Sometimes it amazes me to look back and think of how things used to be around here. One of the undocumented side effects of producing the recent YouTube videos, is that both Sandra and I are looking back at photos of the property from years ago. It’s quite surprising to see the photos, and then ask the hard question: Was it really like that? Well, the facts on the ground based on the photos, very much suggest that it was like that. Hmm.
Living up the bush, as they say, is a very different experience from that of city life. Sandra and I were both born and raised in the city. That was our jungle, and we could navigate our way around the urban spaces. We had the good jobs, lived in a nice house in the inner burbs, and so had absolutely no idea about living on the land. Yet, you know, we knew how to learn, and weren’t afraid of hard work, kept open minds, and so headed up into the forest and hills off on an adventure.
Years, and years later, we still don’t know heaps about plenty of things, but can at least make the claim that there’s some stuff we do know. It kind of all reminds me of a snoring incident from a year or two ago. The guilty person in this case will not be named. Turns out, despite doing years of martial arts training and long distance running as a young bloke, I didn’t have the slightest clue about the gentle art of breathing. Sandra err, knew even less about this subject, which candidly was about the same level as I. It’s something us humans do all the time too, so why didn’t either of us know anything about it?
In many ways, we’re both natural scholars, and so we decided to bone up on the subject of breathing. Who knew there were people out there walking among us, for whom the subject of breathing – is a special interest. Now, I have nothing but high regard for these folks, and as it’s their special interest, they’ll do all the hard yards and run the months and years of personal experimentation, saving us lesser mortals a lot of hard graft and guess work.
One of the most interesting sources of knowledge was a book by the author: James Nestor, titled: Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. I can already sense that some readers here are thinking to themselves: Chris has gone woo-woo. Sure, yeah, everyone’s entitled to an opinion. Look I’m a deeply practical guy and focus on results: Does this here thing you’re talking about, work? After all, there’s only so many hours in a life, and I’m not wasting any of them. But admittedly it all does sound a little bit woo-woo, so please hang in with me here!
As I mentioned, the book is a journey, and last I checked, I don’t really need to know how monks perform some sort of unusual breathing exercise in order to survive long periods of time in deep meditation in super cold environments whilst wearing the minimal basic monks garb. Such esoteric knowledge, is a step too far. What I did take away from the deep dive of that time, is that it is probably a very good thing for a person to focus on breathing primarily through their nose. The benefits are quite interesting and rewarding.
As a child my nose had been broken, so I could only ever breathe through one side of my nose, unless I was doing sports. The adrenalin apparently opened up both sides of my nose, and so sport provided a pressure relief for my sinuses. As you’d imagine being the crafty and resourceful person I am, I did a lot of sports and other physical activities. But as a young adult working a full time job, I’d had enough of the problems, and used what little spare mad cash I had, to go to a surgeon and get my nose fixed, which he did. I was blithely unaware of the serious consequences if the the job was stuffed up, which fortunately is a relatively rare occurrence. Anyway, after going under the knife, plus a day or so of healing, the packs were removed from my nose. I never new so much blood could ooze out of my face. The nurse doing that work was characteristically unsympathetic to my distress and not shy about communicating her feelings in the matter. But a fortnight later, for the first time I could recall, I could regularly breathe through both sides of my nose at once. Relief.
Back to more recent events though. It was Sandra who took the initiative on this journey, and forced herself to breathe through her nose as much as possible all day and (most importantly) at night. At the time I was sceptical, but kept an open mind until the results were in. And it was hard to forget that the experiment produced a couple of really nasty blood clots. Horrid looking things, and admittedly I was a bit worried that a crime scene investigation team might get the wrong idea. So we’ve shone the black light on this pillow and found some unusual stains, do you mind coming down to the station to assist us with our enquiries sir? Not the sort of words you ever want to hear.
