​Greetings fellow Foxies
Borgey Block  is a Dryandra Highbury block managed by DBCA Parks and Wildlife. The southern half was once a conservation reserve. The northern half was a forestry block which provided timber for the Williams sawmill. The name Borgey comes from an English immigrant’s pronunciation of ‘boggy’ 😊. I reflected on this as I dug my ute out 3 times.
Borgey block is about 30kms southwest of Narrogin on Sargeant Road (an unlabelled dead end-road) that straddles the Williams/Narrogin shire boundary. From Narrogin the first 18km is sealed road to the Tarwonga/ West Highbury Road intersection. The next 12kms is well maintained gravel road. There is no Sargeant Road sign. Go right as shown on the map.
On Telstra network I can use Google maps for direction finding in the reserve.

Borgey block is a gem for bushwalkers, wildflower enthusiasts and bird watchers, but there are no facilities and internal roads are rarely maintained. It is a great place to explore with a mountain bike.
Visitors in buses, RV’s and meticulous car owners should remain on Sargeant Road. Carefully driven cars can navigate most main access tracks but may encounter fallen branches. Some fire access tracks, and the reserve boundary can be very rough, blocked or boggy in places. 
Like other Dryandra Highbury blocks, the landscape is more variable than Dryandra Woodland, with much less mallet and gravel country, and no powderbark trees. Geological erosion has stripped away more of the laterite cover, so soils are more variable and better reflect the underlying granitic basement rock. As a result, there is a much open bushwalking country with frequent changes of wildflowers and trees;
The aerial photo with a radiometrics overlay helps show soil and rock types.
This and waterways show a general northwest/southeast trend in the grain of the underlying granite, and intruding dolerite dykes. The dykes often show as ironstone ridges and breakaways covered in brown mallet and gravelly woodland.
Paler shades and pinkish colours show sandier and shallow bedrock areas that are often orchid and everlasting hotspots. .

For a Google Photos album of Borgey Block open this link .Click each image to enlarge it.

Sites 1 to 4 can be reached with most cars, or mountain bikes and are well worth visiting. It is about an 8km easy return walk from the track entrance at Sargeant Road to site 4 and return. Do not attempt to to drive down the fire access track parallel to Sargeant Road as it can be very boggy. I got stuck there for an hour August 2021.
Site 1 is a fabulous wildflower spot.  It is a broad sandy winter-wet valley that is a carpet of stark white spider and cowslip orchids in September, with sundews and other orchids. I even found a few rare shy spider orchids and in October, bee orchids and leopard orchids in the waterway itself. Upslope to the north the bush changes to open marri/wandoo/ dryandra woodland and to two isolated Nuytsia floribunda trees. 

Site 2 is the 1.5km access road that winds gently along the south-eastern edge of the reserve. This skirts a series of short valleys and rises coming from a breakaway or steep ridge running parallel to the track. The landscape along the track changes frequently from sheoak woodland, open wandoo woodland, dryandra scrub and sandy marri woodland. Note the change in wildflowers.

From here the road forks left up a rough gravel track to site 5, and right up an eroded valley road (Site3), which is suitable for carefully driven cars. Site 3 is a 1km sandy gravel to gravel valley between steep doleritic gravel rises on the northern side, and a sandy gravel slope on the southern half of the block. The track gradually goes upslope from wildflower-rich loamy gravel and over a dense gravel saddle with large jarrahs and a mass of yellow September-flowering Petrophile serruriae shrubs. There is a parallel sandier fire access trail through good wildflower country that you can use to return (preferably walk as it is rough and has fallen branches). About halfway up the road there is a rough road leading to from the right to a pleasant upland valley. Unfortunately, some people illegally logged jarrah here. They must have got a huge fright when a tree slid down a cut and nearly killed them. At the corner of the two tracks is a most amazing split Drummonds mallee called the Ent Mallee. It is old and very fragile, please do not climb on it.

Site 4 is a wonderful area to explore. The almost-level road runs parallel to a breakaway/steep change of slope that reflects a change in the east-west grained granite, with another parallel line of granite outcrops in between. These and the pattern of cracks in rocks will interest budding geologists. The bush is mainly open woodland with frequent changes in wildflower communities the track crosses soil types and slight hollows and rises. It is good orchid country with a wonderful show of everlastings in October. Look for a wandoo that was recently blown apart by lightning. 
August 2021:  big tree has blocked the road about half way down. I got bogged backing into the bush trying to turn around.

​The road up to site 5 has some rough and narrow spots with encroaching prickly bush that can scratch the side of the car. Careful car owners may prefer to walk on the yellow track shown on map 6. For about 1.5km it winds through interesting bushland ranging from open wandoo, sheoak thicket, dryandra scrub and mallet breakaways.
The thinner dotted line marks an unmarked 1.2km loop through valley and slopes of scenic open woodland. I found a lovely clump of white-flowering Melaleuca haplantha there. Only try the loop If you have a good sense of direction and can follow your progress using Google maps. Open wandoo, sheoak thicket, dryandra scrub and mallet breakaways.
The thinner dotted line marks a 1.2km loop through valley and slopes of scenic open woodland. Only try it If you have a good sense of direction and can follow your progress using Google maps.

Greetings fellow Foxies
Every reserve I have explored so far contains a bunyip, but Borgey Block (southeast of Williams) is different. Its guardian is an Ent!
This block must have been a part of Fangorn Forest in the time of middle earth.
 
