The road and the town were quieter than usual this morning, even for a Sunday. Perhaps people were getting mum breakfast in bed for mother's day or getting ready to go out later for lunch with relatives. I'll have the quietness anytime. The sky was grey and the air still, enough autumn colour yet to set an interesting scene.
I've been impressed this year by the autumn foliage on the beech trees. We have 6 young ones at home, about thirty at the farm, and there are quite a few scattered around Emerald, including a number in Nobelius Park. A mature copper beech there at the bottom of the driveway is a superb example of the graceful majesty of this tree, perhaps the best I've seen.
I won't be seeing my mother today. Our family has never put much store on mother's day, other than dealing with the frantic week it causes work wise, as the florists are busy and our customers require twice or more what they normally buy in the week prior. But during the week I gave mum a couple of ox tails from the butcher as a mother's day gesture. Never one to bother much with cooking, Elvie has soft spot for ox tail stew and is quick to have a pot on the stove slowly cooking the oxies and vegies.
Ox tails, flower posies, and beech trees always will connect my thoughts to Elvie. Ox tails because it's a treat we've shared in recent years, and posies and beech trees because for almost as long as I remember she has worked with them. In childhood I remember Elvie cutting copper beech foliage for her florist shop from a tree in the Forster's garden in Mt.Waverley. Graeme 'Bubsy' Forster was my best mate in the last year of primary school and the early years of secondary school. His parents Bill and Ethel, who both died of cancer in the late 1970's, were warm generous souls happy to have their tree pruned as beech trees do grow big and love to be cut. Elvie had another tree in High St. Rd. just east of Warrigal Rd. and another in Malvern in the garden of her butcher, Mr Eames. These trees she used as back up when her weekly supply from the growers fell short.
In my mid teens I worked in Elvie's shop for a few weeks after school finished for the year, to earn some dollars, before Christmas, while the shop was busy. I was of course a junior assistant in the shop with duties like keeping the floor swept while the florists were busy putting together arrangements and wreaths etc, washing vases, making tea, answering the phone, running errands, doing up the bank, typing up accounts, and sorting the foliage that came in from growers, some of it of course beech in all its summer glory. It was my favourite task, tidying and splitting the stems and arranging the foliage in large urns of water up against the the back wall of the shop display. Mr.Peterson came down each week with his foliage from Mt. Macedon and Henry Kowalski came from his garden at 'Blue Haze' at Emerald. Henry called in on his way back from the market and by this time, still early in the day, he often smelled of strong liquor. Who would have thought at the time, that twenty years later I would become good friends with Henry's wife. Henry died many years ago but 'Blossom' remains a dear friend to this day.
I believe beech, oaks and sweet chestnuts are of the same family, the royal family of the broadleaves. If the sturdy oak is the king, the beech is the queen. It has a feminine grace and charm, almost daintiness, unusual in big trees. The bark is smooth and fresh and the foliage at any time has richness in colour and texture. In autumn it gleams rich, golden, yellow and brown.
My tree of the week, on mother's day, copper, green or purple, is the beech. Fagus sylvatica. Any desire I have to visit Europe, it would be foremost to see the beech forests of Buckinghamshire and Normandy.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Belvedere Estate
Speaking of Monterey pines as I was on 15th April, it's topical to tell you that several large ones along Station Street. bordering Bill Parker's paddock have been removed this week. Of couse it's not Bill Parkers paddock at all now, he sold it last year. It's the Belvedere Estate.
I wonder where the name 'Belvedere' came from? It sounds odd to me, but then I've never really been into estate names.
It's with some relief that I can answer my own question, the relief because I've discovered the name 'Belvedere' is from historical source and not some market driven attempt to sound sophisticated. I had a look at Bill Parker's book, 'Forest to Farming, Gembrook: an early history'. I quote from Bill's book, written in 1995.
"By the time I was of school age we had moved into the heart of Gembrook township. My older brother, at the age of 23, bought the 6 and 3/4 acre propery 'Belvedere' in Station Street just up from the Puffing Billy railway station. I eventually inherited and still own this property."
Bill told me once, I was picking holly before Christmas along his boundary with the school, that he'd planted those pine trees from cones in his youth. He told me the year but I can't remember, but as Bill was born in 1914, I'd say the 1920's. There's a picture of a timber cottage, "'Belvedere', my home" in his book, taken in 1942, so there was a residence there.
I walked along Station Street this morning. The giant 80 year old pines were gone. A huge bonfire burned in the middle of the paddock as an excavator worked noisily where the pines had been, digging stumps and roots and levelling. For good measure my holly trees had also gone. I've picked holly for Christmas orders there for nearly twenty years so I'll have to find another source. Not that I sell a lot of holly these days, the demand having steadily declined.
There are 17 blocks of land selling in 'Belvedere Estate'. Most are a quarter acre with some larger. Prices start at $150,000 and rise to $180,000 or more. Someone told me Bill sold the land for $870,000 so if you do the sums the blocks will bring over $3 million. I think the developer will make a handsome profit, there being only one road to be built up the middle of the estate to provide access.
Other than me, no one will mourn the loss of the hollies, they are regarded as an environmental weed. Same for the pines. I'll miss them too, just for their size and strong dark prescence. So will the black cockatoos who loved to roost there and feed on the cones.
I wonder where the name 'Belvedere' came from? It sounds odd to me, but then I've never really been into estate names.
It's with some relief that I can answer my own question, the relief because I've discovered the name 'Belvedere' is from historical source and not some market driven attempt to sound sophisticated. I had a look at Bill Parker's book, 'Forest to Farming, Gembrook: an early history'. I quote from Bill's book, written in 1995.
"By the time I was of school age we had moved into the heart of Gembrook township. My older brother, at the age of 23, bought the 6 and 3/4 acre propery 'Belvedere' in Station Street just up from the Puffing Billy railway station. I eventually inherited and still own this property."
Bill told me once, I was picking holly before Christmas along his boundary with the school, that he'd planted those pine trees from cones in his youth. He told me the year but I can't remember, but as Bill was born in 1914, I'd say the 1920's. There's a picture of a timber cottage, "'Belvedere', my home" in his book, taken in 1942, so there was a residence there.
I walked along Station Street this morning. The giant 80 year old pines were gone. A huge bonfire burned in the middle of the paddock as an excavator worked noisily where the pines had been, digging stumps and roots and levelling. For good measure my holly trees had also gone. I've picked holly for Christmas orders there for nearly twenty years so I'll have to find another source. Not that I sell a lot of holly these days, the demand having steadily declined.
There are 17 blocks of land selling in 'Belvedere Estate'. Most are a quarter acre with some larger. Prices start at $150,000 and rise to $180,000 or more. Someone told me Bill sold the land for $870,000 so if you do the sums the blocks will bring over $3 million. I think the developer will make a handsome profit, there being only one road to be built up the middle of the estate to provide access.
Other than me, no one will mourn the loss of the hollies, they are regarded as an environmental weed. Same for the pines. I'll miss them too, just for their size and strong dark prescence. So will the black cockatoos who loved to roost there and feed on the cones.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Grace
I had a cup of coffee with Grace yesterday, after picking bunches of bay foliage from a tree in her yard. I've picked there for 20 years, well before Grace moved into the house some years ago, when a son, concerned that she had too far to walk as she was by then in her mid 80's, bought a house in the main street close to the shops and bus stop.
Come Anzac Day next Friday, Grace will have lived in Gembrook for 66 years. She arrived on Anzac Day 1942, by train and bus from Melbourne. Her husband was in the army in the Middle East and Grace did not feel safe in Prahran where she rented a couple of rooms and lived with her three children aged 6, 4 and a half, and 18 months. The Japanese Imperial Forces were moving south, bombing their way through South East Asia, it was a time of great anxiety.
Grace asked the army where could she could go. Someone suggested Gembrook and she found accomodation sharing a house on Mt. Eirene Rd. She was to meet the people with whom she was to share the house at a specified time at the Gembrook terminal. There was a delay at Ferntree Gully station getting the pusher and luggage from the guard's van, causing her to miss the bus. She could have caught the narrow gauge steam train but opted to catch the bus as arranged, having already paid for the tickets. She waited three hours for the next bus. The kids were hungry, the shops were shut for the public holiday.
When she and the kids eventually climbed from the bus in Gembrook late in the day there was nobody to meet them. She asked directions and started walking, the oldest child taking the pusher while Grace carried the bags. It was a walk of perhaps four miles on rough gravel roads. Darkness enveloped them, there was no alternative but to keep walking toward the light in the distance which she hoped was 'her house'. She recalls the difficulty of this day every Anzac Day.
Grace settled well in Gembrook. She remembers in subsequent years taking the kids to school in a spring cart drawn by an old draught horse. She'd wait for the mail to be sorted then head back, often it being nearly midday by the time she reached the house, such was the slowness of the old horse.
In all the time he was in the army, Grace's husband sent not one letter, despite her writing regularly. He returned from the Middle east, and was posted to Queensland, but absconded regularly to come home, so there was little army pay. Grace says of him that he was a funny bloke, he became alcoholic an died reasonably young riddled with cancer. They had nine children in all, although one died within a month. Grace managed to find work in Gembrook and supported her own large family. She worked in the post office for a long time and was there when we moved here 28 years ago.
Grace never owned a car or home, paying rent for her lodging. In her retirement one of her sons who has done well in business has paid her rent, and now owns the house where she lives. Her children and grandchildren visit regularly and she talks of them constantly. As we drank coffee yesterday she spoke joyously of her most recent great grand child, a girl born at Easter two months prem. and weighing less than 1 kg. The dear little thing, not long ago on expressed mother's milk of 1 ml every hour, is doing well and should be leaving hospital soon.
Grace, who turns 93 this year, was shattered a couple of years ago when one of her sons died of bowel cancer. Nearly succumbing to the grief, she's slowly regained much of her spirit and I enjoy my talks with her, she being so willing to share her stories with honesty not commonly found.
Come Anzac Day next Friday, Grace will have lived in Gembrook for 66 years. She arrived on Anzac Day 1942, by train and bus from Melbourne. Her husband was in the army in the Middle East and Grace did not feel safe in Prahran where she rented a couple of rooms and lived with her three children aged 6, 4 and a half, and 18 months. The Japanese Imperial Forces were moving south, bombing their way through South East Asia, it was a time of great anxiety.
Grace asked the army where could she could go. Someone suggested Gembrook and she found accomodation sharing a house on Mt. Eirene Rd. She was to meet the people with whom she was to share the house at a specified time at the Gembrook terminal. There was a delay at Ferntree Gully station getting the pusher and luggage from the guard's van, causing her to miss the bus. She could have caught the narrow gauge steam train but opted to catch the bus as arranged, having already paid for the tickets. She waited three hours for the next bus. The kids were hungry, the shops were shut for the public holiday.
