Updates

LYLE. Rosie brought Lyle home from hospital on Thursday night. He had not had another heart attack. He said they drained 1.7 litres of fluid from one side of his lungs. He is much better but still looks terrible to me. I'm taking him to his specialist's appointment, his urologist, on Monday afternoon.

RAIN. We had six mls last week, then 3ml, then 12ml on Friday night. That's 35ml for October with 3 days to go. The 30 year average for October is 124ml. I discussed this with Geoff Howard at the post office on my walk this morning. Geoff lives in the next house along from Pat and Leo Buckley in Launching Place Rd. As I walk past he's often doing his 'Tai Chi' exercises on a concrete slab that until recently supported a shed next to the house. He called me down a while back and gave me some basic instruction and elementary excersises to do. He often wears a black track suit and a black beanie on cold mornings over a shaved head with no facial hair except a little 'V' beard below and in the middle of the bottom lip, above the chin. He called it a tickler, with a suggestively lewd glint in his eye, when I said it looked good. He has blue eyes that hold your attention and a smooth voice that give his opinions a confident authority. He's a deep thinker and no fool. His garden is full of elaborate topiaries and the famous (at the time) TV gardening show 'Burke's Backyard' once filmed a segment there.
Geoff said this morning, " It's because the ****s have been removing all the old growth forests in the catchment areas and replacing them with new plantations that take up all the rainfall. The deep natural composting litter is lost as is water retension. The surface dries out. There's bugger all run off. The young trees soak up all the rain where before the forest floor was moist and the rain ran into streams. They've been warned about the consequences for twenty years but are still doing it."
I think he's right, and as well, too much land has been cleared for agriculture. I think Gov'ts should be giving farmers in marginal country drought assistance to stay on their farms, not to farm, but to plant them out with drought resistant vegetation. And not necessarily natives, though they may be the best option. It seems many things have to change if the 'ecological era' is to save us.

BEE SWARM. I found the frames last Wednesday and spent a few hours putting them together, wiring them, and inserting foundation wax. I was all thumbs as I don't do this often enough to do it easily or quickly , the last time being two years ago and then only a box or two. I enjoyed it. They are manual tasks that, like say cleaning and polishing shoes, are somehow rewarding. The swarm was hard to get at, being in the middle of the rubbish pile I couldn't drop them on the ground in front of the box and let them walk in as they like to do. I removed as many of the tangled sticks beneath them, and where I needed to put the box, as I could without them falling before I was ready.It was still messy. I shook them down and they fell into the heap, the box not really being close enough. I watched them for nearly an hour, smoking them gently on the side opposite to the box as they reformed their cluster, trying to herd them in. Some went in but the main part of the swarm was determined to cluster outside the box. I had to go, I had to pick rhodo and mollis azalea at Laurie Begg's and have it at the farm by 5 o'clock.
I came home about 6.30 and had a look. They were much as I left them, I had been hoping they'd have gone in of their own accord. I lit the smoker and stirred them up around the edge of the cluster away from the box while removing more sticks to make it clearer for them to go in. It was a big swarm. Slowly the bulk of them went in. A small cluster remained under the landing board and back to the cleat that the box sits on, which was quite a big gap the way the material I had scrounged went together. By this time it was after 7pm and nearly dark so I left them and went inside to the bathtub.
After Freda's funeral the next day I checked them and they were all in.

