Mock Orange

We have been busy picking mock orange blossom this last week or so. It comes with a bit of a rush in late spring and there's plenty of it this year, certainly the good rains have helped. It's a Philadelphus, the variety we have is coronarius, a plant from Southern Europe. It's a deciduous shrub which grows to about 10 feet high and eight wide over time with multiple stems coming from the base which spread and can be divided off in winter. The flowers are profuse and magnificently scented citrus like, hence the common name mock orange.

It's the last of the spring blossom for us, although there's still some Hungarian lilac to be picked as well. My grandmother Nanna Wilson had a mock orange in her garden in Ashburton and when we moved to Emerald we took a plant from that parent. As it is in demand by our florist customers we have grown more plants over the years and now have quite a lot, sometimes too many to pick it all if the weather is hot and it comes out all at once. The great thing about it is that it thrives in dry conditions of summer so needs no watering but it benefits by cold winters which we do have in the Dandenongs. It's a good keeper in water and is pleasant to pick. It's a 'single' flower as opposed to the 'doubles' of many other Philadelphus varieties which in our experience do not keep well as a cut flower.

It was a ripper dogwood season, we picked large amounts of Cornus florida through October. All in all spring has been grand, despite working in the rain and cold, which has no doubt helped the spring blossom. We will shortly move on to picking beech foliage, it's a little slow to firm up due to the lack of warm weather. Sadly my beech trees at home have been decimated by crimson rosellas who have taken to eating the new leaves. They've had a bit of a chew at the farm too. Not much we can do about it, except watch, and accept the financial wack as one of those things. I just hope it doesn't get worse into the future. Birds are very good at adapting and utilizing new introduced food sources. The parents teach their young where the food is and they have a bit of a yearly movement pattern following the available food. The king parrots are good at turning up just when the tomatoes are full. They'll eat them green before we can get one ripe and strip our bushes in a few hours.

As much as I love birds I am not fond of king parrots or rosellas, they are way too destructive. But the garden abounds with so many birds lately, especially thornbills, spinebills, whipbirds and fantails and some visiting jacky winters. Magpies, butcherbirds, ravens, and currawongs too, and bronze winged pigeons and the usual blackbirds and doves and Indian mynahs. And of course cockatoos and corellas and the odd eagle soaring above like the grand overseer. Jod was happy the other day, he saw a spotted quail thrush at the farm. Probably all this rain has been great for the birds to breed. It's amazing really, these creatures are hell bent on raising young, instinctively, a life's mission, and each building that species' type of nest in a tree or shrub or hollow, or underground say for the spotted pardalote, and following the code of nature as set for them. And in a matter of weeks from egg hatching they can fly and feed. Miraculous. And some of these creatures can fly huge distances in migration, even halfway round the world. I watched a thornbill bathing in a puddle in a tarp I had placed over some wood to keep it dry, not ten feet from where I stood and unconcerned by me. Such a sight would brighten anyone's day.