When she and the kids eventually climbed from the bus in Gembrook late in the day there was nobody to meet them. She asked directions and started walking, the oldest child taking the pusher while Grace carried the bags. It was a walk of perhaps four miles on rough gravel roads. Darkness enveloped them, there was no alternative but to keep walking toward the light in the distance which she hoped was 'her house'. She recalls the difficulty of this day every Anzac Day.
Grace settled well in Gembrook. She remembers in subsequent years taking the kids to school in a spring cart drawn by an old draught horse. She'd wait for the mail to be sorted then head back, often it being nearly midday by the time she reached the house, such was the slowness of the old horse.
In all the time he was in the army, Grace's husband sent not one letter, despite her writing regularly. He returned from the Middle east, and was posted to Queensland, but absconded regularly to come home, so there was little army pay. Grace says of him that he was a funny bloke, he became alcoholic an died reasonably young riddled with cancer. They had nine children in all, although one died within a month. Grace managed to find work in Gembrook and supported her own large family. She worked in the post office for a long time and was there when we moved here 28 years ago.
Grace never owned a car or home, paying rent for her lodging. In her retirement one of her sons who has done well in business has paid her rent, and now owns the house where she lives. Her children and grandchildren visit regularly and she talks of them constantly. As we drank coffee yesterday she spoke joyously of her most recent great grand child, a girl born at Easter two months prem. and weighing less than 1 kg. The dear little thing, not long ago on expressed mother's milk of 1 ml every hour, is doing well and should be leaving hospital soon.
Grace, who turns 93 this year, was shattered a couple of years ago when one of her sons died of bowel cancer. Nearly succumbing to the grief, she's slowly regained much of her spirit and I enjoy my talks with her, she being so willing to share her stories with honesty not commonly found.
Monday, April 21, 2008
20/20 Summit
There was 'something in the air' this morning. Thunderclap Newman's hit record of the seventies would have been an appropriate anthem for the weekend talkfest. Let's hope something comes of it. I've heard nothing impressive so far, and nothing about rescuing the environment and teaching average Australians about their surrounding flora and fauna and living in harmony with it. If the mud splattered four wheel drive vehicle convoys and trailbikes around Gembrook at the weekend are an indication, there's a long way to go.
The air was cold and misty and perfectly still. To this walker, recovering from three days of gastric flu, it was like an injection of life straight into the vein. Smoke from the DSE/CFA controlled burns mingled with the freshness, bringing a little of the bush. I was breathing fine particles of incinerated understory and the charred bodies of thousands of lizards, echidnas, possums and birds and insects, sacrificed to improve the bush and make it firesafe.
I was so thankful that I felt well again. I worked through the acute stage of my flu on Friday, pumped full of painkillers. We had a busy day, due to Jewish passover I think. I had an order for 50 bunches of pin oak foliage as well as other extras above normal. I climbed a tree at the farm which showed good autumn colour and took off the entire top half to get the fifty bunches. Such exertion when you're crook knocks you about, I was in bed dosed up at 7.30pm without any dinner.
Saturday I'd set to work through the bees to prepare them for winter, the weather forecast being for a fine warm day. I took off five boxes sort of half full of honey and pollen and pinched the head of the failing queen of the poorest hive and united it with the hive which was the swarm I caught in the cemetery in December, leaving me four doubles of reasonable strength going in to winter. By days end I'd extracted the honey, about 40/45 kg.
Lib worked yesterday, so after she left at 6.30am I worked on the vegies for our roast chicken dinner and chopped up swede, carrot, onion, celery, parsnip, garlic and herbs for a spag sauce. I walked for an hour, then browned one kg of mince, sealed the vegies with a minute or two in a hot frypan, and put it all in the crockpot with tomatoe paste, a tin of tomatoes and three chopped home grown to cook on low for 10 hours. I make a helluva good spag sauce.
The boys and I left in Gord's car for the footy before midday to catch the start of the Melb/Carlton match at 1.10pm (oddly). It was a spirited contest when Melbourne hit the front early in the second term. At that point I had to find a toilet and when I returned ten minutes later Carlton was six goals in front. We left at three quarter time, eight goals down.
The smoke seems to have cleared a bit now now, as I look out the window at the currawongs having their annual feast in the fig tree. A few months ago I talked to one of the full time CFA blokes who does much of the burning about here in the autumn. I asked him what was the status of sweet pittosporum in terms of fire hazard, when I was researching a response to the council's war on this tree. He wasn't sure which it was at first but when I described it and explained its commonality he said "Oh yeah, that's really hard to burn, its full of moisture and very little grows under it to provide heat in a burn to get it going."
"Why burn it then. Why not cut it out with a chainsaw and paint the stump with roundup."
"No, that'd be too hard in the bush, easier to get a really hot fire going and get rid of it."
He continued to explain the merit of regularly burning the under growth to generate vigourous new green growth of indigenous flora, to the benefit of wildlife species in the surrounding areas which have new unoccupied habitat to move into. I could see his point, but asked him doesn't the fire also cause the sweet pittopurum to vigourously regenerate, it being a native although not indigenous to this area.
"Yes it does, but we send DSE teams in to spray the regrowth with weedicide so we select what comes back."
I'm not convinced that the management pracices in all this are ideal. It's too hard to root out sweet pittosporums manually in the 21st century with the aid off chainsaws, power winches and weedicide but our predecessors cleared vast areas of native forest with axes, crosscut saws and bullocks in a short space of time. The only sure thing at the moment is that every autumn there's a pall of smoke hanging for up to weeks on end, and a lot preserved DSE/CFA salaries paid on this dog chasing it's tail management. Maybe we should be looking to fire resistant species like sweet pittosporum to grow as protective belts for towns and houses and farm buildings.
I can only hope that something comes of the 20/20 summit.
The air was cold and misty and perfectly still. To this walker, recovering from three days of gastric flu, it was like an injection of life straight into the vein. Smoke from the DSE/CFA controlled burns mingled with the freshness, bringing a little of the bush. I was breathing fine particles of incinerated understory and the charred bodies of thousands of lizards, echidnas, possums and birds and insects, sacrificed to improve the bush and make it firesafe.
I was so thankful that I felt well again. I worked through the acute stage of my flu on Friday, pumped full of painkillers. We had a busy day, due to Jewish passover I think. I had an order for 50 bunches of pin oak foliage as well as other extras above normal. I climbed a tree at the farm which showed good autumn colour and took off the entire top half to get the fifty bunches. Such exertion when you're crook knocks you about, I was in bed dosed up at 7.30pm without any dinner.
Saturday I'd set to work through the bees to prepare them for winter, the weather forecast being for a fine warm day. I took off five boxes sort of half full of honey and pollen and pinched the head of the failing queen of the poorest hive and united it with the hive which was the swarm I caught in the cemetery in December, leaving me four doubles of reasonable strength going in to winter. By days end I'd extracted the honey, about 40/45 kg.
Lib worked yesterday, so after she left at 6.30am I worked on the vegies for our roast chicken dinner and chopped up swede, carrot, onion, celery, parsnip, garlic and herbs for a spag sauce. I walked for an hour, then browned one kg of mince, sealed the vegies with a minute or two in a hot frypan, and put it all in the crockpot with tomatoe paste, a tin of tomatoes and three chopped home grown to cook on low for 10 hours. I make a helluva good spag sauce.
The boys and I left in Gord's car for the footy before midday to catch the start of the Melb/Carlton match at 1.10pm (oddly). It was a spirited contest when Melbourne hit the front early in the second term. At that point I had to find a toilet and when I returned ten minutes later Carlton was six goals in front. We left at three quarter time, eight goals down.
The smoke seems to have cleared a bit now now, as I look out the window at the currawongs having their annual feast in the fig tree. A few months ago I talked to one of the full time CFA blokes who does much of the burning about here in the autumn. I asked him what was the status of sweet pittosporum in terms of fire hazard, when I was researching a response to the council's war on this tree. He wasn't sure which it was at first but when I described it and explained its commonality he said "Oh yeah, that's really hard to burn, its full of moisture and very little grows under it to provide heat in a burn to get it going."
"Why burn it then. Why not cut it out with a chainsaw and paint the stump with roundup."
"No, that'd be too hard in the bush, easier to get a really hot fire going and get rid of it."
He continued to explain the merit of regularly burning the under growth to generate vigourous new green growth of indigenous flora, to the benefit of wildlife species in the surrounding areas which have new unoccupied habitat to move into. I could see his point, but asked him doesn't the fire also cause the sweet pittopurum to vigourously regenerate, it being a native although not indigenous to this area.
"Yes it does, but we send DSE teams in to spray the regrowth with weedicide so we select what comes back."
I'm not convinced that the management pracices in all this are ideal. It's too hard to root out sweet pittosporums manually in the 21st century with the aid off chainsaws, power winches and weedicide but our predecessors cleared vast areas of native forest with axes, crosscut saws and bullocks in a short space of time. The only sure thing at the moment is that every autumn there's a pall of smoke hanging for up to weeks on end, and a lot preserved DSE/CFA salaries paid on this dog chasing it's tail management. Maybe we should be looking to fire resistant species like sweet pittosporum to grow as protective belts for towns and houses and farm buildings.
I can only hope that something comes of the 20/20 summit.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
The Monterey Pine
I stand open to correction, but as far as I know the common old pine tree around Gembrook is Pinus radiata or the Monterey pine, indigenous to Nth America. There are Bhutan pines at the railway station and the odd baltic pine and Mexican pines in gardens but the common old pine tree is pinus radiata.
I counted them on my walk the other day. The driveway to the first house on the low side of Quinn Rd. has a row of 8 mature trees. I counted 18 young saplings along the roadside here, babies of that row. A little further on, on Launching Pl.Rd. there's a row of 18 along the front of a house where a front fence would normally be. Another hundred metres or so and there are 4 seriously large specimens in each corner of the block where the 'phsyco' house* stands, in the middle of these four dark giants. Then there's another couple on the other side of the road near the JW's. There's 8 or 9 big ones visible in the station woodland, one of which came down in the storm.
That's a lot of pine trees, just on my walking route, and they'll reward me shortly with pine mushrooms at their base. There's another four around the Catholic church in the main street. They remind me that a large specimen some years ago crashed down on the Uniting church in Ure Rd., totally destroying the building. Fortunately there was no congregation in the church at the time, the sinners spared. I'm trying to think of a God/Proddy joke but it would be in poor taste.
To me as a beekeeper, pine trees seemed a waste of space, having no value to foraging honeybees. Recently, I had a bee box, in the flat, posted to me by the equipment supplier. As I nailed the four sides together I noted that it was of course pine wood, being light, soft and easily nailed, resisting splitting.
On Easter Monday on my walk when I reached 'the gouge', a pair of plumbers were preparing to get to work so I went in to have a chat. They were suspicious of my cordiality at first, as if saying to themselves, "What's this dickhead want," but loosened up to answer my questions.
