I Wish

Three times only this September I've walked early in light rain. With 26 days done it's looking unlikely there'll be more, although the forecast is for showers over the next few days. Often when they say that it doesn't happen. The rain we did have was most welcome after a drier than usual August but it was light rain only. I think about 30 ml for the month so far, if that. We haven't had the heavy spring rain we need. Oh, for a wet October.
Despite the dry, gardens are blooming marvellous. Cherrys are in flower and apples are breaking. Oaks are getting new leaves, as are liquid ambers, elms are flowering thier lovely pale green, pines have their soft light finger shoots. The spud farmers are out rotary hoeing their recently poughed paddocks. If your view of the world was restricted to my walk, without regard to the water levels of the reservoirs or the plight of croppers and irrigators in places less fortunate, you'd think we lived in a lush green paradise.
But if rain doesn't come soon, we're in for a long, horrible summer, with dwindling water supplies to keep new plantings alive. This is scary. Lib's sister Pat rang from Bendigo on the weekend and said it's like a desert there. Many farmers are going to the wall after good autumn rains gave hope and optimism.
Oh, for a wet October.

September Action

I've never seen the forsythia flower so brilliantly. A blaze of bright yellow, 8 feet high and the same across, it has lit up the garden for the last 3 weeks. Spectacular. It's the one with the larger flower, that flowers after the smaller flowered type, and holds back longer shooting leaves. We first acquired it taking cuttings from a plant at 'Blossoms' old place in Emerald. Good old 'Bloss' knew her ecka.
And I don't think I've ever seen the camellias flower so abundantly. It really has been a wonderful spring show. The stachyurus and the magnolias were magnificent. The air is now filled with the scent of sweet pittosporum blossom and the buds on the dogwoods and lilacs are swelling. They're heavily budded and I anticipate another great show, one of the early white dogwoods is already showing.
I had a look at the bees on Saturday. They were doing well, good strong doubles full of bees and hatching brood, drones included. Given that drones take 24 days to hatch from the laying of the egg, the queens must have thought things were shaping up well during that burst of warm sunny weather in the second half of August. I put a third box on each to give them more room.
Yesterday I was busy cutting back the lemon and lime trees, and I cut out the grapefruit altogether. One fruit in all these years and nothing last year isn't good enough. I planted a group of 11 daphnes where they'll get morning sun and afternoon shade and mowed most of the grass.
As for the footy, next Saturday Geelong and Port Adelaide will slug it out for premierhip glory. It's all the talk. Geelong are strong favourites. Tonight it's Brownlow Medal night. Lib asked me to put $20 on Port's Chad Cornes which I did on the computer (I have an account with Lasseter's Sports and also Centrebet) at 7 to 1 so I'm hoping he wins.
Silvan beat Woori Yallock in the grand final of the local footy and I also notice the Wangaratta Magpies beat Nth. Albury, to take out it's first OM flag since 1976. I watched that game at the Wang showgrounds 31 years ago, when I lived there. Twinkle toed captain Des Steele danced his way up and down the ground at his ballerina best as they triumphed over arch rivals Wang Rovers.

