Hi “Brom. Friends” – I hope you’re all enjoying the holiday weekend. The weather was pretty ordinary here yesterday up until about 6.00pm. Temp’s in the high thirty’s and stifling high humidity until about 1.00pm which was then broken by a warm westerly breeze. The breeze lowered the humidity but increased the temperature, but finally at about 6.00pm, we were relieved when a cool southerly change came through and made things comfortable once again.
I had rest day yesterday, as I didn’t feel too flash and that combined with the uncomfortable weather wasn’t much of an incentive to get out in the yard working in the garden. I have a load of plants in the garage all ready to be re-potted, but decided to leave them for another day and give my bumps and scratches more time to heal. I’m still a bit stiff this morning as I write this, but I can see a gradual improvement in my wrist and ribs, so it looks like I’m on the mend at last.
Jean – What you say about the vast difference between where you live now and your previous house makes us all realise that every place is different as far as cultural conditions go. I’ve noticed over the years that even mates in houses just down the street have very different cultural conditions to me. I’m on the high part of town and they are a bit lower and even though they are only half a kilometre away, just that difference in height has a considerable influence on winter temperatures.
We can even have considerable variations within our own yards and to give an example, I had some Guzmanias in my Neo shade house a few years back and they never did well and were always knocked around as soon as the cold weather arrived. Eventually, I moved them into my Vriesea shade house which although it’s probably only fifty feet away, has very different conditions. The bench is about four feet high compared to the previous one which was only one foot (a difference of 3 feet in height), but when you add this to the difference in the fall of the land, about 6-7 feet, the plants are now growing in an area about 10 feet higher than they were previously. Just this change made all the difference and being higher, they now suffer no cold damage in winter and love their new conditions.
Although in my previous job, we would always warn accident patients that it was very likely they would find other areas of soreness the next day, and as everything revolved around paper and report writing, they would need to report and record any new problems so they were covered by compensation. I never thought I’d be finding out these things for myself, and as you point out, I too am just now finding bruises in areas I never realised were injured. I think I just have to accept the hard cold fact that as I get older I am becoming more unsteady on my feet.
I have found that the handiest thing is to have a couple of plastic milk crates close by whenever I’m in the garden. When I’m on my knees weeding and need to get up, I just manoeuvre a milk crate on either side of my body and find them ideal to assist me to get back on my feet again…….What would we do without these handy universal bits of equipment ?
As Teresa mentioned, I think a roll of frost cloth may be a good investment for your new home, it’s quite cheap and can be found at nurseries, Bunnings, and similar stores. I’ve never used it myself, but I have a friend who moved from Camden to a property inland from Taree. He didn’t do his home work very well before he bought the property and after a short time found he was in an area which copped terrible frosts which knocked his brom’s around.
After trying different products you can spray on your plants such as one called “Envy”. See: http://www.fatcow.com.au/c/AgroBest-Australia/Protect-Against-Frost-and-Moisture-Loss-Through-Transpiration-with-new-Agrobest-Envy-Crop-Protection-n782120 My friend found that the Envy alone didn’t offer sufficient protection, but when combined with “Frost Cloth” it solved his problem. Frost cloth is a light weight white coloured type of cloth which can be re-used so would be an economical solution for a collection such as yours.
It’s good to see you have some Magpie friends as well. We have been feeding them ever since we came here to live and I don’t think there’s anything nicer than to hear them warbling as the sun comes up; what a great way to start a new day.
Teresa – It seems like your little lady has acquired a taste for beer now. Maybe you can shout her bottle each time she wins a prize. Nothing wrong with that dog of yours that didn't like beer and preferred wine, it seems he just had a classier pallet.
Your little story reminds me of an incident that occurred back in the ‘60’s where I lived at Dunmore. There was once a bloke on a farm there who bred pigs, and once a week he would come into Shellharbour and pick up a heap of unsold stale bread from bakers and then go to the pub where his mate (the barman) saved him the beer slops out of the trays beneath the beer taps.
He would take it all home and mix these two ingredients together and feed it to his pigs. The local butcher was one of his mates and between the two of them they would slaughter the pigs and cut up the pork, sell it through the butcher shop. Although I never tried any myself, the locals reckoned it was the best pork around and it was sold out as soon as word got around that it was ready for sale.