"The walls and roof trusses are pine. The decking joists are treated pine. It's all plantation grown timber. 90 percent of new houses are the same. We're putting batons up today, it's easy to screw into the pine."
'The International Book of Trees' says of the Monterey pine--
"The Monterey pine is perhaps the lushest and most lordly of the whole tribe. Nature had restricted this incredibly vigourous, but rather tender, plant to a few square miles around Monterey in southern California. Man has changed all that: it's now the chief forestry plant of the southern hemisphere. Results in New Zealand are sensational. In its 5th year there one tree put on 20 feet. Where it's happy the Monterey pine grows vast branches and keeps them densely clad in bright bottle green needles. Even in southern England it grows four feet a year, not even making a resting bud in winter but charging right on, only pausing in cold weather."
Pine needles make good smoker fuel too. Dense cool smoke, and they are convenient to bag. Against the morning or evening sky, pines have a strong, dark presence and their own stately beauty. My tree of the week.
* That house reminds me of the one in which Norman Bates lived in the move 'Phsyco'.
I counted them on my walk the other day. The driveway to the first house on the low side of Quinn Rd. has a row of 8 mature trees. I counted 18 young saplings along the roadside here, babies of that row. A little further on, on Launching Pl.Rd. there's a row of 18 along the front of a house where a front fence would normally be. Another hundred metres or so and there are 4 seriously large specimens in each corner of the block where the 'phsyco' house* stands, in the middle of these four dark giants. Then there's another couple on the other side of the road near the JW's. There's 8 or 9 big ones visible in the station woodland, one of which came down in the storm.
That's a lot of pine trees, just on my walking route, and they'll reward me shortly with pine mushrooms at their base. There's another four around the Catholic church in the main street. They remind me that a large specimen some years ago crashed down on the Uniting church in Ure Rd., totally destroying the building. Fortunately there was no congregation in the church at the time, the sinners spared. I'm trying to think of a God/Proddy joke but it would be in poor taste.
To me as a beekeeper, pine trees seemed a waste of space, having no value to foraging honeybees. Recently, I had a bee box, in the flat, posted to me by the equipment supplier. As I nailed the four sides together I noted that it was of course pine wood, being light, soft and easily nailed, resisting splitting.
On Easter Monday on my walk when I reached 'the gouge', a pair of plumbers were preparing to get to work so I went in to have a chat. They were suspicious of my cordiality at first, as if saying to themselves, "What's this dickhead want," but loosened up to answer my questions.
"The walls and roof trusses are pine. The decking joists are treated pine. It's all plantation grown timber. 90 percent of new houses are the same. We're putting batons up today, it's easy to screw into the pine."
'The International Book of Trees' says of the Monterey pine--
"The Monterey pine is perhaps the lushest and most lordly of the whole tribe. Nature had restricted this incredibly vigourous, but rather tender, plant to a few square miles around Monterey in southern California. Man has changed all that: it's now the chief forestry plant of the southern hemisphere. Results in New Zealand are sensational. In its 5th year there one tree put on 20 feet. Where it's happy the Monterey pine grows vast branches and keeps them densely clad in bright bottle green needles. Even in southern England it grows four feet a year, not even making a resting bud in winter but charging right on, only pausing in cold weather."
Pine needles make good smoker fuel too. Dense cool smoke, and they are convenient to bag. Against the morning or evening sky, pines have a strong, dark presence and their own stately beauty. My tree of the week.
* That house reminds me of the one in which Norman Bates lived in the move 'Phsyco'.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The Outrageous Storm
The day after my last post, when I described seeing 17 black cockies flying in a group, an outrageous storm thrashed the Gembrook landscape and indeed all of the Dandenongs and the southern half of of Victoria.
Black cockies are reputed to be a sign of rain within a few days and I've always felt them to be an accurate indicator, although it may be light rain or showers of not much consequence. I will be interested to note if next time I see a large number in a group there's a storm the next day.
We were without electricity for 32 hours. On the other side of town some people, including Huite and the Smiths had no power for 72 hours. Huite rang me on the Saturday to say his electricity was not yet reconnected and that he and Wilma had spent a lot of time in bed as there was nothing else to do. It was so cold they had get close and personal, refreshing his memory of an earlier time in life when he and Wilma spent a lot of time in bed because there was nothing else they'd rather do. I was amused and encouraged to think of Huite still after it at age 72, even if a blackout was the catalyst.
There was not a lot of rain with the storm. It raged for several hours starting early on the Wednesday. I had to do a road trip with the trailer to Keysborough in Melbourne, taking our mulcher to the manufacturer for an overhaul. It was difficult to keep the carryvan on the road such was the force of the gale, debris flying across the road to make for a scary trip.
We suffered no serious damage. Half an old forked peppermint came down to block our drive and several trees came down along my walk. A large blackwood in the yard of the house below us, two large peppermints along Launching Place rd., a huge pine in the woodland behind the station and the spotted gum opposite the CFA in Innes Rd brought the power lines down. There were many other trees and power lines down around the town. It was a miracle there wasn't more damage to life and property.
Black cockies are reputed to be a sign of rain within a few days and I've always felt them to be an accurate indicator, although it may be light rain or showers of not much consequence. I will be interested to note if next time I see a large number in a group there's a storm the next day.
We were without electricity for 32 hours. On the other side of town some people, including Huite and the Smiths had no power for 72 hours. Huite rang me on the Saturday to say his electricity was not yet reconnected and that he and Wilma had spent a lot of time in bed as there was nothing else to do. It was so cold they had get close and personal, refreshing his memory of an earlier time in life when he and Wilma spent a lot of time in bed because there was nothing else they'd rather do. I was amused and encouraged to think of Huite still after it at age 72, even if a blackout was the catalyst.
There was not a lot of rain with the storm. It raged for several hours starting early on the Wednesday. I had to do a road trip with the trailer to Keysborough in Melbourne, taking our mulcher to the manufacturer for an overhaul. It was difficult to keep the carryvan on the road such was the force of the gale, debris flying across the road to make for a scary trip.
We suffered no serious damage. Half an old forked peppermint came down to block our drive and several trees came down along my walk. A large blackwood in the yard of the house below us, two large peppermints along Launching Place rd., a huge pine in the woodland behind the station and the spotted gum opposite the CFA in Innes Rd brought the power lines down. There were many other trees and power lines down around the town. It was a miracle there wasn't more damage to life and property.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Breathe Deeply The Joy of Life
My mother Elvie went through a box of my father's personal papers, writings, and photos at the weekend. Twelve months have passed since he died last March.
Meredith and Elvie were looking at some of the photos at the farm late yesterday while I had a cup of tea after a busy day. As they passed them on to me to see, a strange feeling came over me.
The photos were a snap of about 80 years of family history. They included Lyle as a baby with his mother, aunts who died nearly 50 years ago, football teams, his family home, his young wife, and more recently his children and grandchildren, his cats, the farm, and himself in his later years, looking frail.
Oddly, I felt quite unconnected. Like it all happenned in a dream or in another lifetime separate to mine. I've felt this way before when going back in time, say to visit the old neighbourhood of our childhood, the old school, or catching up with an old girlfriend. Did it really happen? Did little wooden sailing ships cross the oceans to get here, not so long ago? Did nations spend 6 years trying to bomb each other into oblivion, not so long ago? It all seems unbelievable.
When walking this morning it came to me that every day is new, and different. Today the rose of dawn crept over the hill and shone through white mist, sillhouetting pine trunks and limbs like giant dark statues in the light. Sweet water dripped gently to earth. Seventeen black cockies in flock flopped across the sky east to west, unhurried, laconic. Never seen that many together before.
Tomorrow? Breathe deeply the cold morning air, the joy of life.
Meredith and Elvie were looking at some of the photos at the farm late yesterday while I had a cup of tea after a busy day. As they passed them on to me to see, a strange feeling came over me.
The photos were a snap of about 80 years of family history. They included Lyle as a baby with his mother, aunts who died nearly 50 years ago, football teams, his family home, his young wife, and more recently his children and grandchildren, his cats, the farm, and himself in his later years, looking frail.
Oddly, I felt quite unconnected. Like it all happenned in a dream or in another lifetime separate to mine. I've felt this way before when going back in time, say to visit the old neighbourhood of our childhood, the old school, or catching up with an old girlfriend. Did it really happen? Did little wooden sailing ships cross the oceans to get here, not so long ago? Did nations spend 6 years trying to bomb each other into oblivion, not so long ago? It all seems unbelievable.
When walking this morning it came to me that every day is new, and different. Today the rose of dawn crept over the hill and shone through white mist, sillhouetting pine trunks and limbs like giant dark statues in the light. Sweet water dripped gently to earth. Seventeen black cockies in flock flopped across the sky east to west, unhurried, laconic. Never seen that many together before.
Tomorrow? Breathe deeply the cold morning air, the joy of life.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Satin Bower Birds, Wedge Tailed Eagles.
There was a group of 'new' birds in the garden yesterday. I was about to leave to go to the farm and went to the shed for something. Two birds flew away from the shed as I neared, I thought they were currawongs at first as they were quite large, but their backs were olive green colour as they flew away. It seemed they'd been pinching the dog minnies I leave on the sill for my blackbirds.
I had a better look at them when I spotted them in the blackwood in front of the shed where they'd flown. There was a number of them, perhaps five or more, in the top of the tree, chattering and clacking and making various noises unfamiliar to me. Not having my glasses on I couldn't see them very well, so I went inside and came back with binoculars. I managed too get a good look at one and amazingly saw something bright blue and red, but behind a lot of leaves so I couldn't discern what it was, before losing it while I moved, not seeing it again.
When I saw Jod at the farm I described what I'd seen and he immediately said I'd seen satin bower birds. He'd seen them twice only at the farm over the last few years. Only mature males have the satin colour which comes after the seventh year moult, which explains why all the ones I saw were olivey green with a pale chest scalloped brown. He said the red and blue colour I saw may have been something one of the immature males had collected. They love bright colour especially blue which they use to practice building bowers. They build bowers on the ground to impress females but they actually nest in trees in a nest made with a lot of bark. He said they have a beautiful egg streaked in colours.
While we talked he spotted two wedgies soaring high, seemingly playing in the sky, coming close, then parting, before diving back towards each other. He reckons they are getting ready to mate, they breed in the winter and will mate soon. Fantastic!
I had a better look at them when I spotted them in the blackwood in front of the shed where they'd flown. There was a number of them, perhaps five or more, in the top of the tree, chattering and clacking and making various noises unfamiliar to me. Not having my glasses on I couldn't see them very well, so I went inside and came back with binoculars. I managed too get a good look at one and amazingly saw something bright blue and red, but behind a lot of leaves so I couldn't discern what it was, before losing it while I moved, not seeing it again.
