What Goes Around

Last Thursday morning my phone rang, just before I was about to go to do a small gardening job for a friend.

"Hi Carey, it's Kate. You said a while back you could get me a daphne plant if I wanted one. Do you have one?"

"Yes, I've got one here Kate. I'll drop it around later today."

"How much do you want for it?"

"For you, nothing. It's a present."

"Oh come on why would you do that?"

"Because I like you."

I have been friends with Kate for nearly 20 years. She and her her friend Chris were good friends of my old friend Ida who died some ten years ago. Chris died a few years ago after a short cancer battle.
Kate would be well into her seventies, and has lived in Gembrook all her life. I did a signpost article on her a few years back.

I finished my gardening job and after a think about it I decided I didn't want to give Kate the daphne I had in a pot at home. It was one I struck myself about 18 months ago from some cuttings I put in, and it was the only one that took, out of a batch of about twenty or thirty cuttings. Talking later to my friend Huit, who had propagated daphnes and sold them at the market for decades, I learned that the soil I used was way too heavy which is why I had such a poor strike. I repeated the exercise last summer with Huit's advice and all the cuttings seem to have taken but these are too small to give to Kate. About a year ago Huit brought around two trays of his cuttings for me to look after while he was OS for about a month. He was grateful for me looking after them and told me he would give me some plants later in return for me me looking after them for him while he was away, hence my offer to Kate, knowing I was to get some daphne plants when they were ready.

So I went round to Huit's house. I hadn't seen him for about six months. I had a cup of coffee with Huit and his wife. They are dear friends. They told me they were a little concerned that Huit was suffering loss of memory and had an appointment booked for the next day to investigate it. I asked Huit if he had a couple of daphnes I could buy, thinking he would give me a couple in return for my favour of a year ago. he said yes and he showed me two lovely plants and asked me what I thought they were worth. I said I don't know I was happy to give him what he wanted.

Huit said, "Is $15 too much?"

"Not at all," was my my reply. I parted with $30, thinking well you win some and you lose some, I had left it too long and Huit had forgotten about me looking after the cuttings and our arrangement.

I went round to Kate's and gave her one of them and took the other one home, now having two to plant including my own.

Next day I was busy with various things in the morning, then before I got about my picking, I thought I'd go down to a neighbour's place and have a look at some wood that she, Bronwyn, said I could have when I bumped into her at the post office a month or so ago. I had forgotten about this and had been scrounging wood here and there the last couple of weeks along the roadside to get through to the end of winter. It has been a long cold winter and we've had the open fire going every night for months. This lady is relatively new resident, I met her when I used to walk every morning, she was jogging often, and I learned she had come from Wales after meeting and marrying an Aussie at the Master's games somewhere in Europe. Her husband was an ex VFA footballer who was a top middle distance runner after football and they clicked at first meeting. At that time, two or three years ago, she told me they had some wood they wanted removed and I took it and gave them some honey. At our meeting a couple of of months ago at the Post office she asked me how the bees were going and I explained I'd got out of it really but helped a lady with hers and gave her some Gembrook honey that Leanne had given me from our recent extract, and she followed up with with the offer for me to come and see if the wood was of any use.

The wood was perfect for my needs, good dry wattle to compliment the little remaining big eucy logs I have left. I put five barrows of it in the van, it was quite a long way from the back of the property to where I could park. Bronwyn's husband David (Sheehan) was home and came out and we talked. I remembered him well, he played for Dandenong in the VFA from 1967 into the 1970's, in the halcyon days of the VFA when it was televised live on Sundays after World of Sport. It was top football and entertainment and the competition was tough and brutal between Dandy, Port Melbourne, Preston and Sandringham and others. There's plenty more wood there, and David said if I ring him and arrange a time he'll put it in his trailer and bring it around with his tractor to the front to put straight in my van. How good is that?

I left there and drove down to another friend's place down Collie road. He has several daphne bushes down towards the bottom of a gully that I have picked flowers from for a few years. Sometimes the frost spoils the flowers as it falls heavy down the gully. But not this year, despite the cold and wet there's been little frost. My daphne is all picked out but this comes later because of the cold site. I picked 12 bunches, to follow the 20 each of the last couple of weeks and some blue gum and banksia as well.

It was just one of those good days when all falls into place. While I was a bit miffed at parting with $30 for Huit's daphnes the previous day I was totally blown away by the goodwill of good people straight after. This is a common thing for me. Generosity is a beautiful thing. The more you give, the more that comes back, sometimes indirectly, sometimes later, but it is a truism.

By the way, after three doctors visits and increasing my cortisone dose (temporarily) on advice, my headache went away and I'm fine and dandy. I know not if the headache was related to the RA or the reduced cortisone dose of a couple of weeks ago. I see the specialist mid September, before which I will have reduced cortisone again and we'll tell him about it and see what he says.