! I managed to fill a rubbish bin twice with the mess. I was a mess at the end of the job.

You can see the difference in the photo – the yellow circle shows the mess cleared out from the branches of the jasmine, and the red circle shows just how much mess was sitting up there. It was like a thick carpet.

I then retreated into the air-con, but only briefly as there was yet another power outage.

It lasted for around 3 hours, so I decided to do some weeding out in the shade house garden, in between the light showers of rain. Ah, summertime!!!

Predictions for an overnight thunderstorm and heavy rain last night didn’t eventuate, but at least it rained lightly nearly all night long.

Frog Song In The Courtyard Garden

The soundtrack to our evening was light rainfall and frog song.

Today we had intermittent showers through the morning , interspersed with bursts of sunny blue skies. This afternoon, the grey clouds swept in and we had a heavy downpour.

It was far too hot and steamy to spend a whole lot of time out in the garden. I did however continue work on treating the mealy bug infestation that’s broken out in the shade house garden.

I received some new plants in the mail, four varieties of Plectranthus and a Salvia, and I’m excited to get them potted up for the courtyard garden.

Late this afternoon I heard a noise from inside the house and I thought it was Mick’s workshop door slamming. Mick was downstairs and he heard the noise as well, but thought it was a door slamming upstairs. It wasn’t!!!

The massive old tree trunk, that’s been standing at the end of our courtyard garden ever since we moved into this place, fell down. It’s nearly 6m tall and the wood is heavy.

Mercifully, it fell in such a way that there appears to be no damage at all, missing the plants and the rock border! That doesn’t appear to be any damage to the concrete driveway underneath it either. We can not believe our luck!

The hole left behind shows clearly that the tree was completely hollow inside, likely eaten over time by termites.

I rather like the view at the end of courtyard garden now. I have to admit I don’t think I will miss the old tree trunk.

• 13 Dec, 2024
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