SIGHTS OF SPRING

Walking in the local streets and lanes is full of interest as Spring gets plants growing!

The lushness of beauty of different types of grass or tree are sheer pleasure to the eye.  Even weeds, like the tall plantain with bobbing flower heads, or the circular flat, lobe-leaved  dandelion bring a pause to one’s step, to take in the sight.

Mulberry trees are producing their fruit now, and it’s a special treat to find suitably ripe ruby red fruit to sample, as one wanders over hill and dale, in Bondi.

Another fruit – my favourite – is ripening in our laneway garden….the lantern fruit.  So aptly named, given the little paper-thin lantern that develops slowly, and one by one (not as a ‘crop’); containing a shiny golden round fruit, the size of a large pea, with striking flavours of both sweet and sour. Speaking of peas, the sugarsnap is such a handy veg….best eaten straight from the plant, nice and crunchy.

The most unusual thing I’ve seen lately is the small nodules on the roots of clover.  I’ve heard about legumes being ‘nitrogen fixers’, enriching the soil, and these nodules are the mechanisms for that capture.  And with rotational cropping, we know that leafy plants are best planted in a bed that previously grew legumes, since a growing leaf needs nitrogen!

Enjoy the visual delights around you on your Spring walks….dodging the raindrops!

Kit