Australian and New Zealand Gardening: BROMELIADS IN SUMMER ..2014, 4 by splinter1804

splinter1804 wrote:
Hi Trish, Jean, Diane and everyone else, especially anyone on the ‘sick list”.

Before our members start to reduce their postings due to Christmas commitments and lack of time; let me wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and may all of your "Santa Bags" be filled with nice brom's.

Another nice day here again yesterday and we had a lovely day at the museum with our grandson and his parents. Mitchell’s high point of the day was when one of the men who operates the miniature trains, took him into the shed to see the other three little steam locomotives which weren’t running. One is being restored and the other two are in running order. The little bloke was dumbfounded and just gazed at them in amazement and our daughter said he was still talking about them when he went to bed last night.

Teresa – Like you, we too own our own house, mainly because we didn’t go in out of our depth when we bought it. We didn’t want massive house with a massive accompanying mortgage to go with it like a lot of our friends had. Ours is just a simple three bedroom weather-board house, and as I was a carpenter by trade (many years ago) I was able to do some renovations and additions to it myself when we bought it. The thing is, that it’s our home and it is paid for. When we bought it nearly forty years ago it cost us just $17,750. A recent estate agent valuation put it at over $600,000 because it’s in a prime, much wanted part of town with an ocean view.

Some people who only look at the dollar value tell us to sell it and get the money and move somewhere else, but why? It’s our home and we like living here in a debt free environment; why would we want to move to somewhere else where we don’t like just for the sake of a few extra dollars? I firmly believe life’s not just about dollars; family, happiness and security come first and we have all of these, so I tell them we ain’t going anywhere soon.

What you say about the use of vitamin “K” in the treatment for ingested rat poison confirms what I said about the active ingredient probably being Warfarin.

Prior to my recent operation on my hand, because I take Warfarin daily as a blood thinning agent, the level in my body had to be lowered to lessen the risk of uncontrolled bleeding during the operation. To do this I was infused with high doses of Vitamin “K” until it came down to an acceptable level to operate. Just with the daily dose I take, it took two days to bring it down to a safe level so I imagine with a dog that accidentally ingests a larger dose, it would take longer to reverse its effects. The good news is that it is reversible if treated in time.

Brian – I just want to clarify something you said, (I really like the look of your Vriseas in the pictures); the ones I posted yesterday weren't mine, they were all hybrids made by Jack Koning of Port Macquarie, they are well beyond my budget, so I just like to look at and share the pictures instead, that costs nothing.

We’ve had a couple of earthquakes in our area but the only one I witnessed was when I worked in the carpenter’s shop at the steelworks which would have been in the early sixties. Right opposite the carpenter’s shop was a place called the “rail bank” where all of the railway lines were stock piled about fifty feet high. When we heard this rumbling noise we all rushed to the front door thinking one of these large heaps of rails was collapsing and what we saw was a poor bloody crane chaser standing on top of the heap after just having directed a load, with the whole stack swaying from right to left beneath him.

The quick thinking crane driver lowered the large crane hook down and he was able to hang onto it until he was moved away to a safe area and lowered to the ground. It was rather funny afterwards as the bloke was interviewed later by a local newspaper reporter and he asked the crane chaser "how he would best describe briefly what he felt"; and after censoring this was his brief answer, “ Sh.. was trumps”!

I know the spectacle of fireworks has become an expected display every new year’s eve now, but other fireworks displays albeit much smaller seem to be popping up all over the country for other occasions unannounced at all times of the year, and these are the ones that we can’t protect our pets against.

When I was a kid we would all go to a friend’s farm every Empire Day night and New Years Eve where the kids had previously built a bonfire. We would light the bonfire and celebrate with a few Penny Bungers, Tom Thumbs, Catherine Wheels, Roman Candles and Sky Rockets, the loudest of these were the penny bungers which were no louder than a small car back firing; nothing like the magnitude of things today, but we all enjoyed ourselves and after the fireworks the adults would then go up to the house for a sing-along around the piano and us kids would run around the farm in the dark playing cops and robbers.

We would spend the next day looking for “fizzers” (Ones that hadn’t gone off), so we could get the gunpowder out of them and light it, I guess it was our way of re-cycling.

Maybe I’m just not in the spirit of things like other people, but as soon as I hear fireworks, I immediately think of the poor bloody animals and birds who must be terrified out of their wits. I also think of that money literally “going up in smoke” for the enjoyment of the spectators for ten or fifteen minutes when it could have been put to such better use helping the destitute who are going without and living night to night on the streets especially the forgotten young kids who are in this position also through no fault of their own. I guess some would say that I’m just another cranky old man, but that’s the way I feel.

