Harvest

 Time to pick the first crop of mushrooms:

I should have weighed them, or at least photographed them, before they were chopped up and cooked.

 

A couple of weeks back I was talking to a friend (by phone) about rule compliance here and in her part of Melbourne. I said that around Ballarat it seemed the people least likely to be wearing a mask were young men in hi-vis gear. So when today a few covid exposure sites emerged around Ballarat, I wasn't surprised that several are construction sites.

The result is that from tonight we will be in a strange situation of being "lockdown adjacent", as Ballarat is entering a 7-day lockdown. We don't live in the city of Ballarat, but it is where just about everything we do is. It is where we do all our shopping, and where I work, so in many ways it will be just like being locked down.

Added later: A neighbour tells me that they had booked a week's holiday at a regional tourist destination, but that the accommodation provider has now cancelled their booking because they "live too close to Ballarat".

Successes

Lockdown 6+ or whatever number it is started almost 3 weeks ago. That day I posted about two new projects; a mushroom growing kit, and a wallhanging.

During the lockdown I have worked on the wallhanging, and regularly misted the mushroom kit. Most days we took the dogs for a walk, and on those walks we came across some interesting wildlife.

A swamp wallaby, seen on 4th Sept:

Actually there were two, but I only got a photo of one of them.

A koala, seen on 6th Sept:

I think there might actually be two, because the shapes seem to not be quite right for just one. It could be a mother with a largish baby. But it was a very long way up in the tree, so it was impossible to get a clear view.

A mob of kangaroos, seen on 7th Sept:

They were suprising, as initially I only saw three or four of them. But once they started moving, more and more appeared that had been lying down resting in the long grass. There are 16 of them in this photo.

Yesterday we got the news that this lockdown is finishing at midnight tonight.

I finished the wall hanging this afternoon! I was so excited to have it finished, I forgot to take it outside to get a good daylight photo before it went up on the wall.

It is hanging above the dresser that came from my parents' home last month.

And the mushroom kit?

Tiny mushrooms are appearing. Another success!

New Projects

Yesterday things were a bit different. We could go to shops, and travel around. I went to Bunnings to buy Vermiculite, and came across the last of their mushroom growing kits:

This morning I set it up:

Hopeful that in about 3 weeks it will produce mushrooms:

 I'll let you know if it works.

Then we heard the inevitable, and not unexpected, news that regional Victoria was going back into lockdown from 1pm today. Is this lockdown 7, or is it part of lockdown 6 because 6 is still running in Melbourne? Perhaps it is 6a, or 6.1, or...? With only 2 hours notice, there wasn't time to rush out buying toilet paper (this is a joke), so we went for a walk.

I've decided to devote this lockdown to a new project. Something where if I work on it every day I could finish it before the lockdown ends. Some time in the last couple of years I bought Elizabeth Hartman's Greenhouse pattern:

I'm going to make a wall-hanging version, with just a few of the "plants". After the walk (and a cup of tea) I started work.

One pot made!

Working Bee

It was a cool day today, just right for a big bonfire.

The occasion was a working bee at the Clarkesdale Bird Sanctuary (previously visited in August last year), and the purpose was to clean up some of the dead branches lying around in one small section of the property. A group of about 10 people spent several hours moving dead branches large and small to be added to the fire:

There were lots of fascinating fungi growing on larger fallen trees:

After several hours all the accumulated smaller branches had been added to the fire, and it was just a matter of letting it burn down:

Then it was time to head home, tired but happy after a day out.

Observations

Just realised it is nearly a week since I did a blog post. What have I been doing?

Apart from my one quilt block a day, I've done little bits of this and that, but I really don't know where the time went.

One thing I have been doing is adding observations to iNaturalist. While wandering around our property, or taking the dogs out, I keep an eye out for little bits of nature to photograph and add to the site. Here are a few of this week's observations.

A skink sunning itself:

I now know it is a Pale-flecked Garden Sunskink, Lampropholis guichenoti.

An interesting bird battle seen while out walking:

Magpies chasing off a galah. I don't know what threat a galah might be to magpies, but they swooped it and chased it for quite some distance.

I didn't have to travel far to see this one:

A superb fairywren after a bath in my birdbath this morning.

Autumn is peak fungi time. I don't know much about them, and it is hard to get them identified, but someone at least identified the genus of this one for me as Laccaria:

As well as adding my own observations I find it interesting to explore observations from all different corners of the world, and to see if I can identify anything. (Usually only garden plants.)

Fungus Foray

After a training session on using the iNaturalist app, and particularly the Fungimap Australia project, lots of keen folk went in search of fungi:

From the teeny-tiny on the ground:

To the enormous up a gum tree:

Fungus growing on live trees:

Fungus growing on dead trees:

And even fungus that grows on animal dung!

It was a fun day among the fungi.

Forest of Fungi

Everything is wet at Lal Lal. There is water running across the block for the second time in ten years. The trees are green, and full of birds searching the bark for insects.

Everywhere you look there are fungi. Here's just some of them:

Pushing up through a patch of moss.

A collection of tiny umbrellas.

Pushing soil and leaf-litter aside.(Russula sp?)

A pretty golden one.

The remains of a coral fungus (Ramaria sp?).

Shaggy Fungus

As I was heading off to work this morning, I noticed this fungus emerging from a nature strip. This one was about 20cm tall, and there were a couple of smaller ones about 3 metres away, presumably part of the same organism.

It's not in my book of Australian fungi, but the internet tells me it is probably an introduced species, Shaggy Mane (Coprinus comatus). Even though it's not a native, it appeared on an Australian stamp in 1981.

Mother's Day

Before visiting my mother, I spent some time at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens (1 hour and 40 minutes, according to my son who was waiting in the car). There are some amazing trees in the gardens, but not many people on this cold and showery day. Quite a few of the trees are listed on the National Trust's register of significant trees.

Bunya pine (Araucaria bidwillii)

The trunk looks like a giant elephant's foot.

Tasmanian blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus)

Looks small in the photo but is a giant tree.

Black tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica)

Beautiful autumn colour. This one was planted by the US Marine Corps to mark the time they spent in Ballarat in 1943.

Giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum)

Part of the garden's "Sequoiadendron Avenue" planted between 1863 and 1874. It is difficult to photograph such huge trees.

Echeveria x imbricata making a colourful garden bed:

The fernery would be lovely on a hot day:

A tiny orange fungus, possibly Jafneadelphus ferrugineus:

My third botanic garden in eight days!

Dealing With Frustration

A frustrating day, so here's a photo from Lal Lal on Sunday - a fungus of some type coming up no matter what is in its way.