I like Gardening

That means I like to get out into the dirt to pull weeds and put in plants. I especially like to grow as much as I can of what we eat - and most summers it's more of a problem to use all I grow than anything else. Even with sharing my surplus with my neighbours and putting it out on the street free food trolley I often have a glut that I need to preserve in various ways.

Not this summer though. It started off really well. I got the seeds in on time - not always the case I'm ashamed to say - and the seedlings planted out. And that's where the problems started.  One of our neighbours has a curry tree. These are very pretty with delicate fern-like leaves which are great to flavour food. I have one in a pot and find it very useful but unfortunately they are also horribly invasive if they are in the ground. Their roots spread for huge distances and sucker like crazy - and that was the start of my gardening woes. Attracted by my well fertilised and watered vegetable garden the tree has sent its roots under the fence, spreading up and across the whole of the area and into the neighbour's yard on the other side of ours. The main roots are sending up suckers everywhere and there's also a dense tangle of small fibrous roots making it difficult to get even a sharp spade through them.

I did manage to dig a few beds and put in my seedlings and despite the root competition by dint of regular fertilising it was looking like we'd be okay. Then one morning I went out to have a look around and the top of some of the beans - their growing tips and the leaves halfway down - were gone, completely stripped off to bare stalks. I looked and looked but couldn't see the cause - no insects and it didn't look like bird or rodent damage. It was a puzzle.

Next morning all the beans had been given the same treatment as had the rockmelons I had growing up the fence. I could not still find what was doing it but every day more plants were being stripped and soon despite my covering up the growing shoots the beans, the rockmelons and the cape gooseberries were just sticks. At the same time the beetroot plants were rapidly disappearing although I couldn't see any sign that their leaves were under the same attack.

The zucchinis and cucumbers apparently weren't appealing to whatever it was so they continued to fruit as did the capsicums, eggplant and tomatoes and we could still pick some chard most days. Then I noticed tooth marks in the green tomatoes and soon there were half eaten fruit every morning. This turned out to be rats. These are the bane of every suburban vegetable garden because they are clever and agile - they went as far as to pull off the covers I put on some of the developing fruit. I read somewhere that they don't like some strong odours and the suggestion - much to Miss I'm Nearly Four's amusement - was to put peppermint oil on cotton wool balls and place them around the garden.  That seems to have worked although it takes time and effort because if the cotton balls get wet they lose the smell so they have to be removed for watering. Since by this point all but four of the tomato plants had died it wasn't really too onerous a task.

That wasn't the end of my trials, though. For some unknown reason the cucumbers have all turned up their toes now and even usually reliable plants like spring onions are not doing well. The final blow came when I went out to pick the butternut squashes that had ripened and found several where some sort of fungus was eating away at them where they had been lying on the ground, two had split completely open and ants had established a colony of aphids on another. I probably shouldn't complain too much about this because I already have around twenty squash stored away and there are more coming on but it felt like the last straw at the time.

Despite all of this the capsicums, eggplants and a few herbs are still thriving. Of the herbs the sweet basil is doing particularly well. The photo at the top of the post is of a small section of the basil bed - the small plants among the basil are calendulas which I grow for their flowers. I've already made and frozen four lots of pesto and it looks like there'll be more ready to pick in a few days. Without any idea of what has been stripping the plants and with at least another month of very hot weather to come there seems little point in replanting anything else since with the way things have been going this year a new plague could arrive at any moment.

PS Miss I'm Nearly Four visited again today and was very disappointed to find that we couldn't harvest any vegetables but she did manage to score some strawberries from the hanging baskets and blueberries from those growing in pots.

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe

One of the TV programs I like to watch most days is The Drum. This is a discussion  between an assortment of different panelists on the ABC. The ABC here is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia's independent national broadcaster, and they don't shy away from sometimes uncomfortable subjects, uncovering scandals and criticising those in politics. You can guess how well this might go down with some politicians and their supporters and The Drum comes in for a lot of criticism because of the diversity of its panellists who come from all sides of the political spectrum and give their sometimes controversial opinions on several subjects during the course of the program. Given 'the drum' in Aussie slang generally means the facts (if I'm giving you the drum I'm filling you in on the facts including what's going on behind the scenes) you can see why controversy sometimes erupts when a panellist speaks out.

