Goodbye to 2017 (12/31/2017) - Happy new year to all of you who follow Fifteen Acres. I got quite a shock to realise I haven’t posted since May – 2017 has really been a strange year. I must admit to looking forward to a brand new beginning in 2018, and getting back into the swing of regular updates. There are … Continue reading Goodbye to 2017
The Honeyeater Garden (2/28/2015) - I’ve mentioned our new honeyeater garden in a few recent posts, so I thought I would tell you a little more about it. The idea began approximately a year ago, when I noticed that all of the flowering plants in our garden were not visible from inside the house. We had plenty of honeyeaters on our … Continue reading The Honeyeater Garden
Fuchsia in the Fernery (4/8/2014) - Most of the plants in our fernery are non-flowering, so these bright Fuchsia flowers caught my attention this week. I couldn’t resist photographing them.
Familiar Faces: Wildlife, Home, and Making Contact (11/28/2013) - The first thing I do when I get out of bed each day is look out the window to see ‘who’ is there. We recognise individual birds and animals within a species because they seem to have made their regular patch of turf the land outside our windows. It is their home as much as … Continue reading Familiar Faces: Wildlife, Home, and Making Contact
Hot Northerlies, Cooling Southerlies, and Rough-Barked Trees (1/22/2013) - Over Summer, we’re forever monitoring the wind direction. This is new for us. Living in the city, we monitored temperature throughout the day, but wind direction was just a vague acknowledgement that North Winds were hot, and South Winds were refreshing and cool. Also, when the Southerlies came in on the back of a hot … Continue reading Hot Northerlies, Cooling Southerlies, and Rough-Barked Trees
Learning to love succulents (12/18/2012) - I could not understand why the garden beds were planted with so many succulent plants when we first moved in. To me, they were unattractive and at odds with the lush growth of a cottage garden, which I preferred, and also with the natural bushland, which abounds here. My initial intention was to pull them … Continue reading Learning to love succulents
Luna and Clio’s first day in the enclosure (11/26/2012) - In our previous house, Luna and Clio had free access to a patio enclosed by cat netting. They both love being outside, basking in the sun or chasing insects. For the past few months in our new house, they have had to be content with sunbaking next to a full length window, or watching birds … Continue reading Luna and Clio’s first day in the enclosure
Cat Enclosure Stage 2 – Cat Netting (11/26/2012) - This weekend the weather was fine and we had free time, so we were able to finish the cat enclosure. Essentially this meant covering the yard with cat netting and patching up any potential escape points, for example, making sure the cats are not able to get under the house, or squeeze through a gap … Continue reading Cat Enclosure Stage 2 – Cat Netting
The Cat Enclosure Stage 1 – New Fence (11/19/2012) - It has been very difficult to find clear weekends to build, where we don’t have other commitments, but last weekend we made some progress on the cat enclosure. Finally! We needed a firm anchor point for the cat netting. Unfortunately, the existing lattice was not strong enough. It was beginning to show signs of age, … Continue reading The Cat Enclosure Stage 1 – New Fence
The Cat Enclosure Dilema (10/17/2012) - As responsible cat owners, we will build a cat enclosure before we allow the cats outside. Our intention was to have this enclosure built before we moved in, but the existring fence structure was not strong enough to support the cat netting we need to secure to it. The new fencing materials are due to … Continue reading The Cat Enclosure Dilema
A quick tour of our bush habitat (9/25/2012) - We are very fortunate to have friends who know much more than we do about the native plants on our land. It turns out that our property is rich in native orchids and native lillies. A couple of weeks ago, we had 6 species of native orchid in flower, and another six to ten which … Continue reading A quick tour of our bush habitat
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