Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS GOING INTO WINTER 2015, 4 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi Jean and Brian – I’d just about given up hope of seeing anyone posting, it’s been so quiet for the last couple of days I thought our members had all gone into hibernation.

Jean – I’m gradually getting on top of the brom jobs to do for winter. Last week I soaked everything in Seasol and today I’ll water everything in readiness for giving them all a drink of water mixed with Condy’s Crystals (Potassium permanganate) tomorrow. This along with the Seasol helps plants withstand extremely high and low temperatures better (a bit like a winter tonic) and it also helps your plants build up more resistance to disease.

The good thing about Condy’s Crystals solution is that it’s a pure form of Potassium and I found this helps improve the colour of Neo’s and Bill’s considerably.

Neo Braz-el is a beautiful plant but unfortunately as you say, it’s big and needs plenty of space which is something I don’t have any more, so I’m limiting myself to just the one plant in the garden.

Your mention of cooking for the hospital group reminded me to tell you of our Brom Society’s “Christmas in July” which is something we have done for the past few years. It used to be a BBQ but what we now do is to have a “Soup and Desert” day which seems more appropriate given the cooler weather. Each year different members volunteer to make the five different soups and five different desserts and there’s always plenty for everyone. We still have the usual sales table, popular vote competition, and a very brief general meeting to keep things legal, but it’s more of a social occasion than the normal meeting and gives members more time to “mingle” and talk to each other.

Brian – I too have a grandson who is “train mad” and every month we have to take him over to the Light Rail Museum for a train ride or two. There are several different trains, steam, petrol and diesel and he knows the names of every one of them.

That would have been an interesting day at Central Station which I’m sure I would have enjoyed but as I don’t travel very well any more it wasn’t to be. My elder brother drove trains on the NSWGR all of his working life and started off as a messenger boy and worked his way up to driver. Whenever they would bring a steam train down the coast to Kiama or Nowra I was always able to ride in the cabin of the engine with him and his mate, a memory I’ve never forgotten.

I was always the envy of all the other kids as I related what I had seen on my trips (especially through the tunnels) and how I was allowed to pull the rope that operated the whistle. I’m glad I'm not a child in this day and age as it’s certainly a big “No No” now with Occupational Health and Safety and definitely a “sackable offence” for the driver and the fireman if caught………………………… Unfortunately the "good old days" are a thing of the past.

Next time your grandson visits you could show him our I.L.R.M.S. web site at: http://www.ilrms.com.au/seymour.htm It shows the whole of our complex with coloured pictures of every locomotive we have; 4 steam loco’s, 15 non-steam loco’s plus a miniature railway with two steam loco’s and one petrol and one diesel loco. Certainly enough to keep a little bloke interested.

That’s it from me today and I’ll finish with a few more old pic’s I found while sorting out my brom files recently.

All the best, Nev.