When I saw Jod at the farm I described what I'd seen and he immediately said I'd seen satin bower birds. He'd seen them twice only at the farm over the last few years. Only mature males have the satin colour which comes after the seventh year moult, which explains why all the ones I saw were olivey green with a pale chest scalloped brown. He said the red and blue colour I saw may have been something one of the immature males had collected. They love bright colour especially blue which they use to practice building bowers. They build bowers on the ground to impress females but they actually nest in trees in a nest made with a lot of bark. He said they have a beautiful egg streaked in colours.
While we talked he spotted two wedgies soaring high, seemingly playing in the sky, coming close, then parting, before diving back towards each other. He reckons they are getting ready to mate, they breed in the winter and will mate soon. Fantastic!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sweet Pittosporum
I objected to the council being granted a permit to remove ALL sweet pittosporums from the roadsides a couple of months back. A letter came from the Planning Section of the Cardinia Shire Council last week, saying,
"Your objection to the above planning permit has been considered under delegation and I wish to advise that a Notice of Decision to Grant a Permit has been issued, a copy of which is attached. Your attention is drawn to the appeal provisions on the back of the Notice, in particular:
1. The applicant may seek a review of any condition in the Notice within 60 days of the date of issue.
2.You may seek a review of the decision to grant a permit, or the the proposed condition of the permit, within 21 days of the issue.
Information about Applications for Review may be obtained from the Cictorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, ( address and phone mumber)."
So I've got 21 days from 17 Mar to lodge an application for review with VCAT. I rang them, I have to pay $283.20 and submit the application form and then, once a hearing date is set, I have to attend on the day. I don't think I'm in a position to do this, especially as it would probably be a waste of time and money, but I asked them to send me an application form.
I'll make a stategic withdrawal, probably, and try and think of a plan B. Maybe write to the CEO and the councillors suggesting the council is making a grave error to attack this drought hardy, native tree following twelve years of below average rainfall. We should be grateful for its ability to provide cover for the earth, food and shelter for birds, animals and insects, as well as pump oxygen into the atmosphere while sucking carbon out of it, in this era of critical climate change. The trouble is it's one of the councillors who is driving the whole thing.
"Your objection to the above planning permit has been considered under delegation and I wish to advise that a Notice of Decision to Grant a Permit has been issued, a copy of which is attached. Your attention is drawn to the appeal provisions on the back of the Notice, in particular:
1. The applicant may seek a review of any condition in the Notice within 60 days of the date of issue.
2.You may seek a review of the decision to grant a permit, or the the proposed condition of the permit, within 21 days of the issue.
Information about Applications for Review may be obtained from the Cictorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, ( address and phone mumber)."
So I've got 21 days from 17 Mar to lodge an application for review with VCAT. I rang them, I have to pay $283.20 and submit the application form and then, once a hearing date is set, I have to attend on the day. I don't think I'm in a position to do this, especially as it would probably be a waste of time and money, but I asked them to send me an application form.
I'll make a stategic withdrawal, probably, and try and think of a plan B. Maybe write to the CEO and the councillors suggesting the council is making a grave error to attack this drought hardy, native tree following twelve years of below average rainfall. We should be grateful for its ability to provide cover for the earth, food and shelter for birds, animals and insects, as well as pump oxygen into the atmosphere while sucking carbon out of it, in this era of critical climate change. The trouble is it's one of the councillors who is driving the whole thing.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Heat Wave, Freeze Wave
I'm back home, as of last Sunday. Visitors arrived on Monday, stayed for two days and today is my first chance to blog. I'm as flat as a tack, forcing myself to write. I've lost enthusiasm for blogging, mainly, I think, because there's always so much else to do. I've chosen to continue, after thinking half an hour ago that I'd finish up. Don't buckle just yet, I tell myself.
I had to tell you this story. My visitor was Ian Sinclair*, whom I've referred to as Punjab in a couple of posts in the past. He lives in Canada, at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, near Alaska. He's back in Australia with his 7 yo son for a month's holiday, the main purpose of which was to visit his 89yo mum who lives in a retirement village in Frankston. It's been an emotional time for him. This was the last time he would see his mum, and he wanted his son Jethro to meet her as a boy old enough to remember.
Ian rang me on New Year's Day to wish us Happy New Year, and to say that he was coming to AUS. in March and he'd let us know when he had an arrival date, and when he thought he'd get to us. We heard nothing further, which is not unusual, he doesn't like timetables and just 'turns up'. I had no way of contacting him once he'd left. I couldn't find his mother's phone number in her remarried name of Cantillon**, because, as I found out later, she'd moved into a retirement place. So we went to Lakes hoping he wasn't trying to contact us while we were away, thinking that with Robbie home all would be jake.
Ian called in last Saturday. He'd spent the previous 3 days in the mountains around Big River camping at our old haunts and catching up on eucalyptus scented air. It was hot with near 40C maximums. He and Jethro coped well considering they came from the northern winter and temperatures of more than MINUS 50 degrees in January. Robbie told him we were away and he went to see his mum and returned on Monday evening.
Yesterday before he left we were talking about the March heat wave and the worry of bushfires. I'd just renewed the house insurance and mentioned that I'd meant to check the fine print to make sure our house was covered against bushfires, but forgot in the haste of the last minute. He said he'd checked his because despite all the ice and snow there was still a bushfire threat in summer as there was 21 hours of sun per day in summer, when sunny of course, and the surrounding pine and spruce forests dried out and were flammable because of the volatile oils.
Ian went on to say that insurance companies in Whitehorse have rigid conditions and are as tough as nails. You can't just go away on holiday and leave the house, without making arrangements with neighbours or contractors to inspect it every 24 hours, recording that everything is in order. For example, during freezing and thawing, water and ice is dangerous, pipes can burst and a basement or cellar can catch water and freeze, leaving it filled with 50 tons of solid ice. Claims of $50,000 or $60,000 are not uncommon, when automatic furnaces have failed to keep houses above freezing point.
There was a case recently, Ian said, where a family went away and a tap was left running slowly in an upstairs bathroom, the exact circumstances of which he was unsure. Whatever, the inlet to the tap didn't freeze, but the outlet pipe did, so the water banked up and overflowed and ran onto the floor and throughout. As it hit the gaps, where it would run outside in normal conditions, it froze, so the house slowly filled with water which slowly turned to ice. The house wasn't inspected regularly and filled with water/ice which, expanding as freezing water does, crushed everything and pushed out walls. The house was fit only for demolition, the returning family losing the lot.
* Ian Sinclair attended Mt. Waverley Primary school 1955-1961, as did brother Jod. Ian's younger brother Colin was in my year 1957-1963. Jod was looking forward to Ian's visit and had copied and framed a 4th grade photo from 1959 in which he and Ian were standing next to each other, and which he gave to Ian when we visited the farm Tuesday. Ian and Jod went to Syndal tech and were both in the railways as firemen (trainee drivers) in 1969 when Ian was called up for National Service. After a term in Vietnam, Ian was discharged in 1971, his two years NS completed.
He could not settle in his old job, resigned, and unable to settle into any employment, took off to the Kimberleys. He roamed Australia and Asia for many years, eventually in the company of a Canadian girl, now wife Elke with whom he lives at Whitehorse, in a house they are buying on three acres out of town backing onto pine and spruce bush. At some point he was granted a TPI pension for post traumatic stress and has resisted convention for 37 years. He spends much of the summer fishing and hunting moose. He turns 59 next month. He has another son, Cullen, who is 17 and was born in Nth Queensland.
** Ian's mum married Reg Cantillon, who lived about 5 houses up from us in Mt Waverley with his wife (who died later) and family which included twin girls who were in Ian and Jod's year at school. Their older brother who became a mechanic died as a young man when a car he was working on fell off the jack and crushed him. Ian's father died in the summer of 1971/1972 of a stroke while recovering in hospital from a minor operation. It was the day Garfield Sobers made his famous 254 for the rest of the world team against Australia. Ian told me this visit that he said to me while we watched the cricket, "Dad died last night." I had said, "Should you be here?" He remembered answering, "Why not?" Don Bradman said Sober's innings was the best he'd ever seen.
I had to tell you this story. My visitor was Ian Sinclair*, whom I've referred to as Punjab in a couple of posts in the past. He lives in Canada, at Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, near Alaska. He's back in Australia with his 7 yo son for a month's holiday, the main purpose of which was to visit his 89yo mum who lives in a retirement village in Frankston. It's been an emotional time for him. This was the last time he would see his mum, and he wanted his son Jethro to meet her as a boy old enough to remember.
Ian rang me on New Year's Day to wish us Happy New Year, and to say that he was coming to AUS. in March and he'd let us know when he had an arrival date, and when he thought he'd get to us. We heard nothing further, which is not unusual, he doesn't like timetables and just 'turns up'. I had no way of contacting him once he'd left. I couldn't find his mother's phone number in her remarried name of Cantillon**, because, as I found out later, she'd moved into a retirement place. So we went to Lakes hoping he wasn't trying to contact us while we were away, thinking that with Robbie home all would be jake.
Ian called in last Saturday. He'd spent the previous 3 days in the mountains around Big River camping at our old haunts and catching up on eucalyptus scented air. It was hot with near 40C maximums. He and Jethro coped well considering they came from the northern winter and temperatures of more than MINUS 50 degrees in January. Robbie told him we were away and he went to see his mum and returned on Monday evening.
Yesterday before he left we were talking about the March heat wave and the worry of bushfires. I'd just renewed the house insurance and mentioned that I'd meant to check the fine print to make sure our house was covered against bushfires, but forgot in the haste of the last minute. He said he'd checked his because despite all the ice and snow there was still a bushfire threat in summer as there was 21 hours of sun per day in summer, when sunny of course, and the surrounding pine and spruce forests dried out and were flammable because of the volatile oils.
Ian went on to say that insurance companies in Whitehorse have rigid conditions and are as tough as nails. You can't just go away on holiday and leave the house, without making arrangements with neighbours or contractors to inspect it every 24 hours, recording that everything is in order. For example, during freezing and thawing, water and ice is dangerous, pipes can burst and a basement or cellar can catch water and freeze, leaving it filled with 50 tons of solid ice. Claims of $50,000 or $60,000 are not uncommon, when automatic furnaces have failed to keep houses above freezing point.
There was a case recently, Ian said, where a family went away and a tap was left running slowly in an upstairs bathroom, the exact circumstances of which he was unsure. Whatever, the inlet to the tap didn't freeze, but the outlet pipe did, so the water banked up and overflowed and ran onto the floor and throughout. As it hit the gaps, where it would run outside in normal conditions, it froze, so the house slowly filled with water which slowly turned to ice. The house wasn't inspected regularly and filled with water/ice which, expanding as freezing water does, crushed everything and pushed out walls. The house was fit only for demolition, the returning family losing the lot.
