Ghosts in my garden

Five or six years ago I cut down a grapefruit tree in my garden. This was a little sad because blackbirds often nested in it but we didn’t eat the fruit and it was in the way. The blackbirds seem to love citrus trees and now nest in my lemon and tangelo. Anyway, the bare ground underneath grassed over and you can’t see that the tree was ever there. The story isn’t lost though: every so often a small patch of fungi appear on the lawn. I like to think of them as my grapefruit tree ghost, reminding me that grapefruit tree roots are still down there.

Tawharanui Fungi

I spent the day yesterday at Tawharanui checking up on robins. There have been stoat sightings in the park of late and stoats eat robins (and any other birds they can get hold of). Beacause we know pretty accurately what robins are in the park they give a good indication of predation if we suddenly see a lot of them go missing. Although it was a glorious day I spent most of my time in deep gullies where the sun didn’t penetrate. Like walking into a chilly bin but with lots of fungi and lichens, hence the photos.