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Loofah: vegetable and scrubber in one

Stephen Carlin

This Summer I tried growing loofahs for the first time. I sowed a few seeds in with the green beans and cucumbers thinking that they could share the fence and trellis, and it turned out to be a good strategy. The loofah is a rampant vine, but it is slow to get going in early Summer, so my beans and cucumbers were finished before the loofahs took over. By Autumn my few plants had spread way beyond their bed, and right along the two fences of the vegetable patch available to…

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Our Christmas tree, the brown kurrajong.

Stephen Carlin

Ever since we first started coming North for Christmas I have been struck by these trees with their masses of white flowers. They are common along roadways in the Northern Rivers. They are the local Christmas tree, and almost look like they have taken a heavy fall of snow. Eventually I found out that the tree has the unpromising name of brown kurrajong. The botanical name is Brachychiton populneus. We are more familiar with Brachychitons here as the very showy flame trees, which lose all their leaves and are covered in red flowers,…

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