* Ian Sinclair attended Mt. Waverley Primary school 1955-1961, as did brother Jod. Ian's younger brother Colin was in my year 1957-1963. Jod was looking forward to Ian's visit and had copied and framed a 4th grade photo from 1959 in which he and Ian were standing next to each other, and which he gave to Ian when we visited the farm Tuesday. Ian and Jod went to Syndal tech and were both in the railways as firemen (trainee drivers) in 1969 when Ian was called up for National Service. After a term in Vietnam, Ian was discharged in 1971, his two years NS completed.
He could not settle in his old job, resigned, and unable to settle into any employment, took off to the Kimberleys. He roamed Australia and Asia for many years, eventually in the company of a Canadian girl, now wife Elke with whom he lives at Whitehorse, in a house they are buying on three acres out of town backing onto pine and spruce bush. At some point he was granted a TPI pension for post traumatic stress and has resisted convention for 37 years. He spends much of the summer fishing and hunting moose. He turns 59 next month. He has another son, Cullen, who is 17 and was born in Nth Queensland.
** Ian's mum married Reg Cantillon, who lived about 5 houses up from us in Mt Waverley with his wife (who died later) and family which included twin girls who were in Ian and Jod's year at school. Their older brother who became a mechanic died as a young man when a car he was working on fell off the jack and crushed him. Ian's father died in the summer of 1971/1972 of a stroke while recovering in hospital from a minor operation. It was the day Garfield Sobers made his famous 254 for the rest of the world team against Australia. Ian told me this visit that he said to me while we watched the cricket, "Dad died last night." I had said, "Should you be here?" He remembered answering, "Why not?" Don Bradman said Sober's innings was the best he'd ever seen.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Lakes
It great to be on holiday. I just emailed an apology for not attending tomorrow's museum meeting.
This morning we walked at Shelley Beach with the dogs. It was young Pip's first look at the ocean. She tore into the water then got a hell of a fright when a wave hit and dunked her. She didn't go in again.
It's so nice to see seagulls, black swans, people relaxed lying on the foreshore grass eating ice cream cones, and picking up shells and stones worn smooth.
This morning we walked at Shelley Beach with the dogs. It was young Pip's first look at the ocean. She tore into the water then got a hell of a fright when a wave hit and dunked her. She didn't go in again.
It's so nice to see seagulls, black swans, people relaxed lying on the foreshore grass eating ice cream cones, and picking up shells and stones worn smooth.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Holiday
We're off to Lakes today. Till Sunday. Lib, me, Gord and two dogs. Rob is staying home as he has Uni and will water my plants in pots and the vegies. It could be interesting. A dog holiday! But a change of scenery is inviting and I plan to read a lot and write 3 letters, two to friends who don't access computers and therefore don't read this blog, and one to a 'celebrity' whom I've never met but I'm going to ask for an interview as the kickstart for a story I hope to write. It's a five year plan but if I don't show a little courage and kick it off, it won't happen.
There's an internet cafe at Lakes so if I can escape the dogs for a time I'll do a post from there.
There's an internet cafe at Lakes so if I can escape the dogs for a time I'll do a post from there.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Fay Gerber's Dogwoods
Almost three years ago, on a hot summer's day, I had an appointment to meet Fay Gerber in her Emerald garden at 10.00am. I'd been helping Fay for a couple of hours here and there for some months. I could see vehicles near the house when I arrived, a team of plumbers was finishing a new roof job and putting up new spouting. Fay lives in Melbourne and it wasn't unusual for there to be some work or other happening when she came to stay at Emerald for a few days, the house being perhaps seventy years old, maybe more. It had been recently painted and was well kept.
Fay was no where to be seen as I pulled up. The plumbers were making plenty of noise banging, drilling and cutting. I spoke to the boss who said the last time he saw Fay, not long ago, she was on the ride on mower so I walked slowly from the house looking for her, hearing no mower engine. A short time later I saw her bright blue shirt and wide straw hat as she sat on the grass in the shade of a large tree rhododendron, the mower beside her. She was facing away from me and motionless as if in deep meditation.
Fay, a delightful lady about 80, had retained her wit and charm, and was still attractive despite her advancing years. I had known her for over 20 years, and whilst it might be an unusual place for an 80 yo lady to sit on a hot day, she is slightly eccentric, so I was not surprised or alarmed. As well as gardening, her hobbies are wood sculpture and jewellery making, and she is well read and articulate.
"Are you alright Fay", I called out as I approached her from behind, not wanting to give her a fright by being too close when she became aware of me.
"Hello Carey, yes, I'm fine, I'm having a little rest. I fell off the mower, it almost tipped over and my leg is painful. Could you lift me a little so I can move it?"
She told me how to lift her by putting my arms under her armpits from behind. She winced as she moved then asked me to let her sit again, saying she was sure the pain would ease shortly.
We sat on the grass and she told me her girls musn't hear how this happenned or they'd stop her mowing. She described how the mower tipped up and explained she was lucky it didn't end up on top of her. She loved that old mower. It'd been playing up, a few times she'd asked me to start it for her when I was there, and once to get it into the back of her Camry wagon to take to a repair man.
After a while Fay decided we should get her into the house, the back door of which was some forty metres away. I lifted her again, and with her leaning against me, we inched our way to the house, not an easy thing side by side as we had to manage a narrow path with stone edges and some steps. She didn't want to get assistance from the plumbers, thinking there was not really a way for them to help and wanting as little fuss as possible.
Once inside we had a cup of tea and talked about my impending holiday to Peru. She rang her daughter and explained she'd had a fall. Before I left she insisted that she pay me for my time, although I'd done no gardening. I rang her a few days later to see how she was. She was in hospital with a fractured femur, a hairline fracture, but serious nonetheless.
I haven't seen Fay since. She is fit and well. We spoke on the phone recently, mainly about me doing a restorative prune on her precious 'Captain Rawes' reticulata camellia. One of her daughters and her husband comes to Emerald to mow the grass and do gardening, but I often think of her, especially in the spring when I pick dogwood blossom there, or anywhere for that matter. We have two rows of flowering white dogwood at the farm, and there are three nice trees at home, which came originally from Fay's garden. Her father's old trees had low branches that touched the ground some distance from their trunk, and here, kept moist by the their own autumn leaves, these branches had 'layered', that is, developed roots and thus starting a new young tree as it sprouted vigourous new shoots above where it rooted. Fay called these 'suckers'. She wanted these 'suckers' removed, and we potted them into big pots and planted out two rows at the farm twelve months later, nearly twenty years ago.
I first met Fay back in the 1980's, when our livelihood came mainly from growing herbs and supplying restaurants. I was always short of rosemary, one of the more popular restaurant lines, and one of our pickers told me about a row in a propery in Mary St. One Sunday, I saw a lady in the garden as I drove past and stopped and introduced myself, asking if it might be possible for me to pick some rosemary. I picked rosemary there regularly and we became friends. She asked me did I know anyone who would do some gardening for her. From then on, Rick, Max, and Dirk, who all worked at our farm at some time, did gardening work for Fay when they were seeking odd jobs. When Dirk left us after 10 years, aged 25, to study environmental science as a mature age student, Fay leant him the money to buy his books. He's now a supervisor for Melbourne Water.
Fay's property in Emerald is an acre or two on the edge of the main commercial precinct. Surrounded by mature trees, it's tucked away. People driving past on the main road wouldn't realise there's a piece of Emerald history sitting there untouched by the rampant progress of recent decades. Sometimes when I'm there picking in the solitude I feel I've walked back in time. Twisted and gnarled magnolias line the drive, and mature conifers, oaks, dogwoods and rhodies provide the feeling of seclusion and contrasting rich greenery. The only give away is the the traffic noise from the road.
Fays father planted most of the trees. His name was Carter, a passionate gardener well known for his propogation of yew trees. This of course sixty or more years ago, some wonderful old yew trees still thrive. Self sown baby yews come up all about where no mowing is done, and several of these thrive at our house, given to us by Fay in a winter some years ago.
My friend Doug Twaits, who died some years ago aged 86, knew Mr. Carter, and Fay when she was a girl. He told me once that the old pine tree on the lower corner of the property was there in the 1920's, large enough even then for his family to picnic under on hot summer days when they came up from Melbourne. When I go to the garden in late October to pick dogwood, that variety flowering two weeks after the other cornus florida trees purchased from nurseries, I always look at the old pine and have a mental picture of Doug as a boy with his family picnicking there. That's how Fay's garden affects me.
It took me a while getting to it, but my tree of the week is the flowering dogwood. Why choose February to talk about flowering dogwoods? The other day I was scratching around on hands and knees cutting and painting blackberry plants with roundup in the wild scrubby area behind the beehives and I came across two young self sown dogwoods. It made me happy. I've collected fruit from the dogwoods many times and tried to grow them from seed, never having success. I layer a few every other year by pinning the branch down and tossing some dirt on it. As well as the beautiful blossom we also use our dogwood trees for autumn foliage, the colour ranging from yellow to orange through to deep red.
Cornus florida-- American Boxwood, a native of USA, it's adaptable to most soils and positions, and is frost resistant but drought tender. a deciduous tree it grows to a height of 10 metres witha spread of 3m. The leaves are opposite, ovate-acuminate, short petioled, 10cm long, dark green above and pale green on the undersurface; the flowers are small and white or greenish yellow, occurring in terminal clusters and surrounde by large white or pink bracts; the fruitare brilliant, glossy red berries.
Propogation is by seed, cuttings, layering or grafting. The Delaware Indians boiled the inner bark of the tree, using the tea to reduce fevers. (Encyclopaedia Botanica).
If I was doing a list of my favourite people, Fay Gerber would be high on it.
Fay was no where to be seen as I pulled up. The plumbers were making plenty of noise banging, drilling and cutting. I spoke to the boss who said the last time he saw Fay, not long ago, she was on the ride on mower so I walked slowly from the house looking for her, hearing no mower engine. A short time later I saw her bright blue shirt and wide straw hat as she sat on the grass in the shade of a large tree rhododendron, the mower beside her. She was facing away from me and motionless as if in deep meditation.
Fay, a delightful lady about 80, had retained her wit and charm, and was still attractive despite her advancing years. I had known her for over 20 years, and whilst it might be an unusual place for an 80 yo lady to sit on a hot day, she is slightly eccentric, so I was not surprised or alarmed. As well as gardening, her hobbies are wood sculpture and jewellery making, and she is well read and articulate.
"Are you alright Fay", I called out as I approached her from behind, not wanting to give her a fright by being too close when she became aware of me.
"Hello Carey, yes, I'm fine, I'm having a little rest. I fell off the mower, it almost tipped over and my leg is painful. Could you lift me a little so I can move it?"
She told me how to lift her by putting my arms under her armpits from behind. She winced as she moved then asked me to let her sit again, saying she was sure the pain would ease shortly.
We sat on the grass and she told me her girls musn't hear how this happenned or they'd stop her mowing. She described how the mower tipped up and explained she was lucky it didn't end up on top of her. She loved that old mower. It'd been playing up, a few times she'd asked me to start it for her when I was there, and once to get it into the back of her Camry wagon to take to a repair man.
