A Rad Moon

As it happened it was Lib's and my 37th wedding anniversary, and it was also a red moon, and for other reason to do with blue moon and eclipse coinciding, a special lunar event.

I did not see much of it, when I went out to check yes the moon was full and large and partially eclipsed but no red colour. Half an hour later it was much the same.

The event made me think of a day last year when I went to my friend Henny's place to pick fuschia and abutilon flowers. I went through her gate and carport and as I went across to her back door Henny greeted me. She was wide eyed and and in obvious high spirits, a beaming smile beneath her jet black curly hair as she said, "I'm so happy."

"That's good Henny, it's a great day for it. Why today are you so happy?"

"It was a rad moon last night."

I didn't understand what she said, thinking she had said it was a rat moon. Henny migrated from Holland in her young days . She has a thick Dutch accent.

"A rat moon?" What happened?"

"A Rad moon," she said. "It was so bright last night I couldn't sleep. I love a full moon. I went for a walk in the garden and made a decision. I went back to the house and got Serge's ashes and spread them in the garden. It made feel wonderful. Our favourite colour was red. I was always going to spread Serge's ashes in a beautiful quiet place but I never found the right place, then last night I realized it was here, in our own backyard. Serge loved the garden, and now he's there."

By this time I had realized that a rad moon was in fact a red moon. I never met Serge, my friendship with Henny began after he had died of cancer some years ago. He was Henny's second husband and she had a deep love for him and talks of him frequently and of how happy they were together. I felt priviledged to hear of Henny's great satisfaction at finally spreading Serge's ashes. The joy of it was infectious.

I did a Signpost article on Henny a few years ago, if I can locate I'll cut and paste it.

My Garden is My Little Paradise

Hendrika Priemus loves working in her garden where she nurtures plants and the soil and is rewarded with food, flower and contentment. After thirty years Henny renovates as need has it and seasons roll by.

She says, “I’m always thinking and planning ahead. There’s nothing better than to go bed at night and run through in my mind the good things I did in the garden, and the next things to do. I grew up on a farm in Holland, and lived on farms after I married. Gardening is my life; my garden is my little paradise.”

Henny’s childhood was on the islands of Zeeland, off the Netherlands coast, with 4 sisters and three brothers. All her dad’s family were orchardists, the fruit going to the main town of Zeiriksee by small steam train. Later Henny went to boarding school on the mainland. On one occasion, on the way home on the ferry at the end of term, she observed something which stayed with her all through her life.

“There was a group of children on the ferry in the care of a teacher, who after a while brought out a container of hot soup. As he filled bowls and gave them out there was one impatient little boy with red hair who kept calling out ‘Me, Me, Me.’ The teacher gave the other children their soup first and made the noisy boy wait till last, then said to him, ‘That is a lesson to you to wait your turn.’ I think of that when I feel impatient. Also it is important to share. You are lucky if you can give. People who can’t give miss out.”

While at boarding school Henny met her first husband, a young man from a big family who worked on a farm in another part of Holland. She was 17 when they married and had two children, a boy and a girl. Her husband was a hard worker and became a farm manager. He was restless and ambitious and believed Australia was a land of opportunity to make riches. Henny was happy in Holland but she agreed to migrate to Australia as a family.

“We went to the migrant camp at Bonegilla in the mid 1960’s. We spoke no English, had no jobs, and had sold almost everything for the passage out. We went to a large sheep station about 50 kilometres from Jerilderie. The house we moved into was filthy and needed hosing out. My daughter was nine and my son four years old. It was like a small village with about 10 workers living there. My husband was a labourer and a good worker, but he got the hard boring work like going out and cutting burrs all day in the heat. His dream crashed. It was a long trip for the school bus and we shopped only every two weeks, it was so far to go. Later we moved onto a smaller farm closer to Jerilderie and were able to shop more often.”

“I grew to love the countryside. It was beautiful, and it was exciting to watch the men with the sheep dogs coming down the road, the dogs darting about rounding up the sheep, the whistling and calling, the noise, the dust. We had kangaroos grazing and lounging around behind the house. We were there 8 years and it was great for the children who thrived and did well at school. I came to love Australia.”

Sadly Henny’s marriage did not endure. She moved to Melbourne with her children, who finished schooling and successfully attended university, while Henny paid rent designing and dressmaking and working in boutiques and antique shops. She had a weekend job in a gallery in Olinda where she stayed overnight. “I called it my holiday job so much did I like it.”

In 1981 she met Serge, her second husband. In 1983 she heard from a jeweller in Olinda that his cousin bought a property in Gembrook. “Where’s Gembrook?” she said.  Soon after she and Serge drove to Gembrook in their VW campervan on a wet July day, stopping in JAC Russell Park. Henny said to Serge, “This is my town.”

