Sounds in the Garden

Have you ever stopped to listen to your garden? Take yourselves outside, sit somewhere comfortable, close your eyes and concentrate on what you can hear. There may be the sounds of lawn mowers , traffic or voices, but there will be all sorts of other interesting noises as well. I have made a list to help you get started, but your garden may have it own special sounds. Just for fun, there are some noise-making activities you can try too.

Can you hear these?

bird calls - How many different bird calls are there? Can you guess what kinds of birds they are?

insects - Can you tell the sound of bees from the noise made by other insects? Are there any cicadas? flies? crickets? mosquitoes?

children playing - Can you tell what games they’re playing - cricket? football? ping pong? basketball?

wind - Do the leaves of different trees make different sounds in the wind? Can you hear branches creaking, wind chimes, whistling?

water - Can you hear sprinklers? water falling? taps dripping?

houses expanding/contracting - Does your house creak, crack or groan?

Pick a petunia flower (ask first!). Carefully draw out the green pistil from the centre of the flower. With a bit of practice, you can learn to blow the flower like a trumpet.

Pick a Mirror Bush (Coprosma) leaf. Fold the leaf in half lengthways, shiny sides in. Hold the folded leaf with one hand at the stalk end and the other hand at the non-stalk end. Blow into the non-stalk end while stretching the leaf towards the stalk end and you can make music.

Plant ornamental gourds and let the gourds dry out completely to form a hard shell. When you shake the gourd, you can hear the seeds rattle inside. This is sometimes called a calabash.

Hold a gum leaf lengthways between your two thumbs, folding your fingers loosely. Put your mouth up to your thumbs and blow through them and past the gum leaf "reed". With practice you can learn to play a tune.

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Do you like movies? Usually it's pretty easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys in a movie, but what about it the garden? Quite often, creatures that have a bad reputation are great helpers in the garden, while others that we think are harmless are really villains that do loads of damage. Good gardeners know which of the creatures in the garden are on their side - and you can too.

When you see "ped" in a word it generally means something to do with feet e.g. "pedal" .

Two creatures from the garden also have "ped" in their names - the centipede whose name means having 100 feet, and the millipede whose name means having 1000 feet. Neither of these descriptions are accurate but both these creatures certainly have lots of legs!!

Both of these creatures are Arthropods and have segmented bodies. Centipedes are usually larger. Their bodies are flattened and there is one pair of legs on each segment. The first pair of legs contain poisonous nippers.

Millipedes are round like a cylinder. They have many more segments and each segment has two pairs of legs. They have no poisonous parts and curl up into a neat circle when they want to protect themselves.

I'm sure you are thinking that millipedes sound much nicer and you can certainly pick them up without worrying that they will hurt you, but they are villains when it comes to your plants. They attack plants (they especially love orchids) and can cause damage.

Centipedes however help us by catching and eating other insects and pests that destroy plants. Some centipedes will bite you, so wear your gardening gloves and treat your little mates with respect!

(1) If a centipede has 22 segments, how many legs does it have?

(2) If a millipede has 53 segments, how many legs does it have?

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Soil Texture

Do you like making mud pies? It’s good fun to squelch around in mud, but did you know that you can find out some very important information about your soil by doing just that! We are often told that plants release oxygen into the air, but plants also use oxygen to live and grow. Plant roots get oxygen from the little air spaces called pores that are in the soil. Soils that have large pores allow water and air to pass through easily, while small pores make it difficult for water and air to get to the roots of the plants. The size of the pores is partly determined by the size of the soil particles. This is called the soil texture. So next time you’re caught messing around in mud, you can say, "But Mum, I’m doing a soil texture test!"

You will need: a handful of soil, water, a tape measure or ruler.

1. Get a handful of soil from your garden.

2. Wet the soil gradually and work it in your hand until it forms a ball.

3. Keep working the ball of soil in your hand until it doesn’t change any more.

4. Now slowly squeeze the soil out between your thumb and your forefinger to form a ribbon and watch carefully what happens.

If the soil won’t form any sort of ribbon at all and is very hard to form into ball, then the soil texture is SANDY. Grains of sand will stick to your fingers.

If you can make a ribbon about 2.5cm long before it breaks off, and the ball of mud feels spongy but you can’t feel any sand grains, then you can describe your soil as LOAM.