Turns out, Sandra had also been only able to breathe through one side of her nose. But since this very interesting experiment, she can now use both sides. You may say: So what? But let me tell you this little interesting side effect, breathing primarily through the nose at all times, has meant that we both sleep right through the night. And the snoring has gone. There are other changes as well. It’s been a fascinating journey this experiment, and I’m now left wondering: What else of practical use don’t I know anything about? Candidly, there’s probably more stuff than I have time on this planet for! A dude’s just gotta face one issue at a time, and go from there. If you, dear reader, have an interesting esoteric area of practical knowledge you’d like to share, please don’t keep it to yourself!
Speaking of having to work things out, regular readers will recall that Rabbit WarsTM have been going on here this past month or so. We’ve got a huge swath of Echium plants to remove. The dense woody vegetation is providing way too much shelter for the rabbit resistance to hide in, and so they have to go.
It’s a bit late in the season to be lighting a big burn off, and the Echium plants are so twisted and gnarled we can’t run them through the scary old wood chipper. What to do? We got creative and tested a theory on the woody wormwood shrubs which were removed a week or so ago for much the same reason. The gnarly plant material was dumped in a depression in the ground, then we ran it over with the powerful low centre of gravity mower. All the material got blitzed up nicely, so we’ll begin removing the Echium’s over the next few weeks using the same technique. I was amazed at how little material was left over after this week’s effort.
Observant readers will note that in the image above, the soil in this particular forest edge area is very poor, and so hopefully all of the organic material can only be of benefit, maybe.
You have to have systems for everything. A few weeks ago we dismantled an old rusting steel shed. The corrugated steel sheets were left in an area for us to sort out later. We of course hadn’t counted on a brief wind storm, and so the sheets decided they’d be better if they were spread around a bit. This time around, the sheets have been sorted by materials type and size – then weighted down.
The brief wind storm also somehow managed to split a fruit tree in half. As a note, we recovered a dozen pieces of firewood from the tree, and turned the rest of it into mulch using the scary old wood chipper. The mulch was then added back to the garden bed.
It’s been a weird old week of weather. One morning the outside air temperature was 0’C / 32’F.
You don’t really want to experience such weather when the fruit trees are in blossom, because it usually comes with frost. There was ice on the ground in some, but not all parts of the garden. Bizarrely, the orchards and forest were free of frost, except for the very edges. Didn’t expect that to happen. Somehow the trees must release heat at night during this time of year.
Other days, the weather has been glorious and sunny, but on the cooler side of things. The smoke from the many burn offs in the area are producing some stunning sunsets:
The state government has again been conducting large scale burn offs in the area. Quite sensible really, other than the sheer scale of the burns. It would perhaps be better if the burns were done on a smaller scale so as to allow time for the forest critters to escape and fight their way into new homes, if they can.
A few hours were spent shifting large rocks from the new firewood shed site. The rocks were moved downhill, and then placed in the new rock wall which retains soil along the line of the water tanks. The first layer of rocks is about two thirds done. Sadly, yet again, we’ve now run out of large rocks and will soon have to split some boulders.
It’s a busy time of year, and the large citrus and potato enclosure was mown. Also a half cubic metre (0.65 cubic yards) of purchased soil like product was dumped in there. Some of that stuff was placed at the end of each of the potato rows, and will be used to hill up the vines as they grow – which they are, despite the frost.
Most days I’ve simply grabbed some soil using a scoop and then hilled up the potato vines. The art is probably more complicated than that, but this is the first time I’ve taken this approach with the plants. Also of interest to me is that the saved potato seeds from previous years are much slower growing than the certified virus free spuds.
Another cement step was poured on the new concrete garden staircase.
The step dried rapidly in the warm days, and so we poured another.
In the above image, you can see that the wind damaged tree has been pruned and the mulch was placed back around it’s trunk as soil food.
In breaking produce news:
The almonds were unaffected by the frost, and are rapidly gaining in size. Hopefully, they’ll be ready to harvest once the green fuzzy outer coats begin to split open. That should be sometime around late January.
The apricots are showing signs of frost damage, but it’s possible it’ll only be superficial skin damage. Apricots grown in this part of the continent tend to always show spotty skin damage usually from this sort of weather which happens every year. A grower simply hopes that the conditions aren’t severe enough for the fruit to drop off the tree in shock.