The Ent is an ancient and fearsome being that morphs into differing monsters.
My first sighting was a giant prawn monster slowly lumbering towards me, but as I slowly circled it, I saw an eagle monster, a serpent monster, a squid monster, and a mantis monster. 

 
Tread lightly in this reserve!

I suppose I am required to provide a scientific explanation for boring people who don’t believe in Ents, middle-earth, or Lord of the Rings (sigh).
OK here goes:
This is actually an old Drummonds mallee (Eucalyptus drummondii) that grew as a tree. Mallees uncommonly do this if the main stem is not affected by fire or other events that stimulate new stems to emerge from the basal lignotuber.
At some time, the tree was hit by lightning that blasted the top off, and completely split the stem to the ground on one side and to about a metre from the ground on another. Contraction of the outer sapwood pulled the dry inner heartwood outwards to form the surface of half of each split stem’s perimeter.

Later possibly only ten years or so ago, a bushfire scorched the outer stems of the new ‘trunks’ and burnt through the base of each to form the Ent’s legs. This fire stimulated seed germination, which resulted in surrounding daughter plants that grew as normal mallees. The Ent mallee is barely surviving. One stem has only a three-centimetre cord of sapwood traversing the dead wood.
Another more recently lightning destroyed tree in this reserve is described in this blog.

​Greetings fellow Foxies
I have been sampling the tasty purple berries of Dianella revoluta/ Blueberry lily. It is bush tucker with an edible fleshy berry containing two small nutty seeds. Dianellas are called flax lilies (Noongar name is Mangard) because fibre from the stiff linear leaves makes a handy string or cord for binding. Noongars also crushed and ate the rhizomes.
When I googled Dianella plant I was surprised to see that nurseries have produced new cultivars for the garden.

Similar looking lilies that flower within a month or so of each other include:

• Stypandra glauca/Blind grass is a member of the grass lily genus with a similar looking flower. However, it is a toxic to introduced grazing animals, and the fruit is a dry capsule rather than a berry.
• Agrostocrinum scabrum/ Blue grass lily occcurs on gravels.It has a deep blue flower and a dry capsule rather than a berry
• Dichopogon callipes is an early summer flowering plant with a few small straight leaves on the stem and  delicate blue flowers. It is normally inconspicuous, but a delight to see in mornings when the sun is behind it.

Despite being called lilies, they are part of a group of varied monocotyledons that were apparently once in the family Liliaceae, but were regrouped by taxonomists, with some disputes (remember Dryandra/Banksia?).
No doubt forests have been felled for journal articles and careers have waxed and waned during the lily wars. I assume that microscopes and DNA analysis are the main weapons as  plants do not possess anal hairs. I digress.
From a layman’s view they are all monocotyledons (generally 3 petals, 3 sepals) with rhizomes and/or root tubers. All three plants are resprouters that can recover from fires using energy reserves stored in their roots.
Agrostocrinum, Dianella and Stypandra are in the Hemerocallidaceae family with other Foxes Lair genera Caesia,and Tricoryne.
Dichopogon is in the large Asparagaceae family, which includes all our orchids and (you guessed it) asparagus.

Bridal Creeper is a South African member of Asparagaceae and a weed in that is slowly increasing throughout Foxes Lair
It is an aggressive competitor due to

• A climbing and spreading growth habit
• Profuse berry production. I frequently find small bridal creeper plants at the base of trees in the bush, that have germinated from seeds that passed through birds.
• A huge ability to recover from adversity using root reserves. 90% of the plant occurs underground as a mat of rhizomes and root tubers. Control by cultivation and pulling has no effect.

​Like many pests and weeds, bridal creeper is relatively uncommon in its home country due to native diseases and pests that have evolved with the plant.
This year I thought I would kill some plants in the arboretum using two applications of a glyphosate and metsulfuron. 
Images below show that sprayed plants had more shrivelled old (brown) root tubers but survived, and produced (less) new season tubers and set seed. 

For small outbreaks, digging the tubers out is very effective. The tuber clump holds together and can be hoiked out intact if you get under it with a mattock.
​Unfortunately, Narrogin’s climate is too dry for the introduced bridal creeper rust to persist, and introduced mites are unlikely to have much impact on plants dispersed in the bush. It is going to be a long battle.

​Greetings fellow Foxies
Last week I discovered a flea beetle love nest on a Blueberry Lily with at least a 6 pairs mating on the flowers and taking an occasional nip of flower to maintain their stamina.
The flea beetle is a small, jumping beetle of the leaf beetle family (Chrysomelidae), that makes up the tribe Alticini.
I first noticed some last year as ~ 4mm shiny beetles that jumped like fleas when I tried to photograph them. Have a look at the hind leg muscles in the images below -seriously steroidal.
A bit of Googling revealed that they can be pests in the northern hemisphere, and I recognised a picture of a larva as a horrible little grub that shreds marshmallow weed leaves in my back yard each winter. They are welcome to marshmallow but move on to crucifers like turnips and broccoli. I have learnt not to grow turnips or allow marshmallow to germinate in the garden patch before planting broccoli.

​Brachonid wasps and Tachinid flies are parasitoid flea beetle predators. Adults lay eggs on flea beetle larvae that hatch to produce a grub-like larva that burrows, consumes the insides and pupates there to start the cycle again. I am surprised that I have seen so few beetles and will have to monitor marshmallows next winter.