After a while Fay decided we should get her into the house, the back door of which was some forty metres away. I lifted her again, and with her leaning against me, we inched our way to the house, not an easy thing side by side as we had to manage a narrow path with stone edges and some steps. She didn't want to get assistance from the plumbers, thinking there was not really a way for them to help and wanting as little fuss as possible.
Once inside we had a cup of tea and talked about my impending holiday to Peru. She rang her daughter and explained she'd had a fall. Before I left she insisted that she pay me for my time, although I'd done no gardening. I rang her a few days later to see how she was. She was in hospital with a fractured femur, a hairline fracture, but serious nonetheless.
I haven't seen Fay since. She is fit and well. We spoke on the phone recently, mainly about me doing a restorative prune on her precious 'Captain Rawes' reticulata camellia. One of her daughters and her husband comes to Emerald to mow the grass and do gardening, but I often think of her, especially in the spring when I pick dogwood blossom there, or anywhere for that matter. We have two rows of flowering white dogwood at the farm, and there are three nice trees at home, which came originally from Fay's garden. Her father's old trees had low branches that touched the ground some distance from their trunk, and here, kept moist by the their own autumn leaves, these branches had 'layered', that is, developed roots and thus starting a new young tree as it sprouted vigourous new shoots above where it rooted. Fay called these 'suckers'. She wanted these 'suckers' removed, and we potted them into big pots and planted out two rows at the farm twelve months later, nearly twenty years ago.
I first met Fay back in the 1980's, when our livelihood came mainly from growing herbs and supplying restaurants. I was always short of rosemary, one of the more popular restaurant lines, and one of our pickers told me about a row in a propery in Mary St. One Sunday, I saw a lady in the garden as I drove past and stopped and introduced myself, asking if it might be possible for me to pick some rosemary. I picked rosemary there regularly and we became friends. She asked me did I know anyone who would do some gardening for her. From then on, Rick, Max, and Dirk, who all worked at our farm at some time, did gardening work for Fay when they were seeking odd jobs. When Dirk left us after 10 years, aged 25, to study environmental science as a mature age student, Fay leant him the money to buy his books. He's now a supervisor for Melbourne Water.
Fay's property in Emerald is an acre or two on the edge of the main commercial precinct. Surrounded by mature trees, it's tucked away. People driving past on the main road wouldn't realise there's a piece of Emerald history sitting there untouched by the rampant progress of recent decades. Sometimes when I'm there picking in the solitude I feel I've walked back in time. Twisted and gnarled magnolias line the drive, and mature conifers, oaks, dogwoods and rhodies provide the feeling of seclusion and contrasting rich greenery. The only give away is the the traffic noise from the road.
Fays father planted most of the trees. His name was Carter, a passionate gardener well known for his propogation of yew trees. This of course sixty or more years ago, some wonderful old yew trees still thrive. Self sown baby yews come up all about where no mowing is done, and several of these thrive at our house, given to us by Fay in a winter some years ago.
My friend Doug Twaits, who died some years ago aged 86, knew Mr. Carter, and Fay when she was a girl. He told me once that the old pine tree on the lower corner of the property was there in the 1920's, large enough even then for his family to picnic under on hot summer days when they came up from Melbourne. When I go to the garden in late October to pick dogwood, that variety flowering two weeks after the other cornus florida trees purchased from nurseries, I always look at the old pine and have a mental picture of Doug as a boy with his family picnicking there. That's how Fay's garden affects me.
It took me a while getting to it, but my tree of the week is the flowering dogwood. Why choose February to talk about flowering dogwoods? The other day I was scratching around on hands and knees cutting and painting blackberry plants with roundup in the wild scrubby area behind the beehives and I came across two young self sown dogwoods. It made me happy. I've collected fruit from the dogwoods many times and tried to grow them from seed, never having success. I layer a few every other year by pinning the branch down and tossing some dirt on it. As well as the beautiful blossom we also use our dogwood trees for autumn foliage, the colour ranging from yellow to orange through to deep red.
Cornus florida-- American Boxwood, a native of USA, it's adaptable to most soils and positions, and is frost resistant but drought tender. a deciduous tree it grows to a height of 10 metres witha spread of 3m. The leaves are opposite, ovate-acuminate, short petioled, 10cm long, dark green above and pale green on the undersurface; the flowers are small and white or greenish yellow, occurring in terminal clusters and surrounde by large white or pink bracts; the fruitare brilliant, glossy red berries.
Propogation is by seed, cuttings, layering or grafting. The Delaware Indians boiled the inner bark of the tree, using the tea to reduce fevers. (Encyclopaedia Botanica).
If I was doing a list of my favourite people, Fay Gerber would be high on it.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Squish
It's great to be alive, when you can walk in the cool morning air, then spend ten minutes doing the rounds of the broccolli plants, destroying green cabbage moth caterpillars with thumb and finger. I don't like killing anything, I even avoid stepping on snails or ants these days, but I feel no sympathy whatsoever for cabbage moth caterpillars. Rescueing young brassicas from their voracious evil is most satisfying.
I sowed the broccolli seed on New year's Day, along with some spring onions and lupins, whose seed packets were of the supermarket variety and past their useby date, by eight years in the case of the lupins. The spring onions didn't come up at all, but there are 7 Russell lupin plants that survived the heat and rabbit attack and there was a good strike with the broccolli. I gave some seedlings to Huite and Harry and there's about 20 plants in our small vegie garden protected from the rabbits by sheets of corrugated iron forming a fence.
Some of these plants are nearly a foot high and without control of cabbage moth caterpillars they'd be decimated. As the cool weather comes the problem eases, and into winter when the broccolli is still cropping, hopefully, it's too cold for the moths. I try to get parsley, broccolli, and silver beet growing in late summer/ autumn so that there's fresh vegies to pick in the winter.
Thinking that my first broccolli might be the hybrid type that produces big heads and then nothing much to follow, I sowed a tray of non hybrid seed a few weeks later. This is the old fashioned type that gives small multiple heads but goes on producing for several weeks. These plants are smaller yet of course, and not having room inside the rabbit fence I've planted them here and there around the garden. Some have been lost to rabbits, others I put little guards around, and others still are doing well without protection in places the rabbits don't frequent. The dogs don't stop the rabbits, they catch so few, and then at night when they're in their kennels the rabbits have free reign.
I put in another tray of seed last week, which is just coming up, again a non hybrid variety, but a different type. We should have plenty of broccolli for the winter. The tomato plants are massive and loaded with fruit but none are ripe yet as I got them in late. There should be plenty for March and April. There's zucchini and button squash ready to pick and the butternut pumpkin vines have taken off and there's a few small pumpkins formed. And there'll be beans soon.
The pumpkin seed planted on New years day, which I saved from the vegie scraps bucket, came up, and the young plants are growing well, but I think it was too late to hope that they will produce pumpkins, especially as the weather has turned cool and has a real autumn feel to it. There's some shrubs showing autumn colour and there's a lovely lot of pink autumn crocus flowering.
On the weekend I cut up a tree that fell some time ago, and split the rounds for firewood. There wasn't a lot of urgency this summer as there's still dry wood left over from last winter. I'm looking forward to winter, and in the meantime we have the autumn, a time to admire nature and straighten up. And I'm having fun squishing caterpillars.
I sowed the broccolli seed on New year's Day, along with some spring onions and lupins, whose seed packets were of the supermarket variety and past their useby date, by eight years in the case of the lupins. The spring onions didn't come up at all, but there are 7 Russell lupin plants that survived the heat and rabbit attack and there was a good strike with the broccolli. I gave some seedlings to Huite and Harry and there's about 20 plants in our small vegie garden protected from the rabbits by sheets of corrugated iron forming a fence.
Some of these plants are nearly a foot high and without control of cabbage moth caterpillars they'd be decimated. As the cool weather comes the problem eases, and into winter when the broccolli is still cropping, hopefully, it's too cold for the moths. I try to get parsley, broccolli, and silver beet growing in late summer/ autumn so that there's fresh vegies to pick in the winter.
Thinking that my first broccolli might be the hybrid type that produces big heads and then nothing much to follow, I sowed a tray of non hybrid seed a few weeks later. This is the old fashioned type that gives small multiple heads but goes on producing for several weeks. These plants are smaller yet of course, and not having room inside the rabbit fence I've planted them here and there around the garden. Some have been lost to rabbits, others I put little guards around, and others still are doing well without protection in places the rabbits don't frequent. The dogs don't stop the rabbits, they catch so few, and then at night when they're in their kennels the rabbits have free reign.
I put in another tray of seed last week, which is just coming up, again a non hybrid variety, but a different type. We should have plenty of broccolli for the winter. The tomato plants are massive and loaded with fruit but none are ripe yet as I got them in late. There should be plenty for March and April. There's zucchini and button squash ready to pick and the butternut pumpkin vines have taken off and there's a few small pumpkins formed. And there'll be beans soon.
The pumpkin seed planted on New years day, which I saved from the vegie scraps bucket, came up, and the young plants are growing well, but I think it was too late to hope that they will produce pumpkins, especially as the weather has turned cool and has a real autumn feel to it. There's some shrubs showing autumn colour and there's a lovely lot of pink autumn crocus flowering.
On the weekend I cut up a tree that fell some time ago, and split the rounds for firewood. There wasn't a lot of urgency this summer as there's still dry wood left over from last winter. I'm looking forward to winter, and in the meantime we have the autumn, a time to admire nature and straighten up. And I'm having fun squishing caterpillars.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
More Heat, and Honey
After some days last week of cool, drizzly weather, (it was wonderful!) the heat is back, 34C today and yesterday after a weekend of low 30's.
I had a look at the bees on Sunday. Having extracted 5 supers of honey two weeks previously I thought it was time to put the stickies back so the wax moths grubs didn't damage them. I'd suspected there had been honey coming in since I extracted as the bees had been busy when the weather was good and there'd been no bees sniffing around the shed. When I took some jars of honey to my friends Mark and Jane at 'Sunset', where I have a beehive, Jane said she'd been smelling honey on hot days when she walked in the mornings.
Each hive had a full box of honey on it, including the swarm I caught in early December in the cemetery. The hive at 'Sunset' had two full boxes of honey. I under supered with the stickies and left the honey on the bees for another day soon when I have the time and energy to get it off and go another round in the extracting shed. There goes another weekend of spare time.
It shouldn't be happening. Last year's record crop which took it's toll on me from a work load point of view should have meant an 'off' year this time round, but this next extract will be the third of the summer and the boxes are more 'filled' this time than the previous two extracts. And the honey is still flowing in, the source a mystery to me. There's been a few messmates flowering, the few odd trees that didn't flower last year, but there must be something else within bee range. I'd love to know what else the bees are working.
