Grafton Jacarandas

A couple weekends ago we decided to take a break and take a weekend trip. Seeing photos of the jacarandas blooming in Pretoria, South Africa was a good reminder it was probably about jacaranda season in the jacaranda capital of northern NSW: Grafton.

It was good to get out of town, and it was a beautiful drive.
The route we took takes you through Nymboida, which is the home of
Russell Crowe's Museum of Interesting Things. (We haven't been.)

Grafton is an old river port on the Clarence River just about three/three and a half hours drive from here. We've passed through a couple of times in the past and have wanted to come back to town when the jacarandas are blooming since we first visited about a year and a half ago. We've seen jacarandas drives to the coast in the past and knew we wouldn't be disappointed.

Jacaranda street tree

That ultraviolet violet.

One thing I hadn't forgotten about our previous visit to Grafton was an enormous fig tree tucked away on a side street near the river I'd encountered on an afternoon walk. What I hadn't realised in the slightest was that there are streets lined with enormous fig trees, my route last time just hadn't taken me by any of them.

Green tunnel

The jacarandas were amazing and all, but the sheer size
of the figs was doubly impressive. We don't get trees like this in Uralla!

It's a great time of year for blossoms in general in Grafton and we saw so many flowers. And it definitely felt like summer here, after morning showers the air was humid and when the sun came out it was hot—about 30 degrees C or so (86F). Grafton is a humid subtropical climate -- the drive took us first through temperate rainforest and then sugarcane fields as we approached the river valley.

Sitting ducks in a park

Fallen yellow trumpet blossoms

Golden carpet

White jacaranda

We missed the annual Jacaranda Festival by about one week. Grafton has the festival since 1935, apparently one of the longest flower festivals in Australia. Grafton also has some Big Trees. According to the National Registry of Big Trees, the largest jacaranda tree is in Grafton, with a couple other trees making the list including one of those fig trees, a Brazilian Fire Tree and a Australian Teak. (Can't believe I didn't know about the National Registry of Big Trees before?!)

We had a pleasant half day in Grafton including lunch and ice cream cones at an 50s American-style diner to wait out some rain. It was beginning to heat up after our walk around town admiring the flowers, so we took that as our cue to head to the coast. Next up: photos from our trip to Minnie Water!

Garden Works

It's been a busy spring (and now almost summer) here in Uralla! Between work and house and garden, keeping up the Maydwell business and having American guests, it seems there's always something else to do and I'm pretty behind on my blogging. This weekend I'm hoping to post the next segment of Hokkaido photos and photos from a two weekends ago trip to Grafton and the coast, but first, a bit of housekeeping!

It was a wet spring which means for the first time here we've had to deal with mosquitos in any quantities and there are multitudes of flies. Our wet spell seems to have come to an end, however, as it's been two weeks since we've had any precipitation and only three days with rain so far this month. The green was nice while it lasted but the grass is turning brown again. Storms are forecast for tonight and tomorrow, which would be very welcome indeed—our water tank emptied out this week and it'd be nice to have a break from watering the seedlings.

Black cat, neighbor's fence by the enormous fig tree, not yet
fully leafed out in mid-October when this photo was taken.

Black cockatoos in the neighbor's fig tree (late October)

Some of the plants we've been planting.

It's been quite the adventure starting an Australian garden, first of all to have so many plants we've never heard of before we came here (banksia, callistemons, leptospermum, philotheca, crowea, etc etc etc..) and to live in a climate to be able to grow plants we never considered before (most notably figs and mandarin oranges). Water has also been a challenge and we have gravitated toward natives and other plants which can withstand dry spells. Because of our “cold” winters, landscape plants have to be both frost-hardy and drought-resistant, which can be a bit difficult when looking at Australian gardening books and magazines. Reid has done a great job putting irrigation over most of the garden beds so we can efficiently water our vegie patch throughout the summer, which will be most convenient. So far, our vegie garden is coming along pretty well!

Back yard garden.

 Along the back fence.

With the row covers off (and a heap of radishes)

Carrots, beets, turnips, beans, peas. Despite this being our first year garden,
we have volunteer tomatoes!

Quinoa along the side fence, between strawberries and amaranth

Our front fruit trees are doing well, considering they were just sticks a few months ago.
It's still been cool enough we haven't switched all the plastic in the sunroom to screens.

Slowly filling in the yard from grass to other plants.
(Someday, we're going to have a little patio between the trees..)

Today's harvest is radishes!