One of the smaller peach trees appears to be producing quite a lot of fruit. I may have to thin the fruit on that tree, but we’ll see. I believe the variety is known as ‘Golden Queen’ and they’re very tasty.
Pears and apples are great trees because they simply shrug off cold snaps.
This weeks video is a new format… Just trying stuff to see what resonates.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 16’C (61’F). So far for last year there has been 723.0mm (28.5 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 720.6mm (28.4 inches)
Yo, Chris – How do we know the photos aren’t photoshopped or AI constructed? 🙂
Yup. There’s nothing like blowing a big ol’ blood clot, out of your sinuses, to make you sit up and take notice.
Hmm. Interesting esoteric area of knowledge. Well, if I had bothered to read Mr. Greer’s recent posts, I could tell you all about Wagner’s Ring Cycle. But I didn’t, so I can’t 🙂 . Recently, I’ve taken a dive down the rabbit hole, to research sleep walking, for a friend.
The low center of gravity mower, probably isn’t near as much fun as the scary old wood chipper. But, it sounds (and looks) like it does the job.
The sunset picture is calendar worthy.
The water tanks and giant rocks, look monumental. You can probably see that set up, from space.
I can never figure out how much to mound up the dirt, around potatoes. How much is too much? How much is not enough? I’m glad the almonds, peaches and apricots look as though they’re going to make it into good weather. Have you ever made apricot juice? It’s pretty tasty stuff.
I don’t know how your video is going to be received. Like the hat. You were photo bombed by a chicken.
The succulent flowers are just weird and colorful. Who needs daffodils? Lew
Hi Lewis,
If someone hadn’t casually suggested all those years ago that the photos were artificially generated, would any of us nice folks here even have had such a thought? See, it turns out a bloke has to be careful who he hangs out with. You read that warning here first, although I can’t now really say for sure whether the thought was even my own, and upon consideration it may be good advice handed down from who knows where. Far out man! You see the deep philosophical waters we’re now wading in to? Dude, what is real?
Backing away slowly from such mental conundrums, just in case either of our brains explode – scanners style. The only upside of that situation is that the clean up work would be by necessity done by someone else.
Yup, so true. I have taken your earlier advice on board and have studiously avoided over the years discussing health matters, but a little trip into the land of woo-woo, could be seen as a certain type of counterpoint? Maybe… The blood clot was all to real, and let’s just say that it wasn’t mine. But yes, in life a person can have pivotal moments where nothing is quite the same afterwards. Incidentally, that can happen in the large societal sphere as well.
Lewis, you are like super-bad to say such things. 🙂 Man, I mentioned that the Strauss character was cursed, but even that got no traction, so aren’t you at least a little bit curious to see where things are headed? Mr Greer is of course the master of surprise, and I’m amazed that the cursed musical genius way in the past could see the end point of his beloved civilisation which he viewed as his own personal fast food take away outlet. Dude, it was just like every other one before it. It probably shocked ol’ Wagner the realisation that he’d have to take up a garden hoe and work for a living. 😉
Hmm! Interesting indeed. That is a very fascinating topic, and the Editor long ago used to sleep walk. At first it freaked me out, then I began wondering about what part of the brain had taken charge and so conducted a few experiments, but nothing finalised the matter like resolving the underlying issues. I tend to follow a live and let live approach with life, but waking me up in the middle of the night is bound to bring things to a suitable and speedy resolution. Let’s just say that I became motivated… 🙂 How’s your friend going with this? I’m actually quite curious about the matter as well.
The powerful low centre of gravity lacks the fun of the scary old wood chipper, because by and large the Editor monopolises the powerful machine and so I don’t get to use it. It’s notably hard to form opinions from a position of a lack of first-hand experience. But I tell ya, I see the smiles from afar! Hmm. I checked out the Japanese cutting blades after the rough usage we put that powerful machine too, and they looked as good as new. Best to keep one’s fingers and toes away from such might. And sadly the Echiums have to go. I’m not a fan of the rabbits. And interestingly the local farmer had the young blokes up again over the weekend hunting deer. They look quite capable, except their heavy duty canvas tent looks as though it would be better in a ren-fair.