Not that it will approach anything like the tally of last year, but for a stationary apiary, one that isn't moved from flow to flow, it'll end up being a good season, perhaps in excess of 'three tins per hive',** a fair season even for a commercial migratory apiary. But it's not in the tank yet and maybe I'm counting chickens before they hatch.
** Commercial apiarists talk in terms of 'tins per hive', or they did when I was in the industry, meaning the old 4 gallon tins, which held 60lb of honey, or 27kg. They still talked 'of tins per hive', even though they were using 44gallon drums by then. Generally speaking a year would produce 2-6 tins, average 4, of course some years could go higher and the odd year there may be little if any. A good flow on a particular floral source would be upward of one tin, with 4 tins being a big flow.
I had a look at the bees on Sunday. Having extracted 5 supers of honey two weeks previously I thought it was time to put the stickies back so the wax moths grubs didn't damage them. I'd suspected there had been honey coming in since I extracted as the bees had been busy when the weather was good and there'd been no bees sniffing around the shed. When I took some jars of honey to my friends Mark and Jane at 'Sunset', where I have a beehive, Jane said she'd been smelling honey on hot days when she walked in the mornings.
Each hive had a full box of honey on it, including the swarm I caught in early December in the cemetery. The hive at 'Sunset' had two full boxes of honey. I under supered with the stickies and left the honey on the bees for another day soon when I have the time and energy to get it off and go another round in the extracting shed. There goes another weekend of spare time.
It shouldn't be happening. Last year's record crop which took it's toll on me from a work load point of view should have meant an 'off' year this time round, but this next extract will be the third of the summer and the boxes are more 'filled' this time than the previous two extracts. And the honey is still flowing in, the source a mystery to me. There's been a few messmates flowering, the few odd trees that didn't flower last year, but there must be something else within bee range. I'd love to know what else the bees are working.
Not that it will approach anything like the tally of last year, but for a stationary apiary, one that isn't moved from flow to flow, it'll end up being a good season, perhaps in excess of 'three tins per hive',** a fair season even for a commercial migratory apiary. But it's not in the tank yet and maybe I'm counting chickens before they hatch.
** Commercial apiarists talk in terms of 'tins per hive', or they did when I was in the industry, meaning the old 4 gallon tins, which held 60lb of honey, or 27kg. They still talked 'of tins per hive', even though they were using 44gallon drums by then. Generally speaking a year would produce 2-6 tins, average 4, of course some years could go higher and the odd year there may be little if any. A good flow on a particular floral source would be upward of one tin, with 4 tins being a big flow.
Friday, February 15, 2008
The Fever
My young friend Ruby walked up the hill as I was going back down this morning, on her way to catch the school bus. Her school bag was slung over her shoulder and her strong legs worked under her summer school dress. She leaned forward into the hill, her gait identifying her to me at a distance. She raised her head and smiled as she neared, offering her girlish "Hello." I could see she was carrying something in her right hand, rolled up, looked like flag on a stick.
"Nice morning Ruby. "What's that your carrying, a flag, do you have school sports or something today?"
By this time we'd passed and both looked back to each other. "No, I'm going to the footy after school."
"Good on you. Who do you follow?"
"Richmond." Excitement beamed from her face.
"I'm a Demon fan myself but I'll be watching tonight. Your playing the Saints, yeah?"
"Yeah."
Footy's back. The Tiges have been down a long time and I'll be barracking for them tonight. For Ruby. And for Clappo's daughter, who has recovered from leukemia and is a passionate Richmond fan. Clappo, never into football previously, tells me about Kate who goes to all the Richmond games night or day, and her analysis of what the coach says and game plans etc.
I'll put a few dollars on it, there's a small credit in my Lasseters account, thanks to Maxine McKew. I'll put a few on the Demons to knock off Geelong tomorrow too. They'll be cocky, having won the the big one last year, after a forty four year premiership drought. My friend Nicky, otherwise a sane person, had a 'Weg' Premiers tattoo put on her back recently to mark her 60th birthday. That's worse than my mate Rick, who had 'CATS' shaved into the back of his head in the week before the grand final last year. Footy fever!
"Nice morning Ruby. "What's that your carrying, a flag, do you have school sports or something today?"
By this time we'd passed and both looked back to each other. "No, I'm going to the footy after school."
"Good on you. Who do you follow?"
"Richmond." Excitement beamed from her face.
"I'm a Demon fan myself but I'll be watching tonight. Your playing the Saints, yeah?"
"Yeah."
Footy's back. The Tiges have been down a long time and I'll be barracking for them tonight. For Ruby. And for Clappo's daughter, who has recovered from leukemia and is a passionate Richmond fan. Clappo, never into football previously, tells me about Kate who goes to all the Richmond games night or day, and her analysis of what the coach says and game plans etc.
I'll put a few dollars on it, there's a small credit in my Lasseters account, thanks to Maxine McKew. I'll put a few on the Demons to knock off Geelong tomorrow too. They'll be cocky, having won the the big one last year, after a forty four year premiership drought. My friend Nicky, otherwise a sane person, had a 'Weg' Premiers tattoo put on her back recently to mark her 60th birthday. That's worse than my mate Rick, who had 'CATS' shaved into the back of his head in the week before the grand final last year. Footy fever!
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Sorry Day
Without getting too involved, I think this is a significant day in Australian history.
We should look after our indigenous people and their communities before or instead of committing huge expenditure on warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let's hope it's the beginning of the end of racism, inherent in Australia for so long. Racism borne of a colonial culture of conquest of new lands and the exploitation of resources and the dispossessed.
Perhaps finally there's realization we need to find a new way of life and a new way to do things.
We should look after our indigenous people and their communities before or instead of committing huge expenditure on warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let's hope it's the beginning of the end of racism, inherent in Australia for so long. Racism borne of a colonial culture of conquest of new lands and the exploitation of resources and the dispossessed.
Perhaps finally there's realization we need to find a new way of life and a new way to do things.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Gout
The big toe on my right foot was sore all Friday. By yesterday morning, after a disturbed sleep, it was excruciating. I limped about all day, slower in even the most menial of tasks, even bookeeping on the computer. The pain is there with the slightest movement.
Make no mistake, gout is a formidable adversary. I was disappointed that my precious Saturday was ruined by pain, resultant incompetance, and fear that the condition may linger for days. I can see how severe pain can lead to depression. I had to miss my morning walk, the first time for the year. I took anti-inflammatory pain killers and read up on gout in my food remedy book.
Quote- "Gout is a form of arthritis in which glass like shards of uric acid jab into joints causing searing pain. For some, the mere weight of a blanket on an inflamed toe can be too much to bear."
This is my second attack within a year, after 55 years thinking it was something for others to worry about. Coincidentally (or not?), the first attack came a week after I began taking blood pressure tablets mid last year. I told the doctor the tablets gave me gout after googling the drug (Avapro-irbesartan) and learning that gout was a side effect in some people. She told me the particular Avapro I was taking did not cause gout, it was another type. What can you do but believe your medical practioner who knows more than you do and is entrusted to reduce your risk of stroke and heart disease?
The food remedy book says purines in food can contribute and advises cutting back on purine rich foods such as liver, kidney, sweetbreads, sardines, anchovies, mackerel, asparagus, mushrooms, and beans. And to drink alcohol only in moderation. Beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages increase the risk of gout attack by increasing the body's production of uric acid and impairing the kidneys' ability to get rid of it. Heavy red wines have the most purines. Drinking more water (10-12 glasses a day) dilutes the uric acid in the bloodstream and helps prevent the formation of crystals.
The food recommended to alleviate symptoms is CHERRIES. I bought a big bag yesterday and have been drinking more water. Today I'm much better, only sightly inconvenienced. Mind you I've kept up the anti-inflammatories. Late yesterday I hobbled about picking bay and laurel foliage, which may seem silly when I had a gout attack but the pain had eased a bit, and I had no way of knowing how I'd be today. I planned to work today, to do half of Monday's huge load on Sunday, as it's a big week due to Valentine's Day.
My thinking was, I was so slow with the gout that I should start Saturday. It probably helped me mentally as well as physically, to get moving and make a start. It could be seen as a disadvantage in being self employed, particularly in fields not highly remunerated, that you can't take 'a sickie', but perhaps it's a blessing. Sheer necessity is a great motivator.
Make no mistake, gout is a formidable adversary. I was disappointed that my precious Saturday was ruined by pain, resultant incompetance, and fear that the condition may linger for days. I can see how severe pain can lead to depression. I had to miss my morning walk, the first time for the year. I took anti-inflammatory pain killers and read up on gout in my food remedy book.
Quote- "Gout is a form of arthritis in which glass like shards of uric acid jab into joints causing searing pain. For some, the mere weight of a blanket on an inflamed toe can be too much to bear."
This is my second attack within a year, after 55 years thinking it was something for others to worry about. Coincidentally (or not?), the first attack came a week after I began taking blood pressure tablets mid last year. I told the doctor the tablets gave me gout after googling the drug (Avapro-irbesartan) and learning that gout was a side effect in some people. She told me the particular Avapro I was taking did not cause gout, it was another type. What can you do but believe your medical practioner who knows more than you do and is entrusted to reduce your risk of stroke and heart disease?
The food remedy book says purines in food can contribute and advises cutting back on purine rich foods such as liver, kidney, sweetbreads, sardines, anchovies, mackerel, asparagus, mushrooms, and beans. And to drink alcohol only in moderation. Beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages increase the risk of gout attack by increasing the body's production of uric acid and impairing the kidneys' ability to get rid of it. Heavy red wines have the most purines. Drinking more water (10-12 glasses a day) dilutes the uric acid in the bloodstream and helps prevent the formation of crystals.
The food recommended to alleviate symptoms is CHERRIES. I bought a big bag yesterday and have been drinking more water. Today I'm much better, only sightly inconvenienced. Mind you I've kept up the anti-inflammatories. Late yesterday I hobbled about picking bay and laurel foliage, which may seem silly when I had a gout attack but the pain had eased a bit, and I had no way of knowing how I'd be today. I planned to work today, to do half of Monday's huge load on Sunday, as it's a big week due to Valentine's Day.
My thinking was, I was so slow with the gout that I should start Saturday. It probably helped me mentally as well as physically, to get moving and make a start. It could be seen as a disadvantage in being self employed, particularly in fields not highly remunerated, that you can't take 'a sickie', but perhaps it's a blessing. Sheer necessity is a great motivator.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Agonis flexuosa
Our friend Bill would be in Perth now, or close to it. Lib and I, and mutual friends Maria and Louise, local literary magnates, had dinner with Bill and Paula at their Emerald house last Saturday evening. Superb Indian cuisine, fine wine, music,(Tchaichovsky, Joan Baez, Cat Stevens) and cultured conversation (ranging from the collection of semen from men and drone bees to American politics) made the evening memorable. Bill, a poet, writer, artist, musician and philosopher with a quick wit is always great company as is his beautiful wife Paula, who is equally talented.