FREDA'S FUNERAL. Meredith picked me up at 9.30am and we went down in her car. Lib needed her car as she had an appointment at the physiotherapist in Pakenham, not that she could drive herself but fortunately Robbie was home on swotvac and he drove on L plates.
It was simple funeral with small crowd. The celebrant spoke briefly about Freda's life and then 'Amazing Grace' was played during which we were asked to reflect on our memories of her. Two fond memories for me were having afternoon tea with Ian and Freda many times over ten years or so. Freda was so at home in her kitchen and talked more there and she loved to talk of days long gone. Ian would become annoyed sometimes, with a 'here she goes again' attitude, but she liked to talk. Then when I was with Ian in the garden I'd come back to my van to find flowers had been put on the seat. Freda would be standing nearby watching and she'd say, "Take them to Meredith to see." I'd taken Meredith around to meet Ian and Freda and see their garden and they had been to see our farm. We had much in common.
Ian met Freda at the Flinders hall at a dance there when he was 17, so it would have been 1934. He had one dance with her, the last. It only happened because Freda was sitting near to him when a bloke who was dressed like a gangster came up and asked her to dance. She didn't like the look of him and said she couldn't dance because she had to dance with 'him', pointing to Ian. They didn't meet again for 10 years. When Ian was in the army in New Guinea in WW2 a letter arrived in handwriting he didn't recognize. He was puzzled because the only letters he got was from his mother. Freda had heard that he was in New Guinea and wrote to him. Ian replied and they continued to correspond. Ian looked her up when he got back to Australia and they married soon after. The celebrant told some of this story and Ian told us the rest while we had morning tea after the service.
I took a bunch of variegeted rhododendron ponticum flowers to the funeral. I picked them from a bush in my garden, one that Freda had given me about ten years ago as a small plant propogated from one in her garden.
Tears welled in my eyes and a lump was in my throat when the casket wheeled out at the end with Ian walking behind to the the old wartime classic song 'We'll meet again" by Vera Lynn. That just got me.

Observations This Morning

Walking along the track towards the end of our property I looked across Bond's lane to my neighbour's heap of prunings on their burn site. The swarm of bees that I saw there yesterday was still there. I'm going to try to box it later if I can find the material to put it in. I botted a box yesterday from a bloke who offered it to me years ago and I have frames in the shed which will need wiring. I hope I can find some foundation wax fresh enough to be acceptable to the bees. I don't really want the bees even though they probably are from one of my hives, (my workload is a bit of a worry) but it's better if I can get them before anyone gets agitated.
At the end of our street I saw Allison walking the pet rabbit.
I called out "Hi Allison". She didn't hear me at first as there was a lot of traffic noise. Second time she turned around, looking rather attractive in her pink dressing gown, and said she'd been watching the film crew traffic heading down Launching Place Rd. We commented on its heavy volume, all the 'Thrifty' rental vehicles and the big truck with the 'Empire Film Co.' logo on the side. This traffic had resumed this week, after ceasing three or four weeks ago much to my relief at the time. In the meantime I'd learned that the movie is called 'Where The Wild Things Are', Tom Hanks is the producer, and it has a budget of $80 million, a huge figure to me but not much as far as movies go I suppose. Gordon found this out on the internet.
Allison, her husband and daughter had been away for a few days and I'd been looking after 'Cocoa'. They came home yesterday. "How's Cocoa?", I asked, loudly above the traffic noise.
"She's OK. She always goes funny when we're away. She sulks when we get back and won't eat. She peed on Rick when he picked her up, then peed on Alysha."
I laughed. " I thought she was having a bit off a tantrum when you were away. After I put her food in and covered up the cage I'd hear the bowls being tipped up and tossed around."
"Thanks for looking after her while we were away."
"No worries", I said, moving off.
" Have a good day," she called.
"You too."
About a hunderd metres up Quinn Rd. out the front of Olive's house, the second hose on the left at that end, I noticed another 'For Sale' sign. Stockdale and Leggo's now stands next to 'Frank Facey's, which had been on it's own for a couple of months. My friend Olive died last February. She was 84 and suffered a heart attack. I'd seen two ambulances there on my walk one morning. Then for a few weeks I saw nothing. I noticed the ice cream container of lemons was no longer put at the gate with the sign 'please take'. Then one morning there was a few cars at Olive's house, and one with a 'district nurse' sign on the side. It was there three days in a row and on the third day I met Glennis walking the other way outside Olive's house. Glennis is the retired dentist's wife who lives opposite Leo Bucklet's at the other end of Quinn Rd. Glennis told me Olive was dying. Doctors told her they could do an operation but couldn't guarantee that she'd be as good as before, so she declined and stopped eating. They sent her home to die at the end, the nurse coming daily to administer morphine. Glennis said it's not pleasant dying slowly like that. You lose your ability to swallow.
Olive told me once that she did not want to live if she could no longer look after her garden. She said she didn't know what she'd do, but said she supposed if she stopped eating she would die. Well I don't know if it was deliberate or if she lost her appetite, only she would have known, but it happened that way.
If I've blogged about Olive before I apologize. I don't think I have, given that she died in Feb. and I started blogging in April. Olive's three daughters, who live locally, gave me permission to continue picking in her garden, which I did this spring making good harvest of the flowering dogwood and the snowball viburnums and some green helleborus and some camellia. The garden is deteriorating, nobody is doing anything there, not even cutting the grass. It will sell soon I suppose and it could well be another resource lost to me but I can only be grateful for the fifteen years or so that I picked there, did the odd job for Olive, and shared a cup of tea with her.
On my way back there were rain clouds massing but only a few spits. Fingers crossed it comes to something. Might muck up the swarm catching.
Tomorrow, Freda Lucas funeral service is at 10.00am at Pakenham.