Thanks, and you’d hope the powers that be have better things to do than admire the view from space? No doubt such folks lack hobbies.
Man, I have no idea about how much soil to mound up around the potato vines either, but it is very possible that there are limits like err, including how much soil like stuff I can afford to bring in here. 🙂 The experiment with the saved seed potatoes is quite enlightening, and I’m now wondering how the old-timers used to manage that issue. I doubt seed raising labs were around back in the day. Have you ever heard anything about that trick with saving potato seed?
As each day goes along, the chances of harvesting some of these sorts of marginal fruits, is increasing. For four years, some extreme weather event or another have wiped them all out here, so fingers crossed. I love sun ripened apricots and I’ve never had the juice, but I can imagine that it would be very good. They’re an aromatic fruit don’t you reckon, which we normally bottle and jam. Yum!
utub is a total mystery to me, but we’re just trying things until we hit our groove. From what I see, the game there is to hand over mad cash for what they call, err, boosting. We’re testing the algorithm to see whether there are any ways around that, otherwise the boozts (!) demands may beggar the kingdom. It is after all a business. The chickens are fun aren’t they? And have such cheeky personalities. Some things are good, some are way beyond good, and Michael the hat dude in the big smoke introduced me to: Hanna hats of Donegal
Thanks, and the flowers are a highlight! The succulent garden bed enjoyed it’s recent prune.
Oh my! Those houses are perhaps not for the likes of you and I! Spensive, so you’d hope that they rode out the hurricane and afterwards in comfort. There is certainly a bit of that going on, and they were right at sea level so yeah, what could possibly go wrong? I’d imagine if the outer islands went under, the water wouldn’t stop there.
Christopher Columbus has a miserable looking face with the eyes of a person that I wouldn’t trust. There’s some speculation going on about the bloke lately, but big deal, who cares? Are people so bored that they’d investigate such matters. I need to put them to work hauling rocks back up the hill. 😉
I must say that I’m sensing the distinct absence of sympathy from you here. 🙂 All these activists are changing things in such a way that it’s messing up my schedule. Do they even care? Now New Years day could work, but right now, that’s not an option. But yeah, buck up and stuff, and hopefully the rest of the year is not tarnished!
Thanks for taking the deep dive on our behalf. Peak World Fair perhaps? I wonder if the rise of television had anything to do with the decline and fall of the world fairs?
Ah, yes of course, I forgot, but you’ve mentioned the goats and blackberry clearing before. Makes a person wonder how goats can even consume such spiky canes. Hopefully no goats escaped during your watch, but given that you are still friends, I’d have to suggest the answer is no, maybe? Did they eventually do OK there with all of the fires in their area?
It was a bit cooler here today than where you are. Got up early and did a shandy day of paid work and work around here. We spent about four hours splitting and hauling firewood from the pile of rounds nearest to the forest edge – best to reduce snake risk with such piles, although there is always some of that gear to worry about. The weather forecast suggested more rain than actually fell, so whilst it was dry, that’s firewood time. The Cherokee Bank of Firewood is as you’d imagine, filling up.
Garlic is quite expensive here too, although a bit is brought in from the land of stuff, and the spray turns it slightly off the usually expected colour. Hmm. But I agree, savings are to be made in the garden and kitchen. That amount of cloves would be very good for your health.
Yeah, exactly you can get ambushed, and need I recall the Breaking Bad series? For best sleep, that show had to be avoided due to it making little sense to my brain. Funnily enough I didn’t get that disturbed sleep effect with Dexter, dunno why.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chris,
Oh dear, yet another book to add to the list. No worries about the nature of the book. I’m into the woo a bit. I probably have mentioned it before but I attend an excellent yoga class once a week and our instructor includes pranayama breathing techniques at the end of each session. I used to be a mouth breather especially when stress with short shallow breaths but not anymore. I call the class “old lady yoga”. Our instructor just turned 65, the youngest member of the class is about the same age and the rest of us are 70 or older. It’s a small class so every post can be modified individually depending on what issue each person has. She has specifically centers on back issues and has been very helpful. I have a lot of back issues. When I had an MRI done 3 years ago my doctor immediately referred to me to a pain specialist to get steroid shots but I nixed that idea and in fact was rather surprised as I didn’t have that much pain. Anyway I’m still upright and walk at least 3 miles a day, do my yoga practice and work with weights and I attribute that to my instructor. Anyway, thanks for the book recommendation.