While I don't always agree with the opinions stated I find The Drum often opens up conversations and increases my awareness of things that I hadn't known about - and this is exactly what has happened over the last six months or so. Aboriginal panelists often feature talking about indigenous current affairs while NAIDOC week every year brings indigenous matters into focus with an indigenous moderator and panellist discussion. It's not always comfortable listening because colonial settlement of Australia has many dark passages with long lasting consequences.

It was on The Drum that I first heard of Bruce Pascoe and Dark Emu, his book on Aboriginal culture before the arrival of the European colonists. I'm so glad I did because I've now read it and so many of the questions that had been raised about the traditional way we were taught about Aboriginal culture were answered. I was taught that the original inhabitants had been nomadic hunter gatherers with no permanent settlements. This meant that the land belonged to no-one - the so-called terra nullius - a convenient fiction which made it open for European settlers to lay claim to it. Terra nullius was manifestly untrue since there was already a thriving indigenous population but a resident population didn't stop any of the European colonial powers from as far back as Christopher Columbus in 1492 moving in on other lands and taking over whatever they wanted.  The Australian land grab was only one of the later parts of the world-wide invasions where indigenous people were dispossessed and then put under the 'protection' of the new settlers' laws. The people concerned, of course, were never consulted.

This had long ago ceased to make sense to me and as carbon dating developed and the length of time indigenous people had been in Australia stretched further and further back - it's now estimated that Australia has been continuously occupied for at least 60,000 years - it made even less sense. These were people who shared a cultural heritage and lived successfully on pretty much every part of the continent, from rainforest to desert, exploiting and managing the landscape to their advantage, not the half starved, wandering primitive savages unable to look after themselves that I was taught about in school.

It's turned out that this view was very far from the truth and Pascoe shows us just how untrue as he quotes from the journals of the early settlers and explorers. Indigenous Australians had developed a way of land management that suited this largely dry land using fire. Early visitors continually commented on how the landscape was laid out like 'a gentleman's park' and that the 'natives' were frequently burning small areas but never connected the two. Similarly they ignored the evidence of coastal fisheries and the fish and eel traps in wetlands and on watercourses and the extensive fields of crops like yams. In the journals there's even mention of permanent villages but these were destroyed as soon they got in the way of pastoralists and farmers. In the same way the landscape was changed - if you don't burn at the right time of the year scrub and trees take over and the newcomers didn't grasp this - and the park-like vista disappeared. By the 1830s there were starving Aboriginal people living and wandering homeless - and the reason for this was because they had had their traditional land use where they cultivated plants like yams and their traditional hunting grounds taken away as the new arrivals sought to make the continent over using European methods.

This has had repercussions that echo down to the present day and affect all Australians. You will have heard about the horrific bushfires that have engulfed much of the eastern part of the country. Trying to impose European farming and pastoral practices on the country and not listening to indigenous experience has left us ignorant and at the mercy of natural events like El Niño-Southern Oscillation - and without the tools to survive them.

Recently the eastern part of the country has been suffering a prolonged drought, which left everything tinder dry, and climate change has played its part with wild weather events and higher than average temperatures. Dry lightning strikes have been responsible for starting almost all the fires - very few (less than 1%) were the result of arson despite the false figures irresponsibly reported around the world - and the bushfires themselves have been so extensive that they generate their own weather which includes more dry lightning and fire tornadoes. The problem is massive and we still have much of the fire season to come.

I'm not suggesting we can return totally to the pre-colonial indigenous land management practices - European settlement has fundamentally changed the way Australia uses land - but maybe, just maybe we need to look at both current and pre-colonial methods and what is happening to the planet now then we can work out what is best for our country and by extension the world. It's worth considering and this book with its historical background might be a starting point.

I'd suggest, too, that all Australians would profit by reading Bill Gammage's The Biggest Estate on Earth which also looks at how indigenous Australians used land in pre-colonial times and we might learn something. First Nations people have much to offer if we're willing to listen.

Life Happens

I spent a large part of yesterday sitting in the local ED - I'd developed severe shoulder pain and we thought I might have a serious injury. As it happens after examination and x-rays it turned out to be  bursitis, which although painful is treatable starting with a whiz bang sling to ease the pain and followed by painkillers and rest while it heals. If that doesn't work there's the possibility of steroid injections.