Freda Lucas

Meredith rang me yesterday. I was expecting news of Lyle, who was taken to hospital again by ambulance on Saturday morning. He was having trouble breathing, getting enough air, and couldn't get up from a lying position on the couch. He'd been trying to call Elvie or Meredith for half an hour but couldn't make them hear, even though they were in the next room and the door was open. You can't call out if you can't get enough air.
She said that dad had improved and they said at the hospital they thought he'd had another heart attack but they couldn't say for sure yet. They said that last time, but he hadn't. Then Meredith told me she really rang to tell me that Freda had died. Emerald Glades (Aged Care hostel) rang Meredith's husband Roger (Freda's GP) during the night and he had to go in to fill out the death certificate. Meredith went with him and waited outside the room. Ian, Freda's husband and good friend of mine, came out and saw her. Meredith said he gave her a big hug and held on for a long time. He said he'd had a cry and was feeling better for it, and that he was just so grateful to have had 62 years of married life with Freda. He said she was a wonderful wife and an exceptional cook before the Alzheimer's robbed her of her memory.
The last time I saw Freda, some months ago, she didn't know who I was. I'd heard through Ian that she could no longer walk and was wheel chair bound. The staff at the hostel had to wash her and dress her as it had become too much for Ian. My feeling at hearing the news was one of relief. Ian had had a very tough 2 years as the disease progressed and sold his house and moved into the hostel about a year ago, no longer able to cope by himself with the garden, the housework, and the care of Freda. He turns 90 next January. A finer man I've not met. Freda was 92.
I'll try to blog about Freda, and Ian, when I have more time. They are part of 'old Australia', a fast disappearing generation that remembers going to school on horseback and milking cows by hand.

Rainfall update

We had 4mm of rain during the week for a total of 14mm so far for October. That would make any gardener shaky, as October is supposed to be our wettest month.

3 New words

I read a book review in the bath last night. The article, by Jack Hibberd, was titled Poland's Guilty Secret in the Review section of The Weekend Australian, and the book is titled 'Fear' by Jan T. Cross.
There were 3 words new to me so I've looked them up.

Neonate-- a newly born child, esp. one less than four weeks old.
context- 'On the outskirts, Poles shot dead a mother and her neonate child.'

Bivalent-- same as divalent
Divalent-- said of an atom of chemical element having a valency of two, and therefore capable of combining with two atoms of hydrogen or their equivalent.

Exculpates-- to remove from guilt or blame.
context-- "Yes, but ultimately he nails the existential fear of Poles for Jews, revealing a dual bivalent fear, but not one that exculpates.