Still no rain but quite beautiful weather. We do have frost and freeze warnings for Tuesday and Wednesday but then it’s back to above normal temperatures.
I’ve taken the risk of posting your latest video on Facebook just to see people’s reaction. I think I put something on Facebook about once a year.
Margaret
@Pam
Don’t know if you’ll get a chance to see this but I wanted to express my sympathy for what you’re going through. It’s got to be so hard. I’m glad your son is able to help out some.
Margaret
Yo, Chris – Deep philosophical waters? This sucker is going down! Grab a life vest and hope for the best. 🙂 During WWII, military guys referred to their inflatable life vests as “Mae Wests.” The wags.
Oh, I’ve had a few of those “Nothing will be the same, moments.” 9/11, was one. When it became apparent, that the lockdowns for You Know What, were a real thing, that was another.
Super-bad to say such things? You don’t know the restraint, I manage to attain. I thought a few things, I decided not to say, after reading your blog post (a nose job? Cosmetic surgery? A nation of mouth breathers?), but thought better of it. 🙂
I have zero (_-0- ) interest in Wagner. Other than knowing the basics, to appear to be culturally literate.
I haven’t seen the friend (who has a friend) who sleep walks. I’ve done a bit of research. Causes? Stress, genetics, who knows what. There are supposed cures, sleep labs, drugs, therapy. Heck, there are so many opinions on what dreams are, and sleep walking falls in there, somewhere. The only thing that made any kind of sense was what to do if you had a sleepwalking child. Who was maybe on some kind of schedule. Wake them up 15 minutes before an episode, keep them up for a little while, and then put them back to bed. I guess sleepwalking is fairly common in children, but they tend to grow out of it, by adolescence.
Sad about the Echiums. They were blue, weren’t they? Maybe a small patch, somewhere? Or, even in a container? Take that, rascally rabbits! You won’t entirely deprive me of my Echiums!
I took a look down the rabbit hole, to see about saving potato seeds. Most of the articles were on saving seed potatoes. The old, look for the eyes, and plant chunks. But I did find one article about saving the actual seed, which looks pretty good. “Save Potato Seeds: A Step by Step Guide.” by Joel George. At a site called planthd. Although there’s a glitch, in the article. At the very end (well past the important parts), it lapses into saving pumpkin seeds.
Ohhh. Hanna hats are quit nice. I wonder how I’d look in one? Just yesterday, I tried on a black cowboy style hat, that I’ve had in the closet, for years. I look ridiculous. I’ll have to find a home for it. I couldn’t even convince myself to wear it out of the house, even though it is the Halloween season.
I don’t know about the Worlds Fairs demise, and TV. TV, at least here, was well ensconced by 1964. And there were plenty of TV ads for the fair.
My friends were raising the two goats for meat. They were doing everything “by the book,” and feedback from other goat owners. I always had the feeling that some of the hoops they had to jump through, were the lenocracy in full cry. And the hoops were expensive. Maybe your friends in The Big Shed have some insight into that.
Yesterday’s high was 75F (23.88C). The overnight low was 48F. Forecast for today is 66F. There’s quit a change in the weather, today. It’s pretty breezy out, and there are clouds moving in from the west. Rain and showers in the forecast, for the next week. The autumn rains are here. I won’t have to water, tonight.
Last night, I finished cleaning out my little guerrilla garden patch. Iris. Oh, my. A solid patch. But, I managed to use a fork, to get them all lifted. Replanted a few, and potted up 5 for the Master Gardeners sale, next year. They’re a blue and white miniature iris, called Captain Jack. Also gifted some to the Master Gardeners who come on Mondays. Then I planted another variety of garlic, from the sampler I bought.