Thanks to this regime I'm feeling more comfortable if somewhat limited as to what I can do and as I'm sure you've noticed always happens in these situations I have a sudden desire to do all those things that require full use of my right arm and hand. Some of these I had already planned - for instance I had intended to get out into the garden to take advantage of the relatively cooler weather we're having to clear out the veggies that have past their usefulness and that will obviously have to wait.

By no means all come into that category, though. Why on earth do I suddenly have an urge to sew, for example. I can barely hold a pen at the moment so why on earth would I think I could cut out and make up a garment? I know, it's ridiculous but it's only one of many things I absolutely need - actually that should be want - to be doing - and can't. To be fair some of these things have been sitting quietly wanting my attention for some time but there's been no urgency and it won't make any difference whether they're done today, next week or next month so why do I need to even think about them right now.

One thing that I can't do and find genuinely annoying does relate to holding a pen. Ever since I read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way back in 1994 I've made a practice of writing Morning Pages. Cameron advises that as soon as possible after getting up you sit down and write around three pages. You don't plan or critique in any way. You just write about whatever is on your mind. It can be a rant, a plan of action for the day, thoughts on political matters, anything. These pages are not meant to be shared and I go through them every six months or so and discard anything not worth keeping which unsurprisingly is most of it. Whatever irritation caused the rant has long past, politics has moved on and so on.  I like to write these pages longhand and find the process wonderfully thought clarifying to the point that whenever I've missed doing my pages I feel I've started the day badly. And that's the situation I'm in now. I only managed a half a page this morning before I simply couldn't continue to write anymore and this looks like it's going to be the frustrating situation for some days at least. Sigh.

Tidying Up A Few Things

in particular my sewing storage and it's been instructive to say the least. I have always enjoyed sewing - I used to make most of my own and my children's clothes and I've been a patchworker and quilter for many years - and although these days arthritis has made it much harder to do either I still have an interest in both. For a few years a lot of things (mostly health related) have forced me to do only the bare minimum of sewing - repairs and minor adjustments mainly - but for a while now I've been working through the house decluttering and generally organising things better, thanks at least in part to having reread The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

I've always gone with the theory that's there should be a place for everything and everything in its place but if I'm honest things had gotten a tad out of order and that was no longer working. The reread of Kondo's book a year or so ago inspired me to get 'stuff' - and we do seem to have an inordinate amount of 'stuff' - organised. I could see the task was pretty monumental, though, and I've made the mistake of looking at what needs to be done and being overwhelmed by the task before. I knew I needed help if I was ever going to get anywhere and that's where Julia Bickerstaff's 100 Day Goal (I've talked about it before) came to my aid, that and a closed Facebook of fellow 100 Day Goalers which helps keep me and my micro actions accountable.

It has helped even if I've fallen by the wayside for a while when health and other problems have overtaken me. So far I've reorganised my clothing cupboards and drawers going along with Marie Kondo's recommendations, worked my way through the dining room and family room and I'm currently tackling what is known here as 'the playroom'. That's the room that contains my office and all my sewing and craft equipment. The office section is fairly orderly but the rest ... well, I'd rather not admit to the state of it. I knew it needed attention and kept putting it off but now I've bitten the proverbial bullet and have been working through the mess - and it really was a mess.

While I'm not quite finished - I still have one drawer to sort and tidy - I'm discovering a treasure trove of useful items among the dross and there is certainly a lot of dross. Some things have been gifted to Miss Three and a Half for dress ups - she went home the other day draped in necklaces that I'll never wear again and truth be told it's a mystery  why I ever thought I would. But there's a lot more. I found enough assorted fasteners - hooks and eyes and press studs - to last for several lifetimes I suspect. The same applies to zippers, a motley collection of bias tapes in colours I cannot ever remember sewing with, hemming tapes, iron-on patches, inter-lining and ribbons - so many ribbons. Then there are containers of different kinds of pins. I have no idea why I ever bought some - wedding and lace pins are not something I have ever had a need for. Oh and the sewing needles - there must be hundreds of many varied sizes and types. Along with all that there are tape measures, marking chalks, belt makings, buttons of all shapes and sizes, a punch for putting rivets in belts and a collection of travel sewing kits - why those are there or where they came from I do not know.