When I Woke Up This Morning

I woke at 6.00 am, becoming aware my hand was on my penis. A male thing, I guess. It was reassuringly warm and plumpish. That first ever 'limp experience' recently was nothing to worry about, surely. I thought of September 35 years ago, at Puckapunyal, in the first weeks of national service training, where at 0530 some oafish buffoon NCO would come stomping through the hut, polished boots cracking on polished linoleum, yelling "PARADE 8, PARADE 8, HANDS OFF THE COCKS AND ON WITH THE SOCKS." It was freezing most mornings, the night seeming to have disappeared in two seconds. A wattlebird annoyed one recruit, waking him every morning with raucous 'chokking' outside his window, well before reveille. A flowering callistomen drew the bird to that spot each dawn.
I could hear the dogs playing on the lawn. Old 'Snowie' and young 'Pippa' get on well now and start early, romping around on the back lawn behind our bedroom window. It was the play growl I could hear, they running up and down competing to bite each other on the neck. Through this noise Mr. and Mrs. Whippy called to each other. Yes, our eastern whipbirds are back, not seen yet this season but heard daily, loud and clear. It's a wonderful sound on a Sunday morning, when you don't have to get up immediately. I lay snug and warm listening to the whipbirds, the wattlebirds, bellbirds, currawongs, magpies, blackbirds, and others I could not distinguish that made up the full concert.
On my walk I saw Harry talking to another man near the top of the hill on the main road. I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks, and being Sunday I knew he was on his way back from the cemetery, where he visits his son's grave. His son died in a truck accident some 20 years ago. As he broke from talking to the other man and started walking towards me I could tell all wasn't well with him as his gait was slow and restricted.
He greeted me warmly, and I asked him how did the funeral go. Last time we spoke he told me a friend's wife had died of leukemia. He said it was sad, and added that he went to another funeral last week, that of Lettie from Station Rd. He said that was Heinz he was talking to just now, Lettie's husband. The first funeral was for a wife of one of Harry's 'Club 52', which is the group that has met regularly over 55 years, having migrated to Australia by ship in 1952. Of the 30 or so men originally in the club, seventeen have died, 3 are widowers, and there are 8 widows who attend. "There are a lot of funerals these days", he said.
Lettie and Heinz were not members of Club 52 but Harry knew them well. Lettie had bone cancer for 13 years and was the Peter McCallum clinic's longest serving patient. She regularly had chemo to keep the cancer under control but the treatment caused a blood clot in her stomach and despite an operation, she died.
A cold breeze was blowing, Harry said he'd better keep moving, he had a crook back, which explained his stilted walking. As we parted I said how good it was lying in this morning listening to the birds. Harry said he listened to them too and he loves to hear them when he wakes.

What a Week!

It started badly last Monday morning. I noticed my neighbours' burning heap still smouldering as I went for my walk. They'd burnt off on the weekend on the burnsite on Bond's lane, taking advantage of the dry weather. It'd been a good burn, with just an old stump now flickering flame with a gust of wind. There was plenty of heat still in the ashes so I decided to drag my prunings from the fruit trees onto it after breakfast.
This done I went off to pick camellia bunches at Keith's and Huite's and returned before lunch to stoke the fire, that is, throw in sticks that fall outside the fire into the middle. Somehow while doing this a sharp stick burning at one end must have caught as I was throwing in an armful. The hot end stabbed me in the soft inner part of the right upper arm, below the bicep. Painful? Yes.
After lunch the bee stung me in the left eyebrow so the rest of the day was less than comfortable as I worked cutting laurel from the top of Steve's hedge, straining feet and lower legs balancing on the ladder, and hands, upper arms and shoulders reaching and twisting to bring the prunings down with the pole cutters. It was warm and windy, I forgot to take a drink and soon had a fierce thirst. I was buggered by the end of the day. It was in the bath later that my eye swelled up as a reaction to the bee sting.
Tuesday morning I was OK, if not full bottle. It was picking at Huite's again that I first didn't feel well. He was following me around, talking, and annoying me without meaning to. I had no energy. Huite suggested I look at his plum tree which was about to flower and his pieris bush at the back of the shed. I kept polite, despite wanting only to get out of there, and pushed on and picked the plum blossom and the pieris. It was a tough couple of hours. The rest of the day was the same, I dragged myself through at slow pace.
The nature of my ill feeling revealed itself that night. Gastric flu. I was sore all over and crook in the guts. Most of Wednesday I spent in bed, till I had to get up to meet the bloke the council was providing to help me the next day. Thursday was the big tree planting day in Nobelius Park. There were many hiccups. Some trees delivered were the wrong trees, some meant to be delivered at 1.00pm came at three, my helper had to leave before three so it was a long hard day. All the while the wind blew angrily, and being so dry lately made watering important. Friday I felt much better but crashed again in the evening and was crook in bed again Saturday. Sunday things picked up and I did some mowing.
Noone else in the house had the gastric flu. I'm suspicious that the bee sting had some influence. Perhaps all my antibodies went to fight the bee sting, leaving me vulnerable to the other thing. It's nice to be recovered now, and reflect that the week from hell I endured was better than being stung in the chest by a stingray barb. Steve Irwin died a year ago.