Cacti

Mescaline cactus and wall (my back yard).

Burned “boo!” tree

A story ended by the fire

11 June 2016: This afternoon, walking a slightly different route than normal, I spotted a pine tree starting over — lots of trees were lost to fire several years ago. You have to wonder how much of the existing root system feeds this. Or did it sprout from seed in the rotting trunk? I’ll have to look more closely.

5 May 2017: Pine trees don’t regrow from stumps, unlike eucalyptus trees. But you wouldn’t know that from looking at this. Apparently a pine cone sprouted inside the rotting stump. How it fares as the stump continues to rot will be interesting to watch!

3-½ years later, our hopes of seeing the root structure ended. The rotting host stump burned, consuming the roots of the young tree, now four meters tall.

A palta for the critters

One day, a large avocado is cut from the tree, maybe 660g (1 lb 5 oz). Trusting the dogs won’t eat it – very bad for them – I leave it, instead of getting rid of it. The next day a bit more is eaten, and the same the next day. Have the possum and I reached an understanding?

Sometimes it happens

I picked up a fallen avocado, bounced it once in my hand, and said “396 grams.”

And then…

Hmmm.

Adapting weeds

Our front lawn has always been plagued with dandelion-type weeds. Left to their own, they will grow a foot or so high. This year, they managed to get away from me, and suddenly the font yard was a sea of yellow. I cut them down with the lawnmower before they could go to seed. Lo and behold, they came back, this time flowering close to the ground, and very rapidly going to seed.

Clever little bastards!