Sandra and I discuss ideas, people, concepts etc. Sometimes the conversations delve into complex and deep places. We’re both interested in the world around us, although we often come at that subject from different perspectives. I’m the more touchy feely person who relies upon intuition, but occasionally that doesn’t work out so well. The other day we were talking about different personality types and having a bit of a laugh about one such who apparently can break out into impromptu song and dance routines. Surely this was pure hyperbole?
The ancients knew that hubris turns to its dark companion, nemesis. On Saturday I went into the city to catch up with some friends and enjoy a decent feed accompanied by a good long chat. The centre of the big smoke is about 65km / 40 miles from here, and so it takes a while to traverse that distance. Lunch was an excellent Hawaii Five-0 burger, probably so named after the TV show. Crunchy chicken breast, cheese, greens and a pineapple slice in a bun, what’s not to like about that?
Had a drink of some sort of passionfruit soft drink. I rarely if ever drink such fizzy concoctions, but when in Rome they used to say. An hour went by and the food and chat was going down well. Another hour. Consumed liquids of course don’t evaporate, even when in the presence of most excellent conversations, and after a while the bladder was alerting the brain as to the need to go to the toilet. Fortunately one was near to hand.
A clever person, somewhere, who knows when, but possibly long ago, suggested that the true wealth of a city could be measured by the number of facilities it has for residents and visitors to err, void their bladders and digestive tracts. When I was younger, there were a lot more public toilets than there are today. In these more enlightened times, I dread the public experience mostly because I wonder what horrid mess will affront my senses.
Fortunately, on this occasion the bathroom was conspicuously clean. However it was a small space with a long bench including two hand basins and a baby nappy changing station, which I doubt had ever been used. The opposite had three stainless steel urinals one of which was remarkably close to the ground, whilst over to the side was a single cubicle. The decor was enlivened with brown tiles, of about the size you’d see in a subway station. The colour choice was very appropriate and would have made a small fortune for the designing consultant.
A bloke has to stand at the urinal and do what needs doing whilst admiring the neat tiling job. And so there I was, minding my own business. The door to the room swings open, with authority. In strides a well dressed young bloke with a natty duck egg blue jacket and sharp haircut. Does he proceed to the urinal or cubicle like a normal person? No. He stands there in the middle of the room grooming himself whilst assisted by the reflection in the wall length mirror. A big personality has been known to take up a large footprint, and such was the case here. My tension levels went right up.
I glanced around to see what was going on to the side and rear of me. Dear reader, you have to understand that deep in my internal wiring lies the caveman. Threat, or not threat? The Neanderthal screams when confronted with unusual circumstances before deciding whether to attack or flee. The turned head and eyes imparted information to the brain: Who wears a duck egg blue suit jacket these days?
This all occurred within seconds, and um, yeah, the young bloke was admiring his look in the mirror whilst posing. Hmm. And that was when he began busting out some smooth dance moves all in front of a panel of one: himself. He even managed to make his jacket produce a loud crack sound. Prayer seemed like the only option at this stage: Lord please spare me from a certain type of extrovert! Sadly where is divine intervention when you really need it? It seemed like the wisest course to finish up, before I was finished, wash my hands, and return to the friendly discussion. There’d be time to go again later.
Events run their natural course, and another opportunity (after a respectable delay) presented itself to go to the bathroom again. What a relief, the bladder was distinctly uncomfortable by that stage. As happens even with the best chats, the day eventually wound up. Thus it was heading that home I noticed more than a few people along William Street in the big smoke performing impromptu dance routines, often with cameras. An eerie thought popped into my mind.
It’s been an odd week for human interactions and their technology. Earlier in the week I noticed that the locks and latches on the machinery shed weren’t in the usual arrangement. Hmm. Then on Friday morning, Ollie and I discovered a chunk of what looks like either thick bread or banana bread way down below the house on the forest edge.
