AT PATHO

The tour might take some time. It will be interesting and different. Let’s go.

Firstly, I live in rural Australia facing a lagoon. This is the view out front. My farm is an island, surrounded on all side by water. But don’t be fooled, it can be very dry. For the last two years we’ve only had a total of 225 mm per year (about 8.9 inches).This makes gardening here a challenge.

My favorite tree (?) is here, right out front of my house. It’s a date palm, planted well before I moved here. The house is over 100 years old, (I’ll get to it later), so the palm could be old too. Maybe someone just threw out the trash and it grew? Date palms need a male and a female before they set dates. There are others on the creek, down the track. I haven’t been lucky enough to get a date, in the thirty years I’ve been here.

Positives about date palms : they give shade, look exotic, birds live in them, their fronds burn well because of all that palm oil.

Negatives: they drop palm fronds making a mess, when you set them alight they’re amazing, the fire department needs to bring the truck to extinguish the blaze. (I wonder who did that?)

Palm tree – a blight on the native landscape or beautiful? Comments welcome.