Three Chords on Boxing Day.

"All this happened without me noticing it. Like life, big changes can take place in a garden utterly unnoticed until almost too late."
Those words struck a chord with me when I read them on Boxing Day in the book I'm currently reading,'The Waterlily' by Kate Llewellyn. There's truth there. At the farm, especially in out of the way places like the steep bottom paddock and fencelines. Weeds such as blackberries and ivy silently take hold and spread unseen through the cover of shrubs and grass, sending out rooting tentacles like evil claws. Then suddenly in mid summer, when you have a little more time, you find them defiantly claiming their patch and daring you to try win it back. If you give in they win, and in no time will take everything.
The words struck the second chord on Boxing day in the afternoon when I walked with Lib's sister Margaret and Robbie. We went the other way to my morning walk, north and away from the town, down Bond's lane and past the Gemview Estate that was subdivided from the protea farm a couple of years ago. There were 8 one acre blocks sold off. I'd known there was building going on there, I'd heard the excavators and the nail guns and the cement trucks groaning out their concrete, and seen the teams of tradies and delivery trucks heavily laden with building supplies driving slowly searching for the sites early in the morning down Launching Place Rd.
Despite knowing it was happening, I got a hell of a fright when I saw it. Huge McMansions of modern design, built in sandstone or fancy brick, sitting ostentatiously where potatoes then proteas once grew. A couple of them are so big I reckon four of our house would fit inside, and are complete with concrete driveways and garages bigger than many of the cottages of old Gembrook. It's a groteque scene to me. Suburban Narre Warren North mansions at my back door, and they continue all the way along Lauching Place Rd. to the Pack Track, on land which again was a potato farm subdivided a little earlier. The Pack Track was so named because more than one hundred years ago the trader used to take supplies by pack horse from 'Silverwells' to prospectors in the bush.
The third chord came in the evening on Boxing Day. A neighbour rang and said his brother in law had a ticket for the cricket the next day but couldn't go for some reason. It was a $40 ticket, but despite it being sold out I could have the ticket for only $50 if I wanted it. I thought at first he was offering the ticket for nothing to me or Gordon, a cricket fan, then I thought he was asking $10, until he made it plain they wanted $50, ten dollars above what the ticket cost. Things have changed, once if you couldn't use a ticket at the last minute you'd give to a friend or neighbour. We declined the ticket. Shane Warne may have taken 700 Test wickets and this is his last Melbourne Test Match, he having announced his retirement to take affect after the Sydney Test, but going to the cricket holds no interest for me now they're all multi millionaires. They are no longer sportsmen, it's no longer sport. They are rich men, celebrities, and entertainers. I'd just as soon watch the Upper Pakenham Yabbies.