The memory which remained is anger. The single adult household way back in childhood days, meant living in a house controlled by an angry person, prone to outbursts, and without warning. Hyper aware to that state was how it left me. Even today, the emotion emanates from some folks like a bad stink. It appears as an aura which hangs around them. Best avoided, it’ll possibly lead to a bad end.
Had my own brush with anger and it’s consequences as a young bloke. Moving from a state high school for disadvantaged children where it was a positive outcome if you just turned up, to a more English than the English grammar school, was one truly mind bending experience. My grandfather saw how the educational winds were blowing, and stepped in to help me out. It was an expensive option for him, but to me, the sudden change in an education dropped a young teenager into a comparatively more aggressive culture. Informally, a kid had to know how to fight, or the inference was that things would get worse.
The students organised after school fights you see. They were held in a nearby park. You’d be chosen by an unknown faceless cadre, and as one of the few new kids, my lucky numbers came up pretty early. The menacing message had come down from above. Be there, or else. Who knew that ‘Lord of the Flies’ could be interpreted as a how-to manual?
Being single, mum got me into school as early as possible, so other children were usually bigger. Luck was with me that day. The other kid was my age, but a bit smaller. His dad I believe, owned one of the local new car dealerships. Me being in the school distance running team suggests a slight build, stringy and wiry. It was a mostly fair match up. He got taken down by a choke hold until conceding the fight. The fortunate win took the immediate pressure off, and there were never hard feelings to the other student either. What shook me the most about the incident, was realising just how far out of my depth life had suddenly gotten. The desire to be left alone was naive at best, foolish maybe, seriously bruised at worst.
Being an ever resourceful and crafty bloke, even at that young age, meant heading to the nearest Dojo for some training. The master of the Dojo was Raoul Kent, one of the Australian greats, sadly nowadays long since passed away. Honesty is often the best policy, and my story helped bypass the waiting queue. He trained students hard a couple of nights per week, and as a natural healer, taught some good life lessons.
At the time, a friend who was something of a smooth talking extrovert, wanted to join the training. He’d come along to the nights, and entertained the Sensei with foolish talk. Nowadays I’m resistant to pester power, but back then my strength had yet to wax. My friend wanted to face off against me on the mat, as you do when you’ve had no training whatsoever. The Sensei was amenable to the concept, and he did no differently himself. Every Saturday morning was set aside for whomever, and from whatever fighting background, to face off against him in order to keep his skills sharp. A finely honed blade that bloke, yeah.
Pester. Pester. Pester. Pester. Relent. And that was when things went wrong. We faced off on the mat. Acknowledging the experience imbalance, the rules of engagement were agreed to: No head shots. Not a difficult limit to comprehend. Expecting a friendly and easy bout, the very first thing my friend did was swing his right fist at my face. Fortunately a quick side step and block stopped the nose from being squashed at an odd angle to the rest of the head. To my shame, anger flared right up. My cool departed, and in a flurry of blows, the contest was rapidly brought to a conclusion, without too much harm caused. Bowed to my distressed friend. Bowed to the portrait of the Elder on the wall. Bowed to the Sensei. Left the mat.
Fully expecting the master to tell off my friend for having broken the rules of engagement proved to be another loss of naivety. Instead, it was I who was told off. In front of the entire Dojo. Sensei provided a candid review of my many errors. Losing my temper made me look weak. Expecting your opponent to play by the rules should have been anticipated. And so on it went. It was an humiliating moment, but also a good series of lessons to learn, when it wasn’t a life or death encounter.
My friend and I, well, trust was broken that night, and he never returned to the Dojo. We weren’t friends for many more years afterwards. Slowly drifting apart, as people sometimes do when a wedge is suddenly thrust into a structural weakness. It’s a harsh way to lose a friend. But then, neither did he apologise nor act with any sign of contrition or remorse. I guess it’s people’s preference as to whether they’ll learn from a minor experience over here, or the rough lesson over there. Always hard to tell how they’ll react, but the results are enlightening. You know, my own origins are pretty humble, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t learn and do better. And that’s the knowledge the Sensei wanted to impart.
It continues to remain dry this week, and again it was warm here, even the over night minimum temperatures. The grass and ground cover plants in the sunny orchard, looked blasted.
The shady orchard has received the same amount of rainfall, yet the area looks marginally more resilient. Note to self, increase the tree canopy across the property.
It’s not correct to suggest that the area is in a drought. Far from it really, the rainfall has been more or less average for the year. What has been different this year, is that the rain is arriving in large bursts, then there’s little rain for many weeks. Then it will rain heavily again in a longer cycle. It’s an unusual pattern, but we’re sort of coping and adapting to conditions. Hopefully it does rain again soon. The stored water is now down to about 25,000L / 6,500 gallons. At least the weather is cooling so there is little need now to water the plants.
