Week 4 December 2000: Belated Christmas greetings to everyone. Sorry about the delay in the Garden Diary. Our New Year’s resolution is to keep the Diary up to date.
Some baby Eastern Spinebills were sighted in one of our garden beds. A pair of these delightful honeyeaters had nested in a native clematis vine, growing on one of supports of our patio.
Set up our Christmas tree, a Queensland Umbrella Tree. We have been advocating, for many years, the use of Australian native plants for Christmas trees. This matter will be discussed in our Research section.
A large native wasp was buzzing around our patio. A mud nest was found on one of our outdoor chairs. The nest was broken when the furniture was moved. It contained about a dozen paralysed caterpillars, each carrying a wasp egg. Every summer we find many mud nests on various structures around Yallaroo. We leave these nests alone as they do no harm. Mud-nesting wasps paralyse insects (usually caterpillars) and spiders. When the wasp larvae hatch, they find breakfast, lunch and dinner ready and waiting.
All our family visited this Christmas. We were all relaxing, in the lounge room after Christmas lunch when a brown snake decided to join the party. Persuaded this unwelcome visitor to leave. Certainly jolted us out of our post Christmas lunch lethargy. This is the first brown snake we have seen at Yallaroo.
New Year’s Eve saw us off to Bowral (southern NSW) with our son Lachlan.