Glider eating my roses...
Above and below-- Brush Tailed possums in the trees at the roof edge of the house. They are slightly larger than a house cat. Also- no relation to the American Opossums.
King Parrot saying hello while I was working under the birch tree in the front garden.
After a few hours of both of us working. There is still a great deal to go, but a strong start.
One of the Native Fern Trees being freed from Cape Ivy. This is a Rough Bark Fern Tree.
Apple tree (foreground), Peach Tree (Midground, dark trunk) and Fern Trees.
Below: Serious corm removal of Montbretia. This is a serious bush invader, classified as a Noxious Weed. Each plant can bear a string of corms numbering 14 or more. Each corm is capable of producing another plant. You can see, also, where not only does it literally choke out the soil, but also will infest itself under trees and rot them. The blue bucket was completely full from clearing a square meter.
Japanese Honeysuckle wrapping around a sapling trunk.
A Laurel on the right foreground (shiny oval leaves) and other locations, as it is a spreading plant, and even more Cape Ivy.
This is down on Terrace level 4, and some of the wonderful native ferns. There are some of the invasives here, but the goal is to stop them before they choke out the natives, as has happened on the other levels.
The below photos are entering the Back Garden from the steps and moving across Terrace 1, aka: Cottage Garden Terrace. These are all pre-clean-up. The plan for here is to stop the further spread downhill of the invasives by removal, replanting with non-invasive Cottage Garden plants such as roses, herbs, veggies, fruit trees and various species of Native Plants. There has been evidence of Bandicoot activity, so we are creating various habitat areas for them to arrange as they please. (Such as leaving old, hollowed stumps, or hollowing them myself to leave for shelters and such). Possums of various species also frequent here as well as gliders and quolls, as well as many bird species. In the clean-up process, natives are being left, cleared around, and habitats preserved.
And, yes, for those interested, I will be identifying plants.
The last photo is looking down the "steps" to the second Terrace.
From these photos one can see some of the dormant fruit trees, covered with Cape Ivy. Also various ferns, and the green, leathery grass clumps are called "Onion Grass", or Agapanthus. These are hellatious to remove and considered a bush invader. They have dense clumping roots, which I will show later, and those roots and it's spreading capabilities, displace all other vegitation.