I have no idea what I am going to do with much of this. For the moment I have simply discarded the obviously useless and sorted the rest into groups which will have to be sifted through again when I can find a way to find anything useful a new home. I have a idea that there are charities that might find a use for some of it but that will take some time and investigation. Wish me luck.

It's Going to be a Different World

For our children and grandchildren that is. On the weekend we went with our grandchildren and other family members to AQWA - an aquarium showcasing local sea life. The place was packed with kids having a wonderful time racing around oohing and aahing at the display tanks filled with stunning fish and jewel-like corals and being fascinated by the fish, turtles, sharks and rays being fed and swimming around and overhead as we went through the huge aquarium on a gliding track. This last was so popular with our littlies that we went around four times and they left under protest but as I watched these amazing creatures I couldn't help but wonder how many of their kind will survive climate change and in particular what is the future of our corals.

The waters off Western Australia's very long coastline have always been kept relatively warm by the Leeuwin current which flows south along the coast. It gives us natural wonders like the World Heritage listed Ningaloo Reef - the world's longest fringing reef - where you can swim with whale sharks for example. Which is fine - or has been until now. The thing is climate change has meant that the surface temperature of the ocean is now the hottest it has been in the time that records have been kept and this is confirmed by our indigenous people's oral history dating back centuries. We're seeing coral bleaching events when corals under heat or other stress for long periods expel the symbiotic algae - these normally live within coral structure and give them their brilliant colours - and they then starve to death.This is happening along the coast even as far south as Rottnest Island only a few kilometres off the cost of Perth. On the eastern coast of Australia the Great Barrier Reef - a much better known World Heritage wonder - is under serous threat as this National Geographic article shows.

And this is only talking about corals. The thing is these tiny creatures are now not reproducing fast enough to enable reefs to repair themselves and when the reefs go as they are that affects everything in the food chain. I find it truly scary to think that when my grandchildren are grown to adulthood - only a matter of fifteen to twenty years off - this world of diversity and the equally wonderful world on land may be all but gone and what does that say for humanity's survival?  The UN says that we can do something about the inevitability of climate change if we all act and act now. Why are we even wasting this precious time to quibble about what we should do?

What's the worst that can happen if we do as the Australian school children who have been striking and campaigning for action are asking? Their demands are from the School Strike 4 Climate Australia website are:
1. No new coal, oil or gas projects including Adani
2. 100% renewable energy generation and exports by 2030
3. Fund a just transition and job creation for all fossil-fuel workers and communities
That all sounds very sensible to me.

If we can make a difference to the future of our planet and the lives of our children and grandchildren why on earth wouldn't we?

Aaaaaargh!

Let me tell you about my cat who I dearly love. He's a rescue kitty and has a health problem - a mega bowel. The survival rate from diagnosis is usually between 6-12 months and he's so far beating the odds because it's now seven years since his diagnosis.

What has kept him alive, happy and otherwise healthy is a small daily dose of Actilax. I was surprised when the vet recommended this particular laxative because it is more commonly used to treat constipation in humans but it turns out this is the standard treatment for mega bowel in cats. The problem was that with a relatively small amount being dispensed by the vet which had to be coupled with a visit to said vet every few months the costs ballooned. There's no way I would choose any of the other alternatives which would be to let him die slowly and in agony or have him put down - he's part of the family for heaven's sake - but the continual costs were a serious drain on my wallet.

Puss is a very anxious cat, too, and these vet visits were making him even more nervous. Not the vet's fault of course. They treated him very well but we think bad things must happened to him before he came to live with us, borne out by how long it took him to even allow Pisces to touch him - it was a full year for that although he became quite attached to me after a couple of months. Then the vet suggested I might be better off buying it direct from the pharmacy. Phew! It is considerably cheaper there so that's what I do now.

There's a slight inconvenience as it comes in a big bottle which makes measuring out his 0.5 mls a day dose a little problematic. I get around this by decanting some into a small jar out of which I can easily draw up the required amount and mix it with some of his favourite food. The other inconvenience is that it is very sticky and if you spill a drop it hardens. Luckily even then it can be cleaned up fairly easily with water and dish washing detergent.