As they started home in a storm, Henny saw a ‘For Sale’ sign on the ground in front of a dilapidated bungalow and said, “This is my new address.”

Henny has lived there for more than thirty years. She and Serge did up the bungalow and extended. Serge commuted to Melbourne while Henny worked locally at anything she could find including packing potatoes and cooking for business people. Serge died in 2011 and Henny says her time with Serge was the happiest of her life. “He was a complete gentleman.”

Henny’s daughter Dianne Cevaal is an artist who in 2011 produced a book titled ‘Sentinelles: Watching the World.’ The last paragraph says, “They watch sentinelle over the world, alerting us to things we need to pay heed to, and to messages from which we might learn. They are about the earth because without a healthy earth, life cannot exist. Each creature is precious, each plant is precious, and we need to look after each other.”

The words could apply to Henny and her garden.

Good Timing

I just rang my friend Glen to arrange a time next week to come and prune his abutilons. I pick flowers from these bushes, also known as Chinese lanterns, through the winter and early spring when demand for them is strong. Glen has 5 different colours,orange,yellow, white, pale pink and deep pink, and being able to pick them a quantity in one place is a great help. They are quite rampant growers and because Glen does not prune them when I need the flowers they become large and unruly and there's much pruinings to cart away when they are eventually cut back, which it suits me to do now when demand is light.

Glen, who keeps rainfall records, told me we had 12mm yesterday and 12mm following that last night. How good is that? Just when things had dried out a bit and perfect timing for our vegie garden. Yesterday I planted out some green button squash and sowed some broccollini and silverbeet into seed boxes for planting out late summer early autumn hopefully to grow vigourously in autumn and produce lovely greens through the winter without bolting to seed.

I'm going out to Marguerita's this arvo to see if the tomatoes need more tying up on the stakes. I'll need to do this before Lib and I go away for a few days shortly to Lakes Entrance for our annual pilgrimage to feel the sand beneath our feet and breathe the ocean air. We have worked hard since our holiday to West Australia last July and I have not sighted the sea since. I am longing for it.

I attended Joyce Begg's funeral last Thursday in Pakenham. Joyce was a good friend who showed me generosity and kindness over many years. Ditto her husband Laurie. Joyce lived nearly all her life in Gembrook until the last couple of years when her battle with Parkinson's neccessitated she move into a care facility. They had 2 daughters and 8 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren. It was moving for me to see them all participate in the service and see the photo tribute to Joyce's life on the screen while the songs "Wonderful Copenhagen" and "Some Enchanted Evening" played. Beautiful.

I once did a 'Signpost' profile on Laurie and Joyce. If I can find it I'll include it here.

Laurie Begg started at Gembrook Primary School in 1941 after moving to Gembrook from Glen Waverley when he was eleven years old. His father purchased the propety 'Sunnybank', 120 acres on the Beenak Rd. It was at school that he first met Joyce Huxtable who was a few years younger than he but destined to become his wife some 12 years later.

Laurie and his sister walked to and from school most days and it was not unusual to see snakes. Old Mr Mentaplay often sat on a stump across the road from his house on the Morbey Road corner. The kids would stop and talk to him and wonder at the ants, jumping jacks and bullants as well as little black ants, that crawled all over him but seemed not to bother him at all. "He was a friendly old bloke and loved to tell us stories. We used to call Mrs Mentaplay a 'snake charmer'. Everywhere she went she found snakes and was forever killing them."

"Sometimes neighbour Jim Fry would pick us up coming home in his Armstrong Sideley motor car, which had a gas producer as petrol was in short supply during World War 11. He'd turn his engine off about 100 metres from his garage and roll the last bit, coming to a stop right in the garage, such was his good judgement at knowing what speed to be going and when to cut the engine with precision."

Laurie left school after merit year at age 14 to work on the family farm which included poultry sheds. He had brothers away in the army and there was plenty of work to do on the farm.

"My job was to look after the chooks. We'd get about 30 dozen eggs a day and we'd send them down to the egg board on Puffing Billy two or three times a week. We packed them carefully but the cheques that came from the Egg Board never tallied with what we sent, there were always deductions for breakages or bloodspots or double yolks. Dad grew spuds as well, and cabbages and carrots. We milked two or three cows and supplied neighbours with milk.

Joyce grew up on a dairy farm on the Pakenham Road corner where the community complex now stands. Her parents milked ten cows twice a day by hand and her father Robert Huxtable delivered milk on pushbike around the town.

Joyce recalls that on school holidays and weekends she'd go with him. "He had piece of timber fitted across the handlebars with a four gallon milk can on each side and he'd dink me too. I'd run in and bring the container to be filled from the house, whatever the householder had left out. On my school days he'd do it all himself. He also sent milk out to the mills on the tramlines."

