A daily Affirmation
A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!
"Blue Gums and Black Wattle Trees" Acrylic on Bockingford 300gsm watercolour paper - Maree©
In this painting I experimented with acrylics on a good, thick Bockingford watercolour paper and decided I just LOVE how the acrylics feel on the paper. It's amazing! I think I'm falling more and more in love with this versatile medium.
These trees are on our smallholding and although we are trying to get rid of all the Black Wattles, they spring up faster than you try to eradicate them. The problem is that they produce a huge amount of seeds, which can grow in the most arid and infertile of soils. Even worse, these seeds can live up to a 90 years. And after a first clean-up, even though we have removed hundreds of trees, millions of young seedlings appear. It's basically fighting a losing battle. These evergreen trees were originally imported from Australia for our tanning industry.
Now the touchy subject: chemicals. One simply cannot get rid of Black Wattles unless you use a good herbicide. Cutting a black wattle and hoping it will die, is wishful thinking. We do not use any chemicals at all, with the result that we have an on-going battle, but which provides employment opportunities as we hire several casual workers every year to do another clean-up.
The seed pods on one branch of a Black Wattle tree
Growing habit of the Black Wattle
The flowers of the Black Wattle also causes great outbreaks of hay fever among hay fever sufferers during spring.
Interesting post! Followed your link from your Feb. 12, 2010 post and glad I did.... always nice to learn something new!
ReplyDeleteThose non-native species can be such a nuisance.... we have some introduced species here too that cause all kinds of problems.
My apologies that I missed your comment Teresa! Didn't get an advice from Blogger. Glad to see you here and thanks for visit
DeleteAnother example of mans medaling in natures business, non-native species usually mean trouble
ReplyDeleteYea, the aliens certainly are a problem Desiree. Our blue gum trees were also introduced from Australia many, many years ago and are recognised as semi-indigenous, but they are very thirsty, and spell trouble for our ground water system.
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