Flying Foxes - the "eyes" have it.

FOUR EYES
For the sake of my pal, Miss Eagle, yes, I do know that the heading is a misquote of the oft-use Parliamentary saying - "The Ayes have it".
On Thursday evening, I went to the CTC's Music Night (the first without BJ and Boney running it). They have not left town yet, but they were at a "gig" in Wollongong, so they could not be at the CTC in Robbo.

Anyway, after the Music Night, I walked around the property, and down the back, near the Scout Hall, there were about 40 Flying Foxes coming and going into the large hedge of Cherry Laurels there. So I tried to photograph them flying in and out of these tall hedge plants (trees). They would fly in, squabble, fight, fly off and come back and crash-land again in the tops of the trees. Eventually I got a few photos of reflective eyes, at least.

SHADOWY FIGURE FLYING
Anyway, the evening was quieter than the usual (familiar) Music Night with Boney leading the show.

But Brendan and Royce and the new guard did a pretty fair job. Jenny was singing and jumping around, and John brought a new friend, David, along.


It turned out that David is a pretty good pianist. And Brian and some of the other Musos had a nice time.


WHO'S THAT
HANGING THERE?
Those of us, like Pip, John, Vivienne and myself, who are dedicated audience members had a nice time, and will probably be back next week, and the week after. Lets hope James and Dave and some of the other gang keep on coming along.

On Friday night I went to REPS, where the guest speaker was speaking on Climate Change. He presented the story very well, with amazing statistics on CO2 emissions, rainfall patterns, temperature charts, etc.



BRIGHT EYES
At the end of the meeting, I did a "show and tell" with a bunch of
Cherry Laurel leaves and fruit, and mentioned that these trees ripen their fruit at the appropriate season for Flying Foxes to come in on the warm summer evenings, which makes their potential as a weed far greater than I had realised before.

One of the members came up and said that she had just paid a large amount of money to have a large Cherry Laurel removed, because of the Flying Foxes. I think it was their noisy behaviour which triggered the move, but clearly, any removal of these huge and prolific weeds is a great move.

Clearly they were once a popular tall hedge plant in Robertson, before their potential as a weed was understood. As the oldest (largest) plants appear to be in Ranelagh House, it is not hard to work out who is responsible for this problem - the original owners/gardeners there. But they are long since gone - so that does not help our situation, does it?

For any local readers, please do not plant any more Cherry Laurels in this climate and soil.

I have grown them in Canberra, where they simply do not become a weed. It is much colder there, and the soil is much poorer, so they do not seem to have such weed potential there.

But in Robbo, they grow like crazy, and fruit prolifically. They become a 10 metre high weed. That is pretty scary.