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.