Only three of the Master Gardeners, showed up, this morning. Basically kicked around ideas for next year. They haven’t settled on anything, yet. Usually, they have at least one big project, on the go. This year, it was taking out a few trees, and revitalizing a patch with lots of roses in it. Lew
Hi Margaret,
Oh no! The sneaky book recommendation has struck yet again. 🙂 Who doesn’t love such things? However, as you have access to a veritable treasure trove of books which are in the second hand world, I feel that it is my duty to say that that sooner or later, most things you were keeping a watch out for, turn up. The book is certainly worth reading for the discussion of the more practical matters presented in the text.
It’s really interesting that you mention the breathing exercises at the end of each yoga session, because in martial arts training, that’s exactly what we also did. Hmm. In through the nose, and out through the mouth, accompanied with a ritualistic arm movement which coincidentally expanded the muscles in the sternum. Yes, there is a lot to this art which we do at every step in our lives.
Margaret, what you described is the same breathing pattern that Sandra used when stressed. Respect for contemplating what those actions meant, then addressing the behaviours. I’m genuinely impressed.
What a truly delightful name for the class, and yes, it’s a journey, which we can all but choose to travel. 🙂 Truthfully, every single day of the year, even if we don’t feel like doing so, there’s a twenty minute stretch routine. Your class sounds lovely, and I’ll tell you a story about such things from down this way. The bloke who ran the local earthworks business years ago was rough as bags, but we got along very well and had some good chats. As a small business contractor, he’d be operating the 20 tonne excavator moving soil around to cut in the house site, not to mention all of the other machines used for putting in the driveway, rolling it down etc. Anyway, one day out of the blue, he tells me that he organised a local men’s yoga group for all the sorts of reasons which you’d probably appreciate. That was fifteen years ago, and I’d not really understood the why of it way back then, but now I very much comprehend the situation. You’re very lucky to have such a local group which is attentive to a persons particular needs.
That’s the thing isn’t it? There are invasive quick fixes, and then there are longer term and the much harder regular maintenance paths which are probably easier in the long run. I always choose the latter option.
Years and years ago I attended a workplace safety course where the trainer just casually dropped in the information about walking being an excellent exercise for a strengthening a persons back, and you’re doing all the right things from my perspective. Have you ever noticed that sometimes when there is a need, an instructor and guide sometimes materialises? I’ve had some excellent instruction over the years, like from the Sensei I mentioned long ago.
Sandra had the same food and orthodontics journey that the author of the book mentioned, and comprehending that information alone was interesting.
Hope the overnight frosts and freezing weather aren’t too bad, and that the autumn sunshine follows up with clear sunny days. Truly though, the weather batten is being handed over.
Is the bookshop in it’s new location proving to be popular?
Actually I very appreciate your advertising effort and am trying random videos in order to see what works. Thank you very much. 🙂 Over the past five years or so, I’ve come to the awful awareness that perhaps people aren’t reading nearly as much as they used to, although I am, and will always be, a dedicated bookworm, but that was one of the motivating forces behind branching out with the video format.
Cheers
Chris
Hi Lewis,
Well there is that of course, isn’t there? 🙂 Always a bit of a problem to view the future and take a dark perspective away with you, although I’m very much of your mindset here. Do the best you can, is about all any of us can do now, and of course luck will as always play its part. Mae West was a truly fascinating person, and I’d not previously known much about the lady, however, it impressed me greatly that she appeared to have equal parts: charm, wit and shock value. Not to mention a dislike of big crowds.
Yes, I can well understand how those moments were pivotal, and both rocked my world down here as well. And there are also the smaller more private moments when nothing is ever the same afterwards and your perspective suddenly shifts. I rarely speak of such moments, and the word ‘perspective’ has a great deal of meaning to me.