Joyce left school and started work in 1947 at the telephone exchange where she worked into the night. She has interesting recollections of finishing work and walking back home past the pub during potato digging when the population increased with seasonal workers.

Laurie's father sold 'Sunnybank' after the war and moved to Thorpedale to grow spuds. Laurie didn't stay there long before moving to Springvale where he worked as  barman for a time before going to Queensland with mates and working at a sugar mill in Mackay for a few years. His sister Nancy had maintained friendship with Joyce so on moving back to Victoria Laurie and Joyce reacquainted. They married in Febuary 1953, and lived in Springvale where Laurie worked in a timber yard. They moved back to Gembrook in 1956. Laurie worked as a tree feller for three or four years, mostly for Jim and Kevin Williams.

Later Laurie worked at 'The Crest' for Ray Chandler where he maintained the garden and grew cut flowers for Chandler's florist shop in Malvern. Foliage, daffodils, liliums, boronia, and lily of the valley were sent by bus and train and Chandler would come up on the weekend and take a load back on Sunday.

This, as well stints on market gardens at Berwick and working on a big garden at Dromana instilled in Laurie a keen interest in plants and propogation, culminating in the Larneuk nursey in Gembrook for many years. Laurie worked as head gardener at the Rhodedendron Gardens at Olinda for some of this time while Joyce manned the nursery during the week.

Laurie began planting out stock plants at the site opposite the kindergarten where they now live and they moved there when they retired fourteen years ago. Their wonderful garden has been regularly open to the public along with other Gembrook gardens to raise money for the CFA. Laurie and Joyce are most generous in spirit to garden groups and anyone interested in gardening.

They are self taught but have enormous knowledge, in particular with rhododendrons, which are Laurie's special passion. He still does a day a week working at the Rhododendron Gardens as a volunteer.

Laurie and Joyce have two daughters, eight grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.    

   

The Year 2018 to Date

There's a quiet feeling of confidence I hold for the year 2018 which has not diminished in the ten days to this date.

I had a minor setback yesterday when I reversed my car in Meredith's driveway and hit a retaining wall post that bent the plastic fender and hooked under it. Aware that I hit it, but unaware it was hooked, I quickly drove forward and the fender ripped off on the driver's side, to be hanging loose and damaged. I taped it up so it didn't flap as I drove and do more damage, if not fall off and drag on the road. Maybe up to $1000 to repair is my guess, not worth claiming insurance because of the excess but I won't know till I get a quote.

Sadly I was only there because a new customer turned up wanting elder flowers on a day I wouldn't normally have been there. I have been picking elder flowers along the creek below Meredith and Roger's house where they grow wild a couple of times a week lately as the restaurant demand for these has escalated. I was in a bit of a hurry as I had to pick some beech at the farm before taking my whipper snipper and a mower to a good repairman in Ferntree Gully. It was my first opportunity to do that since the Christmas break, and this after a vet visit for Pip in the the morning (annual parvo/ heartworm shots, anal gland clean) in Gembrook and mowing Mrs Pepi's lawns and spraying her lengthy street drain. A busy day but then they always seem to be that way.

It's upsetting to damage the van like that through my own error, but if that's the worst misfortune for the year I should not be overly concerned. It's a long time since I've had a collision with another vehicle and yet I have had numerous near misses with idiots transgressing to the wrong side of the road cutting corners, turning without indicators, and speeding up behind me on wet roads, trucks included. Cars collide all the time sustaining severe damage, killing and maiming passengers and drivers. No. I musn't be too worried by a bit of cosmetic damage.

In the nine finished days this year I have been busy for all, except last Saturday when I hid inside due to the 40C+ temperatures until the late afternoon when I went out and watered and potted on 40 variegated pittosporum tubes into pots, and some variegated box cuttings. My other days have been spent picking beech for florists, elder flowers for restaurants, rosemary-I had a big order last week for a wedding, weeding 'the vegie garden' -it is more herbs than vegies eg basil dill coriander- slashing grass with the whipper, and last Monday finally getting to begin the annual crawl through thickets and fencelines cutting and painting blackberries. The wood splitting of the bigger rounds of firewood to dry out is ahead of me in the next few weeks and should have been well underway by now but has not yet started.

I have also been occupied peparing and planting out pumpkins where the broad beans were at Marguerita's. The pumpkins I sowed in pots about five weeks ago. Tying up the tomatoes is time consuming, there's about fifty of them and they grow quickly.

This work is all pleasant really, the worst of it is when people want things in a hurry or at short notice. The flies crawling up your nose and in your eyes when your hands are busy is not fun, neither is the pounding sun when you are looking up picking beech but these are minor difficulties compared to the plight of many.

Another quote from Khalil Gibran -

"For to be idle is to become a stranger to the seasons, and to step out of life's procession that marches in majesty, in proud submission towards the infinite."

Thought for The Day

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

 Khalil Gibran