The Mist House | Author
The Mist House
Phone: +61 456 155 796
Reviews
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25.01.2022 Early morning on the Mountain (thanks, Amy, for the photo)
25.01.2022 This is a great plant for the garden - Bletilla striata, or the Chinese ground orchid. It grows alongside any other plant in the garden without the need for a specialised orchid mix. It multiplies freely and puts on a colourful show for weeks in late Spring and early Summer.
24.01.2022 Why enjoy this beautiful Mist House sunrise when theres painting to be done? So far the lounge, dining room, entry hall and study (well, almost the study) have been transformed from yucky custard yellow to a soft mushroom with antique white trim. The family room to go and I will have finished Stage 1. Stage 2 will include the hallway, laundry, bathroom, general toilet and our bedroom and ensuite. Stage 3 will finish the project with the other two bedrooms receiving overdue attention. The house has, indeed, good bones and is responding beautifully to previous neglect. Call me strange (many do!) but I simply love house painting and the rewards it brings. Its elementary: you put in and you get back!
23.01.2022 ...play of light and mist on the Mountain (thanks, Amy, for the photo)
23.01.2022 Fall on the Mountain (thanks, Amy, for the photos)
22.01.2022 1930s winter on the Mountain (Olinda)
21.01.2022 Good morning from The Mist House!
20.01.2022 Snow on the Mountain 2008 (Sassafras)
20.01.2022 Dan Tehans end-of-year report: Dan has had a tough year, including the poor preparation of his current portfolio project. In order to improve his performance he will need to read more in his content area and not be distracted by his rather juvenile class mates. I fear their influence will continue to hamper his already limited potential. Should his current shallow mastery continue I believe he may need to repeat the year, though this may not be possible should his colleagues also fail the upcoming May exams. (Grade: E-)
20.01.2022 Well miss Fall/Autumn this year in The Mist House, but we love the photos (thanks, Amy!).
19.01.2022 ...the azaleas are still going strong: Spring has definitely sprung!
19.01.2022 Its wonderful what a bit of painting and rearranging can achieve. Thanks, too, to Lotto Carpets and Imran Abid Mir and his family for their wonderful carpets that make our home shine!
19.01.2022 Our flag irises are always late compared with the Melbourne flatlands beneath us, but well worth the wait. They are magnificent flowers!
18.01.2022 Do you have plants that don’t like where they live and get up and move somewhere else? We have at least four in the garden. Our foxgloves didn’t like their place on the south side of a fence, so abandoned it for the sunnier north side. I put in a lovely aquilegea (columbine) near a fernery and it promptly shifted twenty metres to a more open perennial bed, and it now looks very content. Coastal daisies, which I love, have very happy feet and pop up just about anywhere they ch...oose, but always, to me at least, in a way that only adds to the garden design. As we live in an mountainous area we have lots of moisture and humidity that is ideal for growing ferns. They just pop up anywhere it is cool and damp, including many tree ferns - and they grow crazily fast. I think it’s this unplanned aspect of the garden that makes my morning inspections even more exciting: ‘Oh, look what’s popped up there - wouldn’t have thought of that!’ (Mt Dandenong, Victoria) See more
18.01.2022 ...things are really starting to happen in the garden: wow, all that pruning and general cleaning-up appears to have been worth the effort!
18.01.2022 Now that our garden is reaching maturity with an abundance of low shrubs and nectar and insect bearing plants such as grevillias, callistemons, azaleas, hydrangeas, rhododendrons and salvias, as well as perennials including penstemons, osteospermum (African daisies) and nasturtiums, many of our little native birds have built up in delightful numbers. They live fearlessly among the plants and permit you to get within touching distance while taking photos. I took a little time ...to get a reasonable shot of a blue wren, but he slowed down for a few microseconds for a proud portrait. The eastern spinebills go about their business and don’t mind at all a camera in their faces. The thornbirds are a little more flighty but will sit after a while. We have quite a few fantails but I couldn’t quite capture a good enough shot. Lots of birds is a great sign of a healthy ecosystem and that our plantings, even though a mixture of natives and exotics, are working well for our local avian friends. Another bonus of such endemic numbers is that non-native birds never appear in our area - not a sparrow, starling, blackbird or Indian minor to be seen, just the way we like it. And, forget about bothersome insects; these little guys and their mates take care of business. We don’t use any insecticides or harmful chemicals in the garden: when you respect Mother Nature, she returns the favour! See more
17.01.2022 Flowering in The Mist House garden: the first Rock Rose of the season and the delightfully fragrant Mexican Orange Blossom
17.01.2022 ...planted out The Meadow Garden terraces with bird attracting grevilleas: coming together nicely!
16.01.2022 Winter morning from the Mist House (thanks, Amy, for the photo)
16.01.2022 ...well worth the hard work: now to the family room and the rest of the house!