Anxiety

My ill feelings and premonitions of Monday have fortunately proved to be unfounded. On Tuesday morning, after 24 hours to think it through, I reached the conclusion that I was overtired and suffered an anxiety attack on the Monday, a reaction to the workload and events of the last few weeks. Mondayitis by another name.
Since Lib fell and broke her wrist I've had an busy time at work. Added to that I've attended a carreer expo one Tuesday night with Gordon in Holmesglen (his TAFE course finishes this year and we have to find something) and then taken Lyle to Berwick the next day for xrays. The next week was Lib's appointment with the surgeon at the Dandy Hospital which ended up a three hour wait in outpatients. The heat had hit the temperature reaching the the mid thirties Celsius with a fierce north wind and I learned that Melbourne Water had put a ban on diverting water out of our little stream into the dam at the farm. This was brought in in early September, because of unprecedented low flows in all streams and creeks in the Woori Yallock creek catchment. So we pay for a water diverting licence but cannot use the water, not to mention the cost of capital in our pump and equipment. On top of all that policians and the media have discovered the drought and have hammered it relentlessly lately. So with one weekend busy working pruning and burning off at home, and the next travelling to visit Lib's mum in Wangaratta ( who is 87, in constant pain despite slow release morphine, with an osteoporosis related bad back, and who only just moves around with the aid of a walking frame), and attend a 50th party, I was exhausted. I need a rest.
The good news is that Robbie had his last day of secondary school yesterday. He now has a couple of weeks swotvac before year 12 exams. I will get a break from performing the morning taxi service.
More good news - our resident Eastern whipbird pair have had a baby and the female and the young'n have been easily seen this last week flitting about the woodshed and the stachyurus and prostratheras. Nature at its best. I'm so glad I didn't scare them off with my pruning. This morning also I saw baby grey strike thrushes playing in the poplars at the end of Quinn Rd. Fanstastic!
I think I have regained my equilibrium after a shaky week.

Monday

Something doesn't feel right today, but I can't put my finger on it.
It's a lovely sunny morning. The boys left at 6.00am with Gord taking his car to Belgrave station. Lib is still asleep. Everything seemed normal on my walk, the air was fresh, cold on the ears, I'd put a jumper on, Snowy was her happy self, the galahs and cockies were feeding in their paddock, the grey thrush sang, the bronzewings 'oomed', just an ever so slight breeze.
But I feel uneasy. Everything seems just too right. Maybe the weekend in Wangaratta, attending Mary's 50th party and revisiting our past life, has unsettled me? Or am I having a premonition? Has something happened that I don't know about yet? Is something unusual about to happen? I feel uncomfortable about the week ahead.
Why?
I'll have to wait and see. This is most odd.

Bonhommie

I'm enjoying a post walk, pre breakfast, peppermint tea with a sqeeze of lemon juice while I blog. Cleansing and soothing.
It was a good weekend. We had a little rain last Thursday, only 4mm, and then 6mm yesterday. Not much, but better than nothing. September was very dry and Melbourne's reservoirs went down for that month for the first time in 36 years since such things have been recorded. Many parts of Victoria are at crisis point. Lib's sister in Bendigo emailed us yesterday saying they are no longer allowed to water the garden, even with a watering can.
I expected the rain because the black cockies had been around and folklore says their presence means it will rain in a few days. It always seems to work, but sometimes only a little rain like this time.
I worked solidly most of yesterday. I was out burning off rubbish before 6am. I normally burn in the evenings on a still day but Saturday, when I planned to burn, was warm and windy and I didn't want to scorch the copper beach tree near where I burn nor upset a neighbour if a bit of smoke goes their way. Do unto others as they say. So I pruned on Sat. and cut out some getting largish holly trees that had been annoying me. I had a big dry heap to burn surrounded by more dry stuff to throw on and also lots up green stuff accumulating for future burns when it dried out and I was worried it was all going to get away on me with the likelihood of early fire restrictions this year because of the big dry. So I didn't walk, I burnt instead as a cool change had come in overnight, rain was threatening, and the neighbours would be asleep, was my logic. I ended up burning the lot, green stuff and all, which I know is naughty, but a drop of sand in a tip truck compared to what the DSE get up to.
Nearing the end of Quinn Rd. on my walk this morning there was a soft crunching of gravel behind me which I heard above the 6am news on the radio I carry in a utility bag. I turned around quickly a little startled, always concerned that a vehicle might come on us suddedly and run Snowie over. It was Janice on her pushbike. She slowed and rode next to me saying 'hello', but not calling me by name. She was in full bike gear including helmet and sunglasses. "Hi Janice" I said, "I haven't seen you for ages. Have you been away or something."
"No, I haven't, but I had two weeks off work which meant I was out a little later. I hadn't seen you either and I said to myself I hope he is not sick."
As she said this she smiled and her voice had a warmth to it. I explained I'd been away for a week, told her about Lib's broken wrist and that I'd been so busy my routine was not so well oiled lately. We agreed the rain was great and she smiled again and rode off.
This was a good start to the working week. I hardly know Janice at all and it's pleasing that she was concerned for my well being. She lives in the first house on the right as I walk up Quinn Rd. and has for years fed her horse in Volta's paddock on the other side of Launching Place Rd. early in the morning, sometimes with a man I assume is her husband. She walks her dog, a border collie named 'Hannah' sometimes at the same time I do and we've had an odd chat here and there about dogs or the weather. Once I told her my name and asked hers. Until today she was always a person of few words and always looked extremely serious or worried. A bit like a Swedish tennis player, not a glimmer of emotion.
On my way back I saw the bag of silverbeet I left for my neighbour Allison, tied to the fence, had gone. Allison walks her daughter's pet rabbit 'Cocoa' in the morning, and now and again I leave greens where I know Allison will see them, where 'Cocoa' likes to do her toilet. I look after 'Cocoa' when they go away.