This was all illegal of course, as all meats were supposed to go through the registered local slaughter house and it wasn’t long before someone blew the whistle and the authorities came visiting. It ended up with him and the butcher getting very substantial fines from the Meat Board (which I think it was called at that time) and the owner of the pigs was also fined by the RSPCA for cruelty to animals. The locals reckoned he wasn’t being cruel though as the pigs always died with a smile on their face, Ha! Ha! (probably pissed)…….Sorry here I go again, off topic once again.
Trish – I’m sure Joe doesn’t mind being on call and working when required over the long weekend knowing that you’re going to spoil him when he comes home.
Yes I have been listening to my body, and the plants in the garage still haven’t been re-potted yet. Instead, I’ve been walking around the yard trying to find spare spots where I can put extra plants. I also noticed yesterday that the frogs are breeding as the little frog pond was almost covered with that foamy stuff which holds all of the frogs eggs together. There was even frogs eggs in one of the bird baths which we put in an out of the way spot for the shyer birds. It’s strange, one day it’s just clean water in the bath and the next day when I went to re-fill it again it was covered in “frog foam” (that’s what I call it anyway).
I’m pleased to hear that your Vrieseas have improved in their new location. For some reason people seem afraid to move plants around, and I think it comes from the advice that “if a plant’s doing well, don’t move it”; the fact is, if a plant’s not doing well, you need to move it until you find a suitable location, and sometimes it’s only a matter of moving a plant a few feet away from where it was originally that will make all of the difference.
I still haven’t taken a pic of the ginger you gave me, but the flowers are a brilliant scarlet/orange in colour and the canes are about four feet high if that’s any help in getting an ID.
I hadn’t forgotten about taking pic’s of the Neo. ‘Orchid’ x ‘Onyx’ seedling and I’ll do it when I get a pic of the ginger, maybe even today as it’s quite overcast so probably a good day for taking pic’s.
Those skewers you get from Coles sound like the same ones I get, and I thought at the time it was Shirley who told me about them also. What are the bamboo sticks you get from Bunnings for your larger plants, are they the green coloured ones we use for staking orchid flower spikes with?
That’s a good decision you’ve come to with your ‘Serendipity Girl'; if it’s starting to get long in the tooth as you describe, I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to remove her pups either; I would leave them attached until she eventually dies away naturally. I’ve found my ‘Serendipity Girl' is slow to produce pups and they are also a bit “touchy” if they are removed at the size normally recommended (one third to one half the size of the mother). It may just be my particular clone or my growing conditions but that’s what I’ve found in comparison with other Neo’s I grow.
Brian – I started this post at about 4.30 this morning but with a combination of slow typing and numerous interruptions, here it is now 11.45am and it still isn’t finished.
I think a lot of us underestimate the capabilities of disable people, true there are the severely disabled who are unable to take part in any of the physical things we read about, but a lot of people put all disabled people in this class, and it couldn’t be more inaccurate.
Last week I was watching the end of a documentary about disabled sportsmen/women. It was filmed in a big circus type marquee and the final act was a young bloke in a wheel chair who wheeled his chair over to a rope that was hanging down from the top of the tent. He reached out and took the rope in his hands and pulled himself (and wheelchair) hand over hand all the way to the top of the tent, and then used the same technique to descend back to the ground. but that wasn’t the end of it, instead of taking the easy way and sliding down the rope, he descended using the hand over hand technique once again
One of the young blokes I used to work with bought himself an ocean type kayak and goes out fishing in the ocean. Definitely not my cup of tea, especially when every night we hear of this same big shark travelling up and down the coast, just looking for a tasty kayak rider for dinner.
It was a very hard decision to chop down my Tibouchina as every year it was such a picture of colour. In the end it was the damage to the shade cloth caused by the falling leaves when they rotted that decided it had to go.
What’s the name of the flower in your first picture?
Secondly, although I’m not a Tilly grower, I think from what I’ve been told and what I’ve read that your Till’s hanging on the wall would benefit from being up higher as they like abundant light.
Anyway, time to go; sorry no pic’s this time but I’ll try and take some today.
All the best, Nev.
