Thursday 21 June 2012

I've been for a walk

Actually I have been for several short walks, but mostly just to the corner of our street and back.  However before my sister went home on Tuesday we went for a short walk in the Botanic Gardens - and down some stairs with no handrails, which I hadn't intended.  All was safe though.

 The waterfall is looking very lush at present - obviously the pump problems have been sorted, it used to keep getting silted up.
This is a sad story, and the tree was removed from the Gardens yesterday.  A horrible new plant disease/pest has arrived in Mackay - Orange Rust.  It is highly contagious, effects the growing tips of affected trees to the extent that the tree will eventually die.  The rust affects plants in the Myrtacaea (can't spell it) family - nearly a thousand species.  The rust was first discovered in NSW about three years ago and lots of the eucalypt forests were being destroyed.  The only way to treat is to spray weekly with quite toxic chemicals and that won't work in the wild anyway.  I have a Backhousia and some grevilleas as well as lillypillies in our garden at home which we are checking closely, we will be devastated if we find it here.  I suppose nature will eventually work out which are the strongest plants and find a way of overcoming the rust, but that will take a long time.  I think the rust came from Argentina, but has now been found all along the Eastern seaboard of Australia.
On a more cheerful note, I am still improving, though I have had to spend quite a bit of time lying on my back with my feet up higher than my heart because I had quite sever bruising all down my leg.  All you can do then is read, so I have been reading to my heart's content with no guilty feelings. Unfortunately for that excuse, the bruising has almost gone!  Cheers

5 comments:

  1. Hadnt heard of that nasty, I hope we dont get it but it sounds absolutely devastating. Glad the walk was successful and I like the idea of lying in bed and reading to my hearts content, not going to happen though. My toe is still giving me traumas, nothing seems to work. So now John and I are trying a few things to see what happens then, it cant make it any worse.
    Off to Melbourne on Sat morning and then the Gold Coast friends 70th and then possibly Rainbow Beach I just hope I can walk.

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  2. Glad you are able to enjoy your walks again.

    That sounds like an awful disease. I do hope that something can be done about it. I remember the devastating effect that Dutch Elm disease had on our elm trees in the late 1960s.

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  3. Glad to hear that your new knee is a success and that you are improving.
    That disease calls to mind Dutch Elm Disease which we had here in the UK some years ago and which robbed us of our beautiful elms.

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  4. Lovely to hear you are out and about a bit Robin, and hope the bruising eases soon, although I seem to think the reading with leg up might not be too hard to take..........LOL

    Sorry to hear about yet another 'imported' problem we have to deal with. Perhaps in our drier area it won't flourish, but it seems you will have a problem for some time to come yet. Let's hope they don't bring in something to get rid of that ends up becoming a pest, a la cane toad!!!

    Take it easy, and happy reading.

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  5. oh i hope you don't find anything on your trees ;(
    glad you've taken to your new knee, just one bend at a time! ;)

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