Many long years ago now, Sandra wanted a sports car. The wish fulfilled a dream, and we purchased an old 1974 Porsche 911 for about $26,000. It was a beast of a machine, and a lot of fun to drive. A big fat whale tail stuck out the back denoting seriousness. But trust me in this, the car looked like it went much faster than it actually did. Driving the car was a solid lesson in how to be effortlessly cool. Late model V8 road registered race cars would sometimes line up at the lights against the aged Porsche. The only sensible response would be that it was beneath my dignity to even acknowledge their presence, and thus the true race was won before it had even begun. Anyway, second gear made an alarming crunch sound, and that would have been simply embarrassing.
We eventually sold the car for about $17,000 with a repaired second gear. Serious people in the know tell me that nowadays the vehicles will fetch over a $100,000, if you can find a buyer. We sold the car in good condition too, because eventually shelling out the multiple $5,000 repair bills proved once and for all, that such machines are a toy for the well heeled. The experience was nice whilst it lasted.
There was one moment of weirdness with the car. One day out of the blue, and with absolutely no warning whatsoever, the nice insurance company called me to let me know that the policy was being cancelled, effective immediately. That was a new and unexpected experience. Who knew they could even do that? Understandably, the customer service representative was edgy, wanted to relay the bad news and finish the call as rapidly as possible. Having few other options for insurance, some hard questions were asked, like: Why is this happening? Turns out the car was a theft risk if parked on the street. Fortunately I was able to prove the vehicle was usually parked in the backyard behind a locked gate. The customer service representative relaxed, took a deep breath, asked for some photos of the arrangement, and the policy continued.
To this day, I’ve never quite felt comfortable that once an insurance policy was entered into, the contract would remain in place until the agreement expired. Events have suggested to me that there are no guarantees in this matter. Insurance contracts are really there to buffer a person against the risk of unfortunate situations occurring. The nice insurance companies weigh up the risk of those unlikely situations occurring, then send you a bill which more or less reflects what it costs to hand over that risk to them. I’d be certain that it is a complicated process, and there’s an old saying that: ‘bills can sometimes reflect the depth of a customers pocket’.
The news headlines here have been full of tragedy of the Los Angeles fires. Reading that many insurance contracts had been allegedly cancelled only months beforehand, was for me a somewhat nerve wracking experience. It bears recalling that for loans on property in Australia, there is generally a clause which specifies that insurance must be maintained at all times. Insurance companies are not your mates, and banks are definitely not your mates – they want no risk, and so that is what the demand clause is probably there for. So far the news is reporting that something like 10,000 buildings have been damaged – that’s going to be one expensive mess. The sensitive person can only but wonder how many of those are actually insured?
I remember hearing statistics from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires down in this part of the world where 173 people died, that about half of the 2,000 buildings destroyed were uninsured. It’s hard to know what happened in those instances, but it probably meant that 1,000 families had lost their house, and may possibly not have had the mad cash to rebuild.
In the aftermath of those fires, the state government slapped on additional building codes so as to reduce the ability of a house to burn down during such a bushfire. Surrounded by very tall eucalyptus trees on a mountain slope, we achieved the highest classification. Yay for us! Boo for our savings.
At the time, only a few companies provided products which complied with the new codes, and each product had to pass rigorous (and also mind bendingly expensive) tests. Those nice companies then passed the costs onto the few purchases of the products. The additional building costs for a small house almost depleted the bank account. In order to afford the material costs, Sandra and I did most of the construction work ourselves. Still, that afforded us extra time to get the minor details of the fire resistant roof, walls and windows sorted out just right. That’s one thing to be grateful for.
It’s hard to know whether the house design will work in the (dare I say it) heat of the moment. Right now, we have insurance and so can afford to leave and let the building fend for itself. Interestingly the additional costs that we paid in constructing our house actually reduces the risk for the insurance company – however there is no discount on our premiums to acknowledge this risk reduction! Anyway, fires are bad, but it’s worth noting that the insurers and banksters have far bigger headaches with flood coverage in Australia, but that is an entirely different, and even more expensive story.
