… amongst other things
The hills are swathed with wattle, and the roadside crowded with the white of mint bush and ti tree flowers and the yellow of wattle and pea flowers. Today’s stroll is a bit hilly, curving past cleared land, and tracks stumble off into rainforesty gullies at the foot of the mountain. The school bus laps me twice, once for high school, once for primary school. There are tempting side-tracks up into the forest and down to the river, but this project has Rules, so I stay on the road, noting options for another day. It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t spotted an orchid yet, and lo! There are the traces of a bearded orchid in a stump, its flowering long past. Just over the road a flurry of bird call, and a flash of red. Three red-tailed black cockatoos feasting in the casuarinas, unperturbed by my presence, but unwilling to pose. The best I could catch was a blur of red. They are doubly welcome: the black cocky is my avatar, and they are supposed to presage rain. Two tree ferns stand by the road, unmolested by clearing and nearby houses. Groves of pink trigger plants straggle up the verge of the road into the bush, a brighter pink than those I saw the other day, despite the dust.
Today’s walk ends in bitumen.
A pond dotted with wattle balls
Dust from the school bus
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- Beard orchid flowering, Potato Point
Has Andy Goldsworthy been here?
And a wombat here?
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snippetsandsnaps 
Once I am home I shall have to work my way along the Riverside Road now that you have taken me along it. I seem to be too busy to actually manage to read any blogs at the moment, but I do want to cherish these. I am sure there will be short dark days ahead…
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Your avatar is cute 🙂 Doing a rain dance for you, Meg. None needed here. It’s bouncing 🙂
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A beautiful walk even if it ended in bitumen Meg. Chuckling at the reference to Andy Goldsworthy 🙂
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Bitumen on this road is usually erratic and short: it’s only the second bit, and usually near houses. Should be more dirt soon.
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The tree ferns look a bit out of place. I’d like to see one of those orchids in fresh bloom, lovely.You know of Andy Goldsworthy?
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It’s the only orchid I’ve ever spotted by myself – crouched down to look at something else and there it was, a few springs ago near home.
My art colleague at work introduced me to Andy Goldsworthy when he knew I liked playing around in the natural world, and another friend lent me a DVD about his work. I remember his meticulous piling of stones in the face of incursions from the sea. I know barbed wire isn’t a medium he’d use, but the grass interwoven gave it an assimilated look!
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Not true Meg, I remember that you spotted about half of our combined haul at the Hunter Region Botanical Gardens a few years back.
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Yes, but they were familiar species, as was the greenhood near Barraba, although it was different from the ones at home.
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The tree ferns aren’t out of place Gilly. The road is!
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