The fruit trees in both the sunny and shady orchard have received no additional watering all year. However, the many young fruit trees in the large citrus enclosure have had to be regularly watered. Their root systems just aren’t developed enough to be able to survive in this sort of climate. On hot days, the dogs and I spend a minute or two giving each tree some water. That works out to be around a watering can each. It’s not much, but will help them to survive.
Unfortunately, with the hand watering of those younger fruit trees, the grass has been growing near to them. Larger fruit trees are less bothered by competition from grasses, but young ones can be totally out-competed. Several times this year, I’ve removed the grass from around the trunks of those small fruit trees, and that’s helped their growth a lot. This week, another round of cleaning up was done using the brush-cutter machine.
Alas two fruit trees in that enclosure died during the summer, but that had more to do with the rabbits ring barking them, than a lack of water. Two peach trees were this week relocated into that enclosure.
The two trees were pruned back pretty hard. The soil was heavily fed, and the plants enjoyed buckets of water, which they hadn’t been getting in their previous locations. It was pretty scary to see how dry the soil was from where they were dug out.
Work on the water system upgrades was completed! Of course, the system has to be regularly inspected for leaks, but that is a requirement with all of the systems here. The upgrade allows us now to easily send water up or down the hill. This is important, because there are three sets of water tanks at different elevations, and it’s no good having water stored where you can’t use it (which is what necessitated the project). From highest elevation to lowest are: House tanks; Overflow tank; and Machinery shed tanks.
The work this week began at the middle level which is the overflow tank. A garden tap with a large diameter 18mm / 0.7 inch hose connector was installed, as well as a quick release connection for a water pump. If required, a pump can be connected up to that large overflow tank, with water sent up or down hill. Or water could be pumped into that tank from any direction.
The pipe and connectors are all sturdy UV stable items which should enjoy a very long life. Observant readers will note that the pipe sits in a trench about a foot under the soil surface. That’s good enough because despite sometimes heavy frosts, the ground simply doesn’t freeze here.
With the trenches backfilled, you’d never know that the pipe is there, except I keep detailed photos of such things because you never know when they’ll come in handy.
Then hours were spent laboriously digging the 45m / 150ft long trench up hill. That was a hard day of work.
The job was broken up into smaller tasks. A couple of metres of trench was dug and cleaned of loose soil. The 1″ rural pipe was laid in the ground. Photographed. Backfilled. Smoothed. And so it went for the entire distance.
Eventually, the trench and pipe made it to the flat ground near to the house water tanks.
Just as the sun was setting, a garden tap with a large diameter 18mm / 0.7″ connection was installed and then attached to a treated pine timber post.
The tools were put away in the twilight, and I headed inside to enjoy a rehydration solution, some Anzac biscuits, then I took the dogs for a long walk to stretch out the tired muscles. It was a pleasure to have completed that project.
This week’s video shows the fog moving in time-lapse:
In breaking produce news:
The birds were just showing the slightest of interest in the persimmon crop, so we picked the lot. The fruit needs to do what is technically known as ‘bletting’, but might as well be described as ‘fermenting’ or even impolitely as ‘rotting’, before they’re edible. It was quite the haul this year.
Observant readers will note that in the above photo, there is a small dish with what looks like carob pods, which are in fact carob pods. This week, I removed the seeds from the pods.
Thinking that the carob flour was produced from the seeds, I chucked the pods into the worm farm bin. Fortunately the bin was clean and empty, because it is the pods themselves which produce the flour (who knew?) In the above photo you can see that the edible pod has a lot of oils surrounding the seeds and skin.
The pods are blitzed up which produces a sort of pelletised mash which is meant to be dehydryated or baked in the oven on low temperature. I’m guessing by that, they mean 60’C / 140’F, but finding no explicit instructions I cooked the mash at 165’C / 330’F. Look, they did end up a bit burned, but are still tasty. As they say, there’s always next year, and I’m left with heaps of seeds to plant.
Some of the Eucalyptus species have completed flowering and are now sporting gum-nuts, which frankly speaking look like tiny little cement mixers.
The winter crops are gaining size rapidly.
The pumpkins are displaying serious signs of powdery mildew which suggests that the end of the season is near for these prolific producers. The nights have been very warm of late too, so I’m thinking that the reduced daylight hours is what is driving the change.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 9am is 11’C (52’F). So far for last year there has been 151.0mm (5.9 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 150.2mm (5.9 inches)