It wasn't planned as a farewell dinner, as the Perth job came up after the dinner was marked on the calender, but Bill broke the news he was leaving the next day to travel by car to Perth to take up a temporary job for three months, managing a chain of 30 supermarkets in West Australia.
It made me recall my one and only visit to West Australia some four years ago. After landing at Perth airport at about 8.00am., we hired a car and drove out into the treelined streets. We stopped to consult the map in the hire car, having no idea which direction to take. I was struck by the clear blue sky and the brightness of the daylight, but the first trees I noticed were Agonis, which were familiar because there are several in our garden and some at the farm which I planted at the same time. I use the foliage in the few mixed bunches we do, but other than that there's no demand for it. I do like the tree, my tree of the week.
That first night of our holiday we decided to stay at Busselton. We were fortunate to find accomodation in a small caravan park as, unknown to us, it was the Friday night of a long weekend and everything had been booked out by Perth residents escaping the city for the weekend. Just as we approached, apparently, there'd been a cancellation, so we grabbed it for three nights and settled in our cabin, which had a large Agonis growing over it providing welcome shade.
If you've been to Busselton you know that it's located right on the shore of Geographe Bay, a wondrous calm natural haven about 40km long where clear blue skies meet the blue green water where dolphins play, and the white sand dazzles the eyes.
Walking the 100 metres from the cabin right onto the beach was a walk through the camping ground and Agonis trees. These had been pruned and lopped roughly to provided campers easy access to their sites, and to remove limbs that might split off I presumed. It was obvious the Agonis would take hard pruning and actually thrive on it.
The next day we drove a little north and picnicked for lunch in a Tuart forest, and here again the Agonis was plentiful as a second tier understory. I talked to a local who referred to the tree as 'peppermints', a name I'd not heard it called before but logical for the strong scent of the leaves.
It seemed that almost everywhere we went near the coast the Agonis was a predominant tree. At one place, out of Albany, on the way to a magic little bay the name of which escapes me just now, a sign read something like "Fire Hazard Slashing Zone- vegetation is slashed to reduce fire risk", and huge areas of foreshore park had been tractor slashed recently. Most of the regrowth was Agonis about a foot high.
The Agonis is hardy tree of considerable charm, suitable for Victorian gardens, and can be left to achieve its graceful natural weeping form if there's enough room, or pruned hard to keep small if necessary. One of my favourites.
The 'Encyclopaedia Botanica' says,
'Agonis flexuosa' Myrtacae. Peppermint Tree; Willow Myrtle. A native of WA, it is adaptable to most soils and conditions, and is drought and frost resistant.
An evergreen tree it can grow to a height of 14m with a spread of 6m. The stem is long and slender, with graceful pendant branches; the leaves are green, willow-like, with a strong smell of peppermint, and 10cm long; the flowers are white, small, and numerous, occurring in globose heads and appearing in spring. Propogation is by seed sown in spring or by cuttings. Prune back annually after flowering.
There are ten Agonis varieties listed. All are native to WA. I noticed the bees working the Agonis flowers this season. Of course there would not be enough around to provide a honey crop and I wonder if such a honey is produced in WA. I didn't meet a beekeeper over there to ask.
If you read this Bill, while you are in WA, if you run into a beekeeper, can you ask him? Maybe someone in the supermarket business would know.
It wasn't planned as a farewell dinner, as the Perth job came up after the dinner was marked on the calender, but Bill broke the news he was leaving the next day to travel by car to Perth to take up a temporary job for three months, managing a chain of 30 supermarkets in West Australia.
It made me recall my one and only visit to West Australia some four years ago. After landing at Perth airport at about 8.00am., we hired a car and drove out into the treelined streets. We stopped to consult the map in the hire car, having no idea which direction to take. I was struck by the clear blue sky and the brightness of the daylight, but the first trees I noticed were Agonis, which were familiar because there are several in our garden and some at the farm which I planted at the same time. I use the foliage in the few mixed bunches we do, but other than that there's no demand for it. I do like the tree, my tree of the week.
That first night of our holiday we decided to stay at Busselton. We were fortunate to find accomodation in a small caravan park as, unknown to us, it was the Friday night of a long weekend and everything had been booked out by Perth residents escaping the city for the weekend. Just as we approached, apparently, there'd been a cancellation, so we grabbed it for three nights and settled in our cabin, which had a large Agonis growing over it providing welcome shade.
If you've been to Busselton you know that it's located right on the shore of Geographe Bay, a wondrous calm natural haven about 40km long where clear blue skies meet the blue green water where dolphins play, and the white sand dazzles the eyes.
Walking the 100 metres from the cabin right onto the beach was a walk through the camping ground and Agonis trees. These had been pruned and lopped roughly to provided campers easy access to their sites, and to remove limbs that might split off I presumed. It was obvious the Agonis would take hard pruning and actually thrive on it.
The next day we drove a little north and picnicked for lunch in a Tuart forest, and here again the Agonis was plentiful as a second tier understory. I talked to a local who referred to the tree as 'peppermints', a name I'd not heard it called before but logical for the strong scent of the leaves.
It seemed that almost everywhere we went near the coast the Agonis was a predominant tree. At one place, out of Albany, on the way to a magic little bay the name of which escapes me just now, a sign read something like "Fire Hazard Slashing Zone- vegetation is slashed to reduce fire risk", and huge areas of foreshore park had been tractor slashed recently. Most of the regrowth was Agonis about a foot high.
The Agonis is hardy tree of considerable charm, suitable for Victorian gardens, and can be left to achieve its graceful natural weeping form if there's enough room, or pruned hard to keep small if necessary. One of my favourites.
The 'Encyclopaedia Botanica' says,
'Agonis flexuosa' Myrtacae. Peppermint Tree; Willow Myrtle. A native of WA, it is adaptable to most soils and conditions, and is drought and frost resistant.
An evergreen tree it can grow to a height of 14m with a spread of 6m. The stem is long and slender, with graceful pendant branches; the leaves are green, willow-like, with a strong smell of peppermint, and 10cm long; the flowers are white, small, and numerous, occurring in globose heads and appearing in spring. Propogation is by seed sown in spring or by cuttings. Prune back annually after flowering.
There are ten Agonis varieties listed. All are native to WA. I noticed the bees working the Agonis flowers this season. Of course there would not be enough around to provide a honey crop and I wonder if such a honey is produced in WA. I didn't meet a beekeeper over there to ask.
If you read this Bill, while you are in WA, if you run into a beekeeper, can you ask him? Maybe someone in the supermarket business would know.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Remorse
The plumber turned up 5.00pm the next day. I wasn't home, Lib was. He gave her back the whole $260. Lib tried to make him him keep $160 but he wouldn't. She said I'd post it to him, he said he'd send it back. He also brought back the jar of honey. He told Lib I should be careful of my temper, and that I could get myself into serious trouble threatening people.
I've felt sick with remorse ever since. I was justified querying the charge and requesting a refund, but I should have remained calm, even when he became surly and argumentative. I would never try to avoid payment for any goods and services I'd received from anyone. After considerable anguish I decided to the best course of action was to send him a cheque for $160 which I had established would be the fair price for the work. I'd learned this from my plumber friend in Wangaratta, and from another plumber who recently installed our new kitchen sink and mixer, but who was not a gas fitter. He suggested I send a cheque and ask for a receipt so I have proof of payment.
Despite telling the plumber I knew where he lived during our heated argument, I didn't know his address to post him the cheque. So I rang the mobile phone number I had, just after I'd written para 2. There was no one of his name in the phone book in Silvan. He was unreceptive, saying he didn't want my money, he didn't like being a called a liar and a thief, and if he ever heard from me or saw me again I'd be in serious trouble. "Alright, have it your way," I said hanging up.
I didn't use the words liar and thief. I didn't even threaten him directly. I was bluffing, in a brazen and, in retrospect, impulsive and foolish manner, to retrieve $100 I felt I'd been overcharged. With a few words not carefully chosen, but too effective in their intimidation, he concluded there was a possibility I was unhinged and ready to explode like Maria's emu egg. I don't repeat them here, this being a public forum. It's best to forget about it and donate the $160 to a charity.
I've learned a lesson from it. $100 isn't worth upsetting another human being for. Before I engage any plumber or tradesman in a situation where I can shop around I'll first establish all rates and charges before any work happens. I hope my plumber antagonist has learned the same lessons.
On a happier note the electrician came on Thursday to fit the new oven. He charged $70 as he said he would if it was straightforward. This component was priced at $140 in the original Clive Peeters fee. He stayed a little longer to look at my faulty electric uncapping knife and still only asked for $70. I gave him $120 cash and thanked him, saying I was still saving on the original installation quote.
The range hood is my one last hurdle in this kitchen project. I need a cabinet maker as the cupboards need some altering. I've rung one who came recently to cut a new sinkhole in our jarra benchtop. Nearly there.
I've felt sick with remorse ever since. I was justified querying the charge and requesting a refund, but I should have remained calm, even when he became surly and argumentative. I would never try to avoid payment for any goods and services I'd received from anyone. After considerable anguish I decided to the best course of action was to send him a cheque for $160 which I had established would be the fair price for the work. I'd learned this from my plumber friend in Wangaratta, and from another plumber who recently installed our new kitchen sink and mixer, but who was not a gas fitter. He suggested I send a cheque and ask for a receipt so I have proof of payment.
Despite telling the plumber I knew where he lived during our heated argument, I didn't know his address to post him the cheque. So I rang the mobile phone number I had, just after I'd written para 2. There was no one of his name in the phone book in Silvan. He was unreceptive, saying he didn't want my money, he didn't like being a called a liar and a thief, and if he ever heard from me or saw me again I'd be in serious trouble. "Alright, have it your way," I said hanging up.
I didn't use the words liar and thief. I didn't even threaten him directly. I was bluffing, in a brazen and, in retrospect, impulsive and foolish manner, to retrieve $100 I felt I'd been overcharged. With a few words not carefully chosen, but too effective in their intimidation, he concluded there was a possibility I was unhinged and ready to explode like Maria's emu egg. I don't repeat them here, this being a public forum. It's best to forget about it and donate the $160 to a charity.
I've learned a lesson from it. $100 isn't worth upsetting another human being for. Before I engage any plumber or tradesman in a situation where I can shop around I'll first establish all rates and charges before any work happens. I hope my plumber antagonist has learned the same lessons.
On a happier note the electrician came on Thursday to fit the new oven. He charged $70 as he said he would if it was straightforward. This component was priced at $140 in the original Clive Peeters fee. He stayed a little longer to look at my faulty electric uncapping knife and still only asked for $70. I gave him $120 cash and thanked him, saying I was still saving on the original installation quote.
The range hood is my one last hurdle in this kitchen project. I need a cabinet maker as the cupboards need some altering. I've rung one who came recently to cut a new sinkhole in our jarra benchtop. Nearly there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)