A few months ago the decision was made. You could call it a Captain’s call. Such things always end well, sometimes! It was more of a gut feeling thing, than any tangible incident which could be pointed at. Like the difference between encountering a hungry bear in the forest when you’re just about to eat lunch and the bear knows it, to that of the situation where you’re intending to eat lunch out in the forest and you hear an unidentified sound – was that noise the breaking of a stick nearby? We may be down under, but we’ve see those bear-human interaction videos. If you have bears in your corner of the planet, please do keep them there, or we’ll send the super deadly local snakes, just sayin’. Whatever, the call had been made – less soap boxing, just focus the blog now on what we’re doing. The videos arose from that time.
Still, it can be very hard to ignore the sheer weirdness of unfolding events in this enlightened era of decline. A recent article here, alerted me to the fact that apparently the banksters announced that they would lower the interest rates paid on new deposits. Such moves makes any new deposit sourced financing for them, cheaper. Nice for some. Turns out the improved margin from this latest banksters heist, will apparently be used to supply new loans, with I’m guessing honeymoon rates, which will most likely revert to the higher variable rates at some point in the future. Yipee, what a great idea! The more sensitive person wonders what will happen when the honeymoon is over.
Back in 1997 it was with a sense of dismay and foreboding that I observed the house price bubble begin to inflate. And it’s just kept on going, on an on since then, longer even than my worst nightmares imagined it could. Speaking of dreams, last night a remarkably vivid dream popped into my awareness. Usually my sleep is deep and long, but following on from that dream, the now pre-dawn awakened mind cogitated upon what it all meant.
My grandfather was in the dream, and he had a full head of hair too. In my memory, he was always bald, the stress of World War II will do such things. But there he was in my dream, replete with good hair and accompanied by a younger lady, who presumably was his daughter and thus my mother. The last I spoke with her, she was way younger than I am now. And they’re both long dead. Anyway, it wasn’t a nightmare, and my mother failed to spoil the moment and instead quietly enjoyed the dream sunshine. My grandfather and I were having a lovely chat whilst making repairs to a brick fence. The dream was an odd metaphor.
Were the fence repairs representative of rebuilding the memories of relationships? The old timers always used to bang-on about mending fences as a metaphor. Heck, for all I know, it may even have been a warning to build a fence, for the zombies are coming. Thinking about the economic news, sometimes I do wonder. Unfortunately I’m not much of a fan of massive fencing in these forested parts. People don’t generally keep stock around here, and the fences merely impede the movement of the wildlife.
Mind you, sometimes a dude wants to impede the movement of the forest critters. The other morning the big dog Ollie, accompanied by my good self, chased off a herd of Sambar deer. They’d been chewing on the bark of some of the pear and apple trees. Pesky and hungry critters. This morning Dame Plum (the Kelpie dog) and I escorted several kangaroos out of the orchard. A farmer around these parts once amusingly said that: we’d created a supermarket for the wildlife. Yes, very funny.
Long term readers will know that there are actually some areas of the property which are fenced off so as to keep out the forest critters out of our productive gardens. About a year ago, we constructed a 600m2 / 6458ft2 fenced off area for the many citrus trees along with a large area set aside for vegetable rows. The idea was to have enough area so that rows could be used, then left fallow for a few years, only to be used again. It’s one of the ways we’re adapting our systems to incorporate crop rotation practices. Hang on a second, do you reckon my grandfather was telling me to fix the fence for that large enclosure? Hmm.
Anyway, since the large growing area was set aside, I’ve been regularly feeding the soil there. Every couple of months, I would chuck some of the coffee ground mixture onto the soil surface, then spread it in with a rake. There’d also been applications of compost applied. It was interesting to observe that during the coldest weeks of winter (not all that long ago), the repeated frosts failed to kill off the grass in that well fed area. The grass looked lush and green, and even grew ever so slowly if the sun shone.
Earlier in the week, I took the scary old rotor-tiller out for a spin, and carved up four garden rows in that rich grassy area. With the potential for economic zombies, it’s always wise to get a decent garden planted out with stuff you can eat. In previous years we’d merely dabbled with growing potatoes. The tubers previously grown were tasty, and hardy enough, but this year we mean business, and business be crackin’.
Once the soil was tilled up, we added: compost; coffee bean husks; coffee grounds; blood and bone meal; and granite rock crusher dust. The tubers were planted reasonably deeply, and the additions were all mixed in with a rake. Easy enough to do. We made a video so you can see for yourselves the process of converting a patch of grass to productive garden rows.
That’s me jovially leering at the camera. It was a nice day for working outdoors, which is not always the case in the winter months. The other reason for my good cheer is that there were no zombies and/or Triffids in the immediate area (the dogs would have warned me). But, also there was still ample room in the large enclosure should we decide to create or need a further two garden rows this season.
Observant readers will note from the earlier photo that we’ve allowed plenty of space between the garden rows. That space can be allocated in future years for garden rows, whilst the currently used rows are allowed to return to grass, thus resting the soil up in an easy to recall cycle. The rows line up with the citrus trees which are planted in the other half of the enclosure so it is obvious where the rows had been. Will the arrangement work? Were ghosts from my past warning me of some unknown folly? I have no idea, but if it all works, the experiment sure will be worthwhile.
For those who are interested, the rock crusher dust is known in this corner of the country as ‘bluestone’. It’s a remarkably similar granite to the stuff used in Stonehenge. My understanding of the use of granite in gardens is that the darker the colour, the greater the variety of minerals which will be supplied to plants. Here it is in the trailer before application so you can see the original colour for yourselves:
The other week we noticed that a particularly vigorous fruit tree was in fact rootstock. The grafted section of the tree had died and so the rootstock had to go.
It was a good excuse to get the chainsaw, pole saw and scary old wood chipper out for a spin. Some of the fruit trees are getting quite large!
Pole saws are complicated bits of equipment, not to mention dangerous. It’s always unwise to drop branches onto your head. The height of the tree was much reduced, and then the chainsaw could do the rest.
Removing the vigorously growing tree will free up more space in that area. Over time the other nearby trees, which have been leaning away from the monster, will straighten up and produce more fruit. Cutting the tree down was the easy bit. We then spent four hours (in two sessions) feeding all of the branches into the scary old wood chipper.
The trunk and all of the larger branches will be used as future firewood. Nothing goes to waste here, and even the mulch will be used to fertilise garden beds.
As I mentioned, after more than a decade and a half, some of the fruit trees are getting quite large.
The garden sure is slowly waking up from its winter slumber. Even the ferns are sending forth new fronds, like this Mother Shield Fern in the next image:
We also made an update video for the sake (Japanese rice wine) production. It’s really interesting to see the process over time:
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 10am is 9’C (48’F). So far for last year there has been 645.6mm (25.4 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 620.0mm (24.4 inches)