The last two times we have been up the mountain it has been cold and wintery – perfect weather for a nice big fire. Growth has slowed down significantly and the insects are hibernating. It is beautiful.

We have been a bit overwhelmed about what to do with all the clear space and it doesn’t feel like we are making any progress. Mum came up with us in June, which was great. She is an old hand at beating the weeds and gave us some advice on what to do next. She suggested that we start laying down mulch and building some garden beds to work with – so that is what we did.

It is always fun to see what the seasons bring and winter is definitely citrus season. We have a mandarin tree with fruit most of which we lost to the neighbour’s cows, sadly. There are wild bush lemons and a sour old orange tree at the kitchen with ripe fruit – we took a bucket of the lemons to make some lemon curd! The loquats were also starting to ripen and the mulberry trees were budding. The black sapote had lots of fruit on it but they were still green. We picked a couple to see if they will ripen off the tree.

Mackellar Range May 2010

Mackellar Range June 2010