An explosion of colour ...

The first two months of spring have been a mixed bag in terms of weather. Some days have been incredibly wet and wild, others have been quite balmy and just recently we have even had a couple of hot days (at least by Tasmanian standards). The views over the Huon river are ever changing in the springtime, but probably one of the enduring memories of this particular spring will be the vibrant rainbows that have regularly coloured the sky. It seems that favourable cloud patterns, the relatively low hanging sun and perfect latitudinal position make the Huon valley a great place to view rainbows. In fact, a feature this year has been the number of double rainbows on show. 

A double rainbow

Notice that the fainter secondary rainbow is larger than the primary one and has the colours reversed - red is inside and violet is outside! I had never noticed this phenomenon before. The dimmer area in between the two arcs is known as Alexander’s Dark Band, named after the Greek philosopher who wrote about it 1800 years ago. Just goes to show that the ancient Greeks seemed to know an awful lot of stuff. I have yet to see a tertiary or a quaternary rainbow but I live in hope. 

On the non-rainy days when there are no rainbows to amuse and delight, the river invariable provides some moments of outrageous beauty. 

No wind, no sails

I have remarked before on the importance of micro climate. It turns out that our soil is very heavy clay which once warmed retains the heat effectively, but when cold takes a fair while to warm up. So it was that when I had to leave Franklin for about two and half weeks in October to return to Brisbane it seemed as though spring was still a way off. Sure we had had the beauty of the pink blossom of the early ornamental plums (prunus nigra), the crab apple (malus floribunda) in full bloom and a great showing by our daffodils, but many of our trees were still sticks and the rhododendrons and azaleas were still only showing buds. But that all changed while I was away. When I returned the irises were in full flight, the rhododendrons and azaleas were in bloom and some of our show trees had their new coating of effervescent spring colour.

Irises

Rhododendron `Pink Pearl'

The golden elm in spring dress (the effect is lost on Pepper)

The good weather has allowed us to work longer hours and make solid progress on a number of major projects. The first project we finished was to fence in and plant our 32nd wedding anniversary olive grove. After waiting weeks for the water to disappear from the fence post holes (see the earlier post of 27 Sep 2022, "The green shoots ..." for the back story)  we finally got underway and in no time at all we had the poles fixed, a gate hung, a fence finished and 15 olive trees all planted.

The fence under construction

Buoyed by the success we pushed on and laid the foundations for a brand new bed in the garden which we have earmarked as the Japanese garden. It will be some time before it is ready for planting but we already have a number of Japanese maples collected and awaiting transplant. We then got started on redoing the front fence to keep out the local fauna, especially rabbits. This was a slightly different fencing task as we had to use timber cross pieces between the posts to fit in with an existing fence that we had a contractor put in about a year ago. This proved a little tricky as getting the geometry of the cuts right was a little challenging and the philotheca bush right in the construction zone was absolutely covered with bees! Anyway, we prevailed with only a minor amount of marital disharmony and a few bruised heads from crawling about in confined spaces. 

Overall it has been a very busy couple of weeks, with both of us feeling completely exhausted by the time we call time for the day.  It is incredibly satisfying, however, to see both the shape of the garden changing and also to be able to remove some of the wire cages protecting our shrubs because of the improved fencing. 

A happy fencer

In the main it seems as though life in the country is suiting with us quite well ..