So last night I was tired and decided to have an earlyish night. I was about to go to bed when I remembered the jar was nearly empty and I decided to refill it. I'm not sure why I didn't leave it to the morning but there you go. I filled the jar and put down the almost full bottle to fasten the jar lid. Didn't want to spill anything, did I. I'm pretty sure you've already guessed where this is heading, haven't you, because I then reached out to put on the bottle top and ... knocked the bottle flying. Somehow - I have no idea how - it ended up half way across the kitchen on its side and pooling out its contents onto the cook top. I may have said a few choice descriptive words as I lunged for the bottle before it completely emptied.

Pisces came running from the other end of the house - not sure if it was the bad language or the crash as the bottle landed that brought him - as I dumped the bottle in the sink and grabbed wads of paper towels to start mopping the cook top where the sticky mess was heading out further by the second and perilously close to running over the edge and down the cupboards. That was when I realised that the bottle had also sprayed some of its contents over half the kitchen on its way to the cooktop. The floor was covered in splashes of sticky goo, ditto the bench tops, while my nightgown was soaked, sticky unpleasantness coated my arms and legs and my thongs (flip flops to you non Australians) were a mess. Pisces offered to help but I figured there was no point in both of us getting covered in stickiness so I declined the offer. It took me nearly half an hour to wipe down all the surfaces in the kitchen plus even longer to wipe over the floor until I decided it was good enough to wait for a proper wash in the morning and then I had to have a shower and change before I fell into bed. I did find a few missed spots on the floor this morning and it is now mopped and clean and I even managed to clean up my thongs which were probably in need of a scrub anyway.

The moral of this story is? Well I'm not sure there is one other than to be careful when using gluey substances. I've certainly learned that lesson.

Can You Guess What This Is?

More to the point make a guess as to why it's in my garden? Want to try again? Go on, I'll wait. I'd be surprised if you did guess it actually. It's a black knee high stocking and this is why it's in my garden.

If you read this blog on a regular basis you'll know I have an extensive vegetable garden and I usually manage to produce the bulk of our veggies with quite a bit going to the neighbours and to the free food trolley a few doors up. In fact the biggest problem for the summer vegetable garden is usually not getting overwhelmed by it. This year things are different.

It started when I noticed that the growing centre of my kale plants were being destroyed. It looked like something had been chewing on them and was to say the least annoying because they were still producing tasty leaves. Unable to do anything about this - and as the plants had started to die - I pulled them out. No matter, I thought. The summer crops are coming in with multiple buds on the zucchinis, tomatoes and cucumbers. It'll all be good.

Then I noticed that the centres were being eaten out of all the female zucchini flowers when the buds were about to open. As well the male flowers were disappearing before they even got as far as opening. What to do? I remembered the knee high stockings I had bought to provide protective slings for the rockmelons (cantaloupes to those in other parts of the world) that I have been training up the fence. W\hat if I covered any close to opening zucchini buds with them - and maybe I could cover up the forming fruits, too. Could it work? It did.

So every night I go out and tuck in any female zucchini buds on the verge of opening and put covers over any fruit already forming. So far so good and the only problem is - apart from needing an ever increasing number of stockings - that I have to go out in the morning early enough for the bees to do their work. It's rather lovely to gently pull the stocking off a flower and see it spring open into a glorious golden blossom.

Sadly though, no matter how lovely the flowers may be, with no male flowers, however industrious the bees, it looked as though zucchinis were going to be off this year's menu. Then I had a flash of inspiration. I have a large patch of butternut squash which are blooming madly. They are quite different in many ways but they are the same family of plants, so, since I'm not intending to save zucchini seed I wondered if they would be similar enough to fertilise the zucchini and give me fruit?  Much to my relief they were.

So there's the tale of my zucchinis trials and if you'll excuse me now I'm off to put them to bed for the night.

Oh I nearly forgot. I've finally seen the culprit. This morning I went out a little earlier than usual and caught sight of a small black creature, almost certainly a rodent of some sort, about to investigate the ripening tomatoes. It scurried off so I'm not sure whether it's a young rat - seems unlikely because it's been helping itself for some weeks and it would have been full grown by now - or a large mouse. It certainly doesn't look like any animal native to this area. Now all I have do is to work out some way to rid myself of it. Any suggestions gratefully received.