WoodenSpoon

The story goes that a scientist from overseas was visiting the Museum in Sydney. He crossed the street to Hyde Park and stood under a Plane tree (below).

The Plane tree (Platanus orientalis) on which the first Australian record of the Sycamore Lace Bug was made

He examined a leaf…

Underside of a Plane tree leaf in Hyde Park, Sydney

… and remarked, “I see you have the Sycamore Lace Bug“.

Three adult Sycamore Lace Bugs, surrounded by cast off skins from juvenile moults

This was the first record of an unwelcome invasive pest that is currently spreading inland from Orange to Bathurst and will eventually extend as far as Canberra and Melbourne.

The Plane Tree is a valued urban tree that grows vigorously in harsh environments such as streets and paved carparks, providing dense shade in the summer.

One hypothesis that seeks to explain its rapid spread is that since the Plane Tree is often planted along roadsides, tall vehicles can break off branches and carry them from city to city, where they are likely to brush against other Plane Trees.

Recently I learnt that one could purchase steel-capped gumboots. Now it seems safety-conciousness has also emerged in the fashion end of the footwear market.

Steel capped KT26 shoes. Style and safety entwined in a perfect package

There’s something about the big banana. To me, when the only other big things in Australia were North of the Border(®™), it was always a sign that we were really On Holiday. With the advent of the digital camera, it is now possible mandatory to take a snap as one drives past. I have some others in teh archive, taken before I realised I had created yet another int3rn3t tr4diti0n. I’ll dig em out, promise.

Composition, focus, glare. None of these matter. The big banana is the money shot.

The obligatory driving-past-the-big-banana shot

This noisy miner didn’t make it to Christmas.

A noisy miner, exhausted after a long squawk, makes a festive feast for various arthropods

Since I started my Apprenticeship (farm studies, majoring in applied ecology and construction jobs of all descriptions) I’ve begun to feel a strange compulsion, nearly as strong as the attraction of female flesh that beset me at adolescence. And like puberty, it has been a lonely period of self-doubt, shame and finally acceptance and rejoicing. Now I feel confident enough to come out and say that I have become a connoisseur of fences. I find it hard to keep my attaention on the road as I drive through the country admiring the firm, perky lines of a fresh young fence, the timber not yet bleached to grey by the sun, wire taut as a violin string; or a stately old hand-made post and rail bulwark possibly 100 years old, lopsided in places but still holding strong, defiantly resisting the ravages of tiem and termite.

Like cars, once you get your eye in, the variety of styles and designs begs to be catalogued, so here is the first of perhaps more than a few extracts from my new but growing collection of fence photos.

In this one, a round gatepost is stayed against the strain of the wire fence by a horizontal beam and a tensioned diagonal wire. Notice how grooves have been cut in the posts by chainsaw to guide and hold the wire. It is perhaps a little overengineered but that is a hallmark of the hand of Simon Stenhouse.

A nice round post strainer assembly, Deua river, downstream of Araluen NSW