With all this talk about fires in mind, I’ll share a little secret with you all: If you’ve ever wondered why Sandra and I are obsessively neat here and put so much effort into the vegetation management, take a look at the photos of the fires in LA – then you’ll wonder no longer. And we get almost three times the rainfall they do. Makes me wonder whether those sections of LA will be rebuilt in the long run.
The weather here has turned from hot and dry, to hot and wet. With the sudden change and all the smoke in the atmosphere from the large Grampians fire in the far west of the state, the sunsets have been spectacular:
When the skies are clear, the summer sun is fierce due to the extreme UV radiation. Still, work continues around the property. The long path up above the house leading to the terraced gardens was pruned of over hanging vegetation.
All of the material was fed into the scary old wood chipper. With sharp blades and a bit of care, that machine is a beast. The mulch produced was thrown into the nearby garden beds where it will feed the soil and salvia flowers.
After the path was cleared, things got serious. The scary old 8.5hp wood chipper was moved to the terrace which grew the many Globe Artichokes. All of those plants were cut down and fed into the chipper.
It was the day to use scary old machines, because once the garden bed was cleared of vegetation, the equally old 7.5hp rototiller dug up and turned over all the soil in the bed. I even used the machine to dig down deep and rip up the underlying clay and mix it into the soil.
The weather was hot and humid and sweat dripped off me. So we called it quits for that day. The next day a trailer load of compost stuff (sand + mushroom compost + fine woody mulch) was dumped onto the garden bed.
Whilst we had such good quantities of compost stuff, we began fixing up another bed in the terraces. It too is being enhanced with a rock wall on the downhill edge.
The compost material was smoothed out. Then on top of the surface many soil minerals were added including: Coffee Grounds + Garden Lime + Dolomite + Gypsum + Blood and Bone meal. All those were then mixed into the soil using a garden rake. Backwards and forwards the rake was pushed mixing the materials into the compost and original soil. It was hot work.
The bed has now been planted out with seeds for many of our winter crops. A very heavy rainfall on Sunday will hopefully get the seeds started growing early. It’s worth mentioning that the the Globe Artichokes were divided up and then replanted elsewhere.
The early variety of potatoes (Nadine) growing in the above bed were harvested. We made a video about that work:
At this time of year, the blackberries growing in the steep soil batter on the uphill side of the house have to be cut back. The canes are burnt off when safe to do so, in the brazier in the courtyard of course.
Two half days were spent turning some of the seasons fruit and berry harvest into tasty home made jam. Yum!
The two Kelpie dogs continue to attempt to out-alpha one another. It’s a breed trait, but they should know by now that Sandra and I are the bosses. Anyway, all sorts of funny antics go on all the time, and the other night the hapless Ruby stole Dame Plum’s position on the couch. The Dame was having none of that mischief and cut the proverbial Gordian Knot. Ollie deigns not to notice the antics, or get involved.
In breaking produce news:
The apples are getting larger, week by week.
The turmeric in the greenhouse has clearly enjoyed the warm and humid conditions. It’s even pushing up a fifth set of leaves.
Speaking of the greenhouse, many of the tomato vines have almost climbed to the ceiling. I’ll top the plants off (i.e. cut them) so as to ensure that’s as high as they can climb.
I’m of the opinion that growing the vines up strings reduces yield, but makes for an easier time of managing the otherwise sprawling vines. How good do these tomatoes look? It’s possible that if I’d begun the climbing process earlier in the season, the yields would be higher, but who knows?
In the sapling fence enclosure, the many pumpkins and squashes are growing strongly. I hope the locally adapted melon produces some fruit, but you never know. The only other year we’ve grown melons was the notoriously hot Black Summer of 2019/2020. That was a very hot year.
And despite not being watered at all this year and just surviving off rainfall, the grapes are doing particularly well.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 10am is 20’C (68’F). So far for last year there has been 40.6mm (1.6 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 0.0mm (0.0 inches)