16.01.2022 ...gave the Meadow Garden a Spring clean today: looking good!
15.01.2022 The Terrace Garden is coming along nicely with some Australian native and Old World perennial plantings.
13.01.2022 The garden today: vignettes, including the first sighting of our co-parented magpie fledglings (I expect the parents will present them to us any day now)! I also started planting out the new garden bed - so glad my favourite nursery (Paddy’s Plants in Monbulk) opened up today. Yippee!
13.01.2022 Thanks to S.T. Roberts Landscaping for their amazing craft skills using beautiful Travertine stone. We are thrilled with the final result.
12.01.2022 Snow on the Mountain: Carole, Ben & Amy (Kalorama, 1986)
11.01.2022 ...always something new to see in the garden
11.01.2022 A lovely Monet moment this afternoon as I eagerly roadtested the new garden seat at the bottom of the garden. I’m reading Gisela Kaplan’s marvellous book on Australian magpies and their astounding abilities as songbirds, intelligent thinkers, clucky parents and neighbourhood protectors of humans and smaller birds alike (ours are friends, not swoopers). I spent an hour or so reading with a cuppa in my hand and took breaks to watch flocks of swirling cockatoos in the valley far... below, the local ravens feeding their single fledging just a few feet away and in the distance the ever changing blue hues of Mt Toolebewong and Mt Donna Buang behind. Oh, and in the background our magpies were variously chortling and carolling their well-protected domain, as if to reinforce what I was reading. The reassuring calls gave permission to the little wrens, thorn birds and eastern spine bills to flutter and twitter safely in the ever spreading chestnut tree to my near right. So, how is your day? See more
11.01.2022 In 2009 I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and was profoundly moved by the experience, perhaps no more so than when viewing the diary in the place where it was written. In Annes gifted prose she wrote of the magnificent chestnut tree seen through her window. It reminded her of the beauty of the world in spite of her dire circumstances. The tree has since fallen and been replaced by a virtual tree. I left a video message on it for Amy who read the diary at an early... age and still remains inspired by Annes example. I cant find my message on that tree, but think I can offer an even greater gift. We have a large chestnut tree at the bottom of the Mist House garden. It can be seen in all its splendour from most rooms in the house. I think from now on it should be known as The Anne Frank Tree. windowhttp://www.annefrank.org/en/News/Anne-Frank-Tree/
10.01.2022 Morning on the Mountain: can you see the balloon floating over the Yarra Valley (thanks, Amy, for the photo)?
09.01.2022 Do you have a special plant in your garden that comes with its own story: a gift from a friend, a memory of a loved one, or maybe a reminder of a place? We have many such plants in our mountain garden. This rather pleasant white flag iris is one. My darling wife bought it on a whim a few years ago from Coombe Cottage in the nearby Yarra Valley, the family home of Helen Porter Mitchell, better known as opera diva Dame Nellie Melba. Coombe Cottage has a spectacular garden and o...ccasionally the resident gardeners have a clean up and sell plants at their popular reception business. Luck was in and a couple of plants made their way home for my attention. I’m surprised at how vigorously it has spread and holds itself proud and high, singing to the world, so to speak. Every time I pass it on my daily garden walks, I hear a little of Rosina from ‘The Barber of Seville’, or Violetta from ‘La traviata’. So, what is your ‘special’ plant? (The Mist House garden, Mount Dandenong, Victoria). See more
07.01.2022 ...the Japanese maples are turning - lovely!
07.01.2022 ...the Anne Frank Tree (chestnut in the background)
06.01.2022 The garden is now reaching a level of maturity I have been looking for over the past three or so years. A little more nurturing and planting to go and it will be more than pleasing. What a pleasure it is to have a garden adopt you!
05.01.2022 Its so wonderful when a bedroom window also acts as a bird hide. The lorikeets are semi-frequent visitors and I love it when they are around. The cockies appear to be barely amused.
05.01.2022 Sometimes I look up and remind myself that in our lovely garden we have quite a few towering trees. While our endemic messmates and mountain ash in and around our property beautifully frame our views to the Great Dividing Range, I think our yellow box eucalyptus is my favourite. Its bark is a shifting artwork and at night or during the day it glows.
03.01.2022 ...lovely walk from The Mist House this morning: about twenty minutes away at the top of the ridge we can see Marvellous Melbourne. Along a little further is a memorial to a tragic 1938 plane crash. The tracks are easy to navigate and the views stunning.
03.01.2022 Winter is coming to the Mountain (thanks, Amy, for the photo)...
02.01.2022 ...always something to see!
01.01.2022 Snow on the Mountain 2008
01.01.2022 ...just a five minute drive from The Mist House and glorious. Worth another look at the end of September when everything will be in full bloom. Still, this isnt a bad start to Spring!