Bronzewing

A while ago when the days were short, I started my walk in semi darkness. I thought I was hearing a tawny frog mouthed owl at the bottom of Quinn Rd. Well I may have, or I may not. Probably not.
As time went by I heard it later in the morning and in different places and I wondered why an owl is humming when he should be asleep.
Then one morning last week on my way back a bronzewing pidgeon flew up close in front of me from the gravel with a flurry of wings and settled briefly in a nearby pittosporum. I had a good sight of the green sheen on its wings. The next morning on my way back down Launching Place Rd, I heard the noise again coming from a pine tree in front of the Jehova Witness people's house. I stopped walking and looked up into the tree for a couple of minutes scanning all the branches in search of the hummer. Its movement gave it away, its chest puffing out and back in unison with the noise. Some sort of pidgeon I concluded. The only other feature I could see at this distance with the naked eye was that it had a light coloured cap on top of its head which I noticed before it flew away.
I was telling Jod about this, and about the bronzewing, at the farm while we bunched a load of dogwood blossom. He said it could have been a bronzewing making the noise but he wasn't sure about the cap so he pulled his bird book out from under the bench in the shop and looked it up. Sure enough the male has a creamy coloured cap which the female doesn't, which explains why the one I saw the day before had a grey head.
Just now I have looked up the common bronzewing in my bird book ( The Birds of Australia- A book of Identification- 758 Birds in Colour- Ken Simpson, Nicolas Day).
Its distribution is all of Australia except Cape York Peninsula. Its voice is resonant, deep, a repeated 'oom'.
It would seem that's what I've been hearing. Also on the bird scene I saw numerous yellow tailed black cockatoos during the week which are always good to watch. And the currawongs have been absent now for some weeks, which I'm happy about, I was getting tired of them nicking the mini dog yummies I put out on the shed windowsill for my friendly blackbirds. And I took a walk in the galah feeding paddock. There were many obvious, neat, concave hollows in the ground where the birds had been 'beaking', about two inches in diameter, and lots of broken off dandelion leaves. I don't know if the galahs etc were taking a bite out of the stems or biting them off to find seeds underneath.

