It is also a rampantly vigorous spreader and has become a weed in many areas. Admire it but do not plant it, and if possible cut it down and replace it will a wattle that doesn't have plans for world domination.

It's just possible that the wattles were Golden Wattle (Acacia pycnantha), our national flower, and deliberately planted. Golden Wattle blooms from about the end of August to the end of September, with big golden balls of flowers and thin, curved green leaves. My gratitude if these were deliberately planted, because they were bright and joyous and the kids in the back of the car yelled "The wattle is out!"

When the wattle blooms around here you know winter's back has been broken.

Our place becomes wattle rich in spring. We have the Sydney golden wattle (A. longifolia), and then blackwood (A. melanoxylon), which is said to have good timber, though I've never used it either for carving or in the wood stove. The only wattle I've ever cooked with has been black wattle (A. mearnsii), harvested from the trees that fall over our entrance road during wind, storm, or when they are elderly and borer-ridden and a rain storm makes their tops too heavy for their trunks or roots to support.

Beware of burning black wattle. It burns hot, and fast, and I twice set the chimney alight trying to heat the oven for a quick souffle. The first time I shut the air intake and the fire went out. The second time I was nine months pregnant and the wood on either side of the chimney was beginning to char and I had to call the bloke next door for help. Keith and his friend arrived to find me on a chair flapping at the charring with sodden tea towels - at that stage I didn't have a hose. Keith efficiently got me off the chair, put out the fire, cleaned the fire box, made me a cup of tea and gave me a lecture on burning wattle wood and how to keep my chimney clean. The area surrounding our chimney is now inflammable and extremely safe.

Acacia mearnsii is our true spring bloomer here, and one I feel deeply sentimental about, as it just began to bloom in my last weeks of pregnancy and was still blooming for the baby, the nappies on the line dusted with wattle pollen. That was a drought year, the grass worn from the ground and the gum trees drooping. But A. mearnsii is a stubborn old tree. Nothing stops it flowering, even our most recent droughts and Black Summer.

When I say "old" I am talking in wattle terms. Wattle grow fast, but somewhere after 15-20 years they lose their vigour. Borers invade, and the trunks turn knobbly and ooze sap. You can kill the borers, of course, but it won't do much good for the tree, nor the borers, or the birds who like to eat the borers. An old wattle tree simply is at the end of its life.

This can be a problem if it's in the middle of your garden - or along your entrance road - as the falling trees may squash other plants, your car, your cat, or turn a visit to town into a few hours with the chainsaw. Luckily there are expert tree fellers who will be able to climb up the tree, or at least something solid nearby, and cut it down bit by bit, clean up at they go, so in the evening all that's left are a few traces of sawdust.

These days there are also new low-growing varieties of wattle trees like Mini-Cog, bred from the bower or river wattle, A. cognata. Limelight is as gaudy green leafed as its name suggests, but my favourite - from pics, anyway - is Mini Cog. Mini Cog has been renamed for the US market as Cousin Itt, and very suitably too, as it's just under a metre of green hairiness and is totally adorable mounding up and drooping down the sides of a big pot on the patio, though it looks far less exotic - and quite beautiful - planted as a low-growing hedge along a bank or retaining wall. It takes full sun to part shade, and once established will survive long dry periods - though plants in ground survive far better than those with hot, confined roots in pots on baking patios. It is said to have small gold flowers in spring, and I'd buy one, if we weren't already extraordinarily supplied with local wattles, not to mention bright yellow everlastings and daffodils.

It really is spring, and it's glorious.