Colleen – You say, “I wish I was mortgage free”, but then as a consequence of how you've managed things, you have something even more valuable, and that’s not just a "house", it’s something more valuable than that; you’ve created a "home", where you can bring up the boys in a loving environment with their animals and chooks and learn about all of the good things in life that money can’t buy.

I think we take too much for granted these days and place too much emphasis on the almighty dollar. I know we need money to survive, but we don’t need to go overboard like some people do. It’s often a struggle, but we usually manage to come through it OK and are mentally much richer for the experience and appreciate what we have all the more.

I’ve just looked up the Cobdogla Steam Friends Society site and see that their locomotives are 24” gauge like ours. For anyone not familiar with trains, 24” was a narrow gauge railway (half as wide as the normal gauge) and was mainly used for industrial purposes from the cane fields of Qld to the gold fields of W.A. and everything in between.

It’s great to see these small volunteer run groups working so hard to maintain these small railways in an operational capacity when it would be so easy to just ignore them and see them all sold off as scrap like so many others in the past. The thing is, that like all things of historical interest, once they are scrapped, there’s no turning back and they are gone forever. They are all part of our country’s heritage so let’s support these organisations who strive to keep them going.

What you say about Shirley’s climate having something to do with the magnificent colour she achieves with her plants is very true, but you still need to learn how to manage this extra light to achieve the best results without burning the bum out of your plants. I have seen some magnificent plants grown in the Melbourne area as well, and once again these growers have to learn how to manage the colder environment to prevent cold damage. No matter where you live, it’s all about experience and learning how best to work with the conditions Mother Nature has dealt out for you.

Like you say, it's sad to see these large clumps of brom's just being dug out and binned, but I must say in defence of the people who do it, a lot of them don't even realise what great plants they really are, especially if they buy the property with the gardens in a run down state and they are seeing the brom's at their worst.

Fortunately, some people who do know what they are will sometimes try and find homes for them and on several occasions the secretary of our Brom. Society has had letters from from these people offering "free brom's" to anyone who wants to come and dig them out.

It seems that Brandon lost a lot of teeth in one go; did he loose them by natural causes or is he trying to raise a bit of extra Christmas money to buy himself a present? Maybe because Cameron lost one, Branden was just trying to "trump him".

Oh to have a nice tidy shade house like yours where you can walk through without bumping plants. I could do the same if our block was twice as large or I cut down my collection by 75%, but then which ones would I get rid of as I like them all. It seems I'm stuck with wall to wall brom's whether I like it on not.

Jean - One of the claims of Seasol is that it can increase the plants' tolerance by up to four degrees during excessively hot or cold weather thereby lessening the damage to foliage. Since I've been using it I've only had minor leaf burning during the hottest parts of summer and no cold damage at all during the winter, so perhaps a drink of this may help your plants through the hot weather.

The plant in your picture I think is what was commonly sold around here as Neo. Aussie Dream 'Lovely Lady' or more correctly the name it's registered by, Neo.'Lovely Lady'. It's one of the better ones from the Aussie Dream grex and I've seen pic's of them grown in Thailand with stacks of leaves and near perfect shape which no doubt can be attributed to the climate (See Pic.1, although not a real good picture it shows the great shape and leaf stacking which the Thai growers are famous for. Although like a lot of variegated plants, it can sometimes be a little unstable but not as bad as many others and generally it remains pretty stable. It looks like your plant still has a bit of growing to do so could you please post a pic when it's mature?
See: http://registry.bsi.org/?genus=NEOREGELIA&id=5526#5526

That had better do me for today as I still have some more name tags to mak up in preparation for when I can start potting again. So once again I'll finish with some more pic's from my old files.

Firstly Neo. 'Lovely Lady' grown in Thailand which shows what a big influence the climate can have on a plant. We would love to grow plants with as much "leaf stacking" as this, but the down side is, that while they are stacking leaves, they aren't producing pups.

Pic 2 is Bill. 'Fascinator' (Grown in strong light) Pic.3 is Bill. 'Hallelujah' grown in good light while Pic.4 shows Bill. 'Hallelujah' (grown in low light). I know I'm always "banging on" about strong light for best colour, but even grown in low light, Bill. 'Hallelujah' can still produce attractive colours. Finally, Pic.5 is Bill.'De Nada' again grown in strong light.

All the best, Nev.