Week 3 February 2001: Still working on our Power Pole Garden. Digging holes, planting and mulching. Planted a Banksia repens. This is one of the interesting ground covering species from Western Australia. Hopefully this Banksia will survive and thrive in this garden.
In January we collected seed from Fringed Lilies (Thysanotus species) and sowed them. This week some of these seeds were germinating. This will be a first and hopefully we will be able to introduce these beautiful herbaceous plants into the Yallaroo gardens.
There are three frog ponds at Yallaroo. One of them has always been very murky. The frogs don’t mind but it was not a very attractive sight. We have a small dam, which is always clear and contains Chara an underwater plant. The water in this dam is always clear so we introduced some into our murky frog pond. After a month or so the water is now crystal clear. This had been a very satisfactory result.
Plenty of wildlife around this week. The Yellow-faced Honeyeaters who nested in a peach tree in January have raised two fledglings and they left home this week. Saw one of our Jacky Lizards catch a large grasshopper. Took a lot of juggling before the grasshopper became lunch. A Burton’s Legless Lizard was observed in one of our gardens. This brown-bodied reptile has a snake-like body, lizard head and the vestiges of legs. This lizard is about 20 centimetres long. Its principal prey seems to be other lizards.
Still hot and dry with only three millimetres of rain.