Death stalks the garden in a penguin tee

The first kill is the hardest. It gets easier after that. Since my last filing from the Baxter backyard the itchy cow tree has been terminated with extreme prejudice.

When we raised our flag at Castle Baxter and surveyed the traditional quarter-acre block, we counted a heck of a lot of trees – 57, including the various self-sprouted saplings.

My favourite grew in a corner of the lawn and attracted gaudy jewel bugs, so that before it flowered we knew it was some kind of hibiscus. The flowers when they came, in their hundreds, were pretty pink pinwheels, exquisite in their delicacy and I was utterly smitten.

Then began the nightmare.

Those flowers turned into huge pods, each one filled with thousands of tiny glass-like fibres which laid a cunning carpet of agony across the lawn, over the deck and – on the lightest of breezes – into the house.

It had to go. 

The little charmer was a Norfolk Island hibiscus (Lagunaria patersonia) and came down over the winter in a delicate operation carried out by a crack troop of arborists.

Its departure only made it easier to pick out the next targets for destruction. Death stalks the garden in a penguin tee. It’s a Girl Reporter thing.

Our backyard was planted many years ago and the trees have grown far taller than originally intended. Palm fronds are disappearing into foliage and all we really get to see of some of them from ground level is a lot of tree trunks which, in a certain light, resemble prison bars.

They no longer effectively screen the yard from the neighbours and one of them produces gorgeous bronze and gold bottlebrushes. We only see these flowers when they’re spent and fallen on the earth.

There will be a reckoning, but arborcide is a complex and expensive business so, for now, I am content to leave my dark plans fomenting yet a while.

The killing season continued with a war on weeds. Cat’s claw creeper was running rampant along our fenceline and all over a Cadaghi tree beside the back gate. As an aside, the Cadaghi (Corymbia torelliana) is also a weed in south east Queensland but one pest at a time.

While the Cadaghi is a local weed, cat’s claw creeper (Dolichandra (Macfadyena) unguis-cati) is a Weed of National Significance. It gets its common name from its three-clawed leaves which hook into whatever happens to be passing.

It was popular once in Queensland gardens but in these more enlightened times we know that it can quickly overwhelm native habitats, destroying everything in its path.

Nothing like a good poisoning to make a Girl Reporter feel like a real gardener. The job was so vast I called for my lovely assistant and accomplice the current Mr Baxter and together we went shopping for a battery-operated backpack-mounted high-powered killing machine.

My cunning plan worked and without delay Mr B was in the garden with his new toy, spraying the recommended Glyphosate at the recommended rate (Adventures passim) on all the cat’s claw – a handsome horticultural Clyde to my Bonnie.

It will take a couple of years to control it, and cat’s claw is just one of the many weeds which have taken over that side of the garden – our Fruit Alley in the making. Mr B will have plenty of opportunity to hone his killing skills.

Seriously, the grim reaper thing has been getting me down. In addition to our pre-meditated work, it seemed everything I planted was destined to die. While we mustn’t discount my own incompetence, the itchy tree’s departure also had a role to play.

An early burst of warm weather came riding in on a dry westerly just as the Salad Bowl had lost its afternoon shade. If you want an efficient killing machine a death ray from the heart of the sun is hard to beat.

All I could see for weeks when I stepped outside were the bleak outlines of the neighbour’s house and the shrivelled remains of my spring greens and summer colour.

Adding to my growing conviction that I’m no Lady Gardener, the removal of the tree had exposed the dry dustbowl of our lawn in all its inadequacies. For a week or two I was distinctly deterred. I took to hiding down the back of the yard, scooping up leaves under the old granddaddy fig.

In the first two weeks of October Mr B and I took a well-earned rest from our Daily Toil to literally watch grass grow. He ploughed and I scattered a box of Kikuyu seed and this time our timing was perfect. The rains came and within a day a pale green fuzz appeared across the muddy ground, growing more distinct almost by the hour.

It was an enormous boost to your Gardening Girl Reporter’s confidence, but there was more to come. When the new lawn was strong enough to take my trampling, I ventured out to find something wonderful had happened.

There in the beds among the fallen unexpectedly peeped the green shoots of recovery. Even the crotons, which had almost unanimously been reduced to dry sticks, were sprouting new leaves.

Reader, the garden is not the riot of colour I envisaged but for the first time in a while I feel that one day it might be. Yes, Death wears a penguin tee but Life can elude both my blunder and intent.

And that’s a comforting thought to take in to another Queensland summer. Happy gardening!

© Maria Spackman 2017

Further reading:

Cat’s claw creeper – everything you need to know about this nasty weed.

Cadaghi – a native of the north Queensland rainforest but a pest in sub-tropical regions, like ours.

Want more Baxter? Try some of my previous Adventures in Gardening