Last I checked, the forest plants do not produce such tasty morsels. Being the observant type, I decided to leave the food scrap where I found it for fifteen to twenty minutes and just wait and see what happens. My thinking was that if it was a bird or animal which had dropped it there, they’d quickly come back for it. The local birds are not wasteful when it comes to food. But no, the food scrap remained. Bagged the chunk up and froze it. It might come in handy.
Unfortunately I have had to install several trail cameras (which are remarkably cheap items) and notify all of the neighbours that strange activities are afoot in the area. We’ll see what turns up, at the very least the footage of the wildlife at their antics and activities will be interesting.
It’s been a very busy week with paid work. Tomorrow (Monday) is the last day of the financial year, and so people are getting their ducks in line. Earlier in the week we had an hour spare which was used to top up all of the steel round raised vegetable beds in the kitchen garden. Heaps of compost + coffee grounds + garden lime + blood and bone meal, were added to the beds. It’s a heady mixture which will grow most vegetable varieties reasonably well.
Then it rained, heavily. We’re still well behind the more usually expected annual rainfall for this time of year, but rest assured dear reader, that it is no longer dry outdoors.
The decent rainfall caused a little bit of erosion near to the raised garden beds. I’d describe that as an early warning sign, yeah.
Establishing a rock wall near to all that soil would stop the erosion, but we’d only put the soil down there in that location last week. Getting a rock wall in place was simply too much work for the time available.
So a few days ago we split a few boulders into large rocks, and then brought all those back up the hill in the yellow power wheelbarrow.
The new rock wall has now been completed and tested by more wet stuff falling from the sky. The soil surface also received additional crushed rock with lime, and so the rain has worked wonders to set the lime.
In between the many raised garden beds, we’ve now added a much larger rock wall as well as additional crushed rock with lime. The rain was good in that it showed some low spots, and those will be topped up and brought back to level.
The area near to the two large house water tanks has not yet been finished, but depending on the weather that will be done over the next week or so. Basically, more soil needs to be added and that requires a brief run of dry weather. I’ve got this notion to add rocks to the soil surface so that it ends up looking like what is known as crazy paving. That should provide a solid all weather surface which won’t wash away if the tank inlet filters block up and water spills out everywhere.
This week’s video is on the work performed to relocate the raised vegetable beds:
In other work, two timber posts were cemented into ground near to the two new water tanks installed only last week. One of the posts will be for a garden tap, whilst the other will be a quick release for a water pump attachment should the water need to be moved uphill, as it eventually will be in the summer months.
In breaking produce news…
Earlier in the week we purchased a hand of Cavendish bananas and came across another example of the dreaded (I believe) Panama Fungus. It’s remarkably unappealing looking:
The fruit on the Pomello (a form of grapefruit) citrus tree has nearly ripened. Some of the fruit are almost as big as Ollie’s head!
A couple of Raspberry canes produced some way-out-of-season berries. They tasted as bad as they look, but it was intriguing that the earlier unseasonably warm weather produced this result. I suppose given enough global warming that many varieties of plants will adapt to the new circumstances.
Despite it being in the depths of winter with frozen over night temperatures, the garden still produces edibles.
The earlier dry and warm weather in the year has motivated land holders to clean up their act. The other day looking into the valley, a person would swear that they were viewing the mythical land of Mordor. Smoke clouds were billowing up into the air right across the valley. Far better to burn now, than wait for extreme summer weather to do the job.
Sadly, it appears that the many tree ferns planted many years ago in the fern gully died during the hot and dry start to the year. Presumably in earlier years I’d allowed the soil there to become too damp, and those ferns simply hadn’t put down deep enough root systems to survive the months of unseasonable weather.
It’s not all bad news though on a fern front, the mother shield ferns survived the weather and are doing pretty well. Those plants are more prolific in the surrounding forest than the tree ferns which tend to cluster around creeks.
And almost to the day of the winter solstice, the daffodils broke ground. It’s uncanny, and I believe that they are early this year.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 5’C (41’F). So far for last year there has been 326.2mm (12.8 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 300.6mm (11.5 inches)