If the ball of mud feels like plasticine and is very smooth and you can make a long ribbon of 5cm or more, then it is a CLAY soil.

There are many divisions in between, but there are important things to know about these main soil types.

SANDY soil has large grains and large pores and drains easily, but it also dries out very fast. It also generally has very few nutrients. It needs frequent watering and fertilising.

CLAY soil has small particles and tiny pores and does not drain easily. It often forms a hard layer that water and oxygen cannot easily penetrate, but once it is wet, it stays moist for longer. It is often, but not always, quite high in nutrients. It needs thorough soaking in dry weather, but may need extra drainage in wet areas. Mulch helps to stop a hard crust forming.

LOAM is usually good for gardening.

Some plants like sandy soils and some do well in clay, but for most plants, ALL SOIL TYPES can be made better by adding lots of organic material e.g. compost, leaf mould, straw and animal manures, because it adds nutrients as well as allowing water and air to move through the soil at a suitable rate.

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Butterfly Watching

When my daughter was four years old we were walking down a busy Melbourne street when she insisted on stopping to pick up a butterfly from the pavement. She put it on the front of her little white dress and it clung there all day. It gave the shop assistant in Myer quite a start when she commented on Julia's "pretty brooch" which promptly opened and closed its wings! All the way home in the car, it stayed perched on Julia's dress. We even took a photo when we got home. Then Julia took her little friend out to the garden and placed it gently on a daisy. The butterfly unrolled her long feeding tube and drank the nectar gratefully. We all felt very happy that the butterfly could spend her last days among the flowers in our garden. What butterflies visit your place?

Butterfly Watching Hints

1. Hot, sunny days are the best for watching butterflies.

2. Butterflies particularly like plants that have brightly coloured flowers that are all tightly packed together. You might already have a Buddleia, Hebe, Verbena or Lantana in your garden. Watch to see who visits on a hot, sunny morning.

3. The vegie patch is another place to watch. If you are growing cabbage, cauliflower or broccoli, you are almost certain to see Cabbage White butterflies about. Their tiny eggs hatch into those green caterpillars that chew holes in the cabbage and broccoli leaves.

4. If you have an Oleander bush look at it very carefully. (Remember that all parts of this bush are poisonous.) If you are very lucky you will find a pupa of the shiniest gold or silver. It belongs to a Common Australian Crow butterfly which is blackish brown with white spots.

5. Julia's butterfly was an Australian Painted Lady. They particularly like daisies. When you look at this butterfly it seems to have only four legs, but of course, like all insects, it has six. Perhaps you can see two little front legs held up tightly against the body.

6. If you try to catch butterflies you will probably hurt them quite a lot. Just observe them quietly and you will find out a lot about them.

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Possum Spotting

Do you have possums in your garden? Have you ever watched to see what they eat and where they go? Possum spotting is fun, and you might be surprised to see what your possums have for dinner. If you don’t have any trees or shrubs in your garden, then perhaps an adult in your family might take you to a park one evening to see if you can spot a possum or two. There is an albino possum living in our street. It is completely white with pink eyes. That makes it very easy to spot - even without a torch!

What You Will Need: a good bright torch & plenty of patience

1. Many gardens around Australia are homes to possums or have possums passing through in the evening. You might hear them making their strange "KKKKKKKKrrrrrr" noise at night, or maybe you might see some scats (possum poo) on the ground. One thing possums love is apple sprinkled with cinnamon. Leave one out for a few nights in a row, and if they get eaten, you can be pretty sure your possum will come for its treat again - then you’ll be able to spot him/her.

2. Did you know that possums build nests in trees? They are like big birds’ nests. Some lazy possums prefer to live in the roofs of houses instead.

3. When you are possum spotting you must be very quiet. Go out into the garden just after dusk and find a place near where you think possums might be - and sit very, very quietly.

4. If you think you see a possum, shine your bright torch on it. The possum will sit very still in the torch light - it’s "playing possum" - pretending that it’s not really there at all!

5. See if you can tell if it’s a brushtail or a ringtail possum. Brushies have big ears and bushy tails; ringtails have small ears and a tail with a bare end which usually has a white tip on it.

6. If it's a female possum you might be lucky enough to see a baby on her back.

7. Don’t ever harm a possum. Even though they are sometimes noisy and messy, and sometimes they eat things we’d rather they didn’t - rose buds for example, we are very lucky to be able to share our gardens with such beautiful creatures.

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