Good Company

Yesterday morning after seeing Gordon off about 6.00am it was raining sparsely so I decided to wait bfore setting off on my walk. The sky to the west was grey and heavy and the raindrops were big, every indication was that an October buster was imminent. I wrote an important email instead, and before I knew it the rain had stopped but I didn't have time to walk as I had to run Robbie to Emerald to catch a bus. I did some grocery shopping while there and came home again and complained to Lib that I missed my walk.
She asked me would I go for awalk with her later in Cockatoo. She still can't drive, not being able to change gears with her broken wrist, so I agreed, thinking it would be good for her to get out and have a change of scenery.
Around lunchtime I pulled the carry van into the car park on Bailey Rd. and we took off, Lib, me, and little Snow. We'd not walked here before and I vaguely noted the sign naming the track as Yellow track. It was wide enough for Lib and me to walk side by side with Snow at our heels. Lib commented that Snowie walks close to her on the way out when she walks but then on the return is always 20-30 metres in front because she knows the way back.
Yellow track soon merged into a bigger track called Wright track which gently meandered down through the messmates and peppermints which predominate in this bush. It was open forest with a low undersory which I suspect is 'controlled burned' every few years by the DSE for bushfire prevention. After a kilometre or so we came to a gravel road and we decided to turn back rather than continue along another track which would have taken us to Emerald.
Sure enough on the way back Snowie took the lead. A shower of rain and a cold wind made us walk briskly, talking as we did as husband and wife do about anything that caught our interest. "Look at the heavy budding on that sprig of messmate". "See that pepermint trunk with hardly any bark". "Check out the big crown on that tree and the trunk's big angle and the hollow at the base, it's a wonder it's still standing".
Lib pointed at Snowie taking a track off to the right.
"Look at Snowie, she thinks that's our track", Lib said as we walked straight ahead.
I laughed and wondered when Snow would turn and come after us, then I saw a sign saying 'Yellow track'.
"That is our track" I said. We laughed at ourselves as we followed Snow back to the van.

Gentle on My Mind

The phone rang last Wednesday morning, the first day after we returned from Lakes Entrance. Lib was in Dandenong hospital waiting for her op. and I was doing housework including two big loads of washing the boys had accumulated.
The owner of the voice on the other end of the line said he had tried to ring the farm but only got the answering machine on which he left a message, but he needed to talk to someone because he wanted to buy 20 squares of lawn chamomile and he needed to pick it up on Friday morning as early as he could. He found my number in an ancient nursery journal so he gave it a try.
He was polite and well spoken. I explained to him that I had been away and couldn't tell him if we had the twenty squares available but if we did then it would be fine. I said I would ring my sister at the farm and we'd get back to him shortly to tell him when he could pick it up if there was no problem with the number.
I assumed he was a landscape gardener and didn't give it much more thought, however it did prompt me to ring Meredith to see how she was managing in my absence, as I learned on Sunday that mother Elvie had fractured a kneecap in a fall of her own. Meredith had 'moved in' to live at the farm to look after father Lyle, who had been mum's patient, and at this point she did not know of Lib's misfortune with the broken wrist.
We commisserated with each other, which we have done all our lives as siblings, and she said she thought that there were 20 squares there and that she and Jod could handle digging it and would have it ready for the customer. She told me our main wholesale buyer had been on the phone wanting as much dogwood blossom as he could have, which set my agenda for the rest of the day.
Next day, as I pulled into the farm with a second van load of lilac blossom, dogwood, pieris and snowball viburnum I noticed the 20 lush green chamomile squares in their trays neatly placed ready for the customer. There was a warm north wind blowing so I unloaded my day's picking quickly, putting it inside out of the wind, where a similar amount of blossom picked at the farm was already. It was a sight to behold. Buckets of pink and white dogwood, mauve, purple and white lilac and rich creamy pieris and greeny white snowball, massed together drinking water, standing fresh. The shop was steeped with the rich, almost intoxicating perfume of spring.
As we sorted the invoice, a van pulled up and the chamomile customer came in. He commented on how lovely the shop smelled, then stopped talking and looked a little dreamy and light headed, as if having an epiphany. Regaining focus, he said it reminded him of a time he was in southern China near the border of Tibet in a forest of naturally occuring tree rhododendrons growing around a lake, with an understory of azaleas. There was blossom wherever you looked. He said the petals from the azalea flowers fell into the lake and were eaten by fish which became relaxed and sleepy, the azalea flowers being narcotic. Black bears came down to the lake for an easy catch and the scene was the most extraordinary thing he'd ever experienced.
Meredith told me later that he was from the Camberwell Council. They want to grow a chamomile lawn at the civic centre and he was so happy to have found the chamomile after searching nurseries and herb places high and low without success until he found us.
Job satisfaction is a great thing and now and again my turn comes. I loved his story of the rhodie forest and the lake with the fish and the bears.