Lewis, I have nothing but respect for your self restraint, and candidly know of what you speak of. There being no such thing as free speech down here, and I’m unable to even click on a ‘like’ button for such things as said in your fine country. Dare I say it, but that is an amendment which needs exercising and protection, I’d just get the backside sued off me and be left with nothing to show for it all. It troubles me very deeply that goobermints are considering misinformation, disinformation and no-information laws, although I may have made up the last category. Makes a person nervous that they may come unstuck merely for making an error. Hmm. And word on the street is that the proposed law is not being equally applied. Someone smarter than I may have mentioned that not all pigs are equal! Insert squooshed sounding oink noise from this ‘ere corner of the interweb… 🙂
Hehe! Nah, man, the procedure was hardly done for aesthetic purposes. Thanks for the laughs as that was genuinely very funny. The surgeon said something about adnoids, whatever they are, but all I wanted was to be able to breathe properly. I’ve heard alarming stories over the years of kids who’d stuck plastic items like lego up their noses and it had become stuck. Horrific.
Always wise to keep up with what the cool kids are talking about! 😉 I have no interest in opera.
Interesting, and hope you get a chance to catch up and find out the latest update. The Editor used to sleepwalk when stressed out. That was a strange trigger, but consistent, and I tell ya what, the incidents used to stress me out – at first at least, then it was just intriguing. The situation causing the stress was tackled, and that worked to resolve the incidents, but who knows really how all this brain stuff works? I tend to hold the belief that there’s a lot more going on in the world than our brains can comprehend. Of course, I could be equally wrong. Not a bad idea at all to observe the patterns, then break them. Very clever really.
Yes, the Echiums are blue, and that just makes the work doubly hard. Your suggestion is most excellent, and what we may do is perhaps manage those plants a lot better than we have done so far. They readily volunteer so, starting again with them won’t be a difficulty. Should my penance be having to replant the area with blue flowering plants?
Ooo, many thanks for the potato seed saving suggestions, although I was unable to find the link you mentioned. However, there seems to be a lot of information on this process, and it is a subject which is worthy of a very deep dive.
Hanna Hats are awesome and other than stuffing up the sizing, what could possibly go wrong. 🙂 You’d probably look super cool in one of the hats, and truly the woollen ones do keep your head warm in the winter months. On an only marginally related hat story from earlier today… A lovely young lady I know mentioned the cool hat I was wearing as she was looking for a present to buy for someone. I don’t usually engage in such conversations for very long, but you know, it was about the hat, and what can I say, I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the makers, and oh well. Anyway, after a very short few sentences, I could sense discomfiture and then she started saying ‘my partner this, and that’. Sure. OK I hear you. Internally I was thinking to myself: ‘For f#$k sakes I’m just talking about a hat’. Anyway, I’ll just take myself outside… Oh well, that took a sudden awkward turn. Moving on. Most of the time I generally keep to pleasantries with such people because socially that’s what is required, but I guess dealing with the general public can make a person cynical as to peoples motives.
It’s an interesting thing though with the demise of the world fairs, but then it may be simply an idea which had been played out to its conclusion? Dunno. I’ve seen a few things in decline over my life, like the matinees / cinema.
You know what, next we catch up, I’m going to ask them about their experiences with that side of things. They do process their animals on site, but I’d reckon that there’s be some restrictions relating to the sale of the stuff. You do hear stories about really odd and arbitrary restrictions, and it’s always troubling to see such lenocracy in play. It’s a good word isn’t it?
The nights are getting a bit warmer here than where you are, but the daytime temperatures are around the same. Today was quite nice, but I did paid work all day long. Thursday night into Friday looks to be quite torrential with rain, but warm-ish too.
Hehe! The guerrilla garden patch – like it! Those irises will sell for sure at the plant sale. I’m yet to encounter a solid patch of irises, but know what you mean there. A gnarly mess of root systems. Ah, so that’s where you got some of the extra garlic cloves into the ground. Your timing is pretty good for planting.
That’s hard work, and the trees here need pruning and the roses need attending to as well. That stuff never stops. Did the revitalised area end up looking good? I don’t mind a good thinning of the vegetation when it needs to be done.
The frost the other day caused some of the roses to wilt. Better cut those bits off them. And I forget, did I mention that the other day a koala call could be heard from down below? That’s the first in a while.
Cheers
Chris