Hi everyone – I thought it was time to pop in again and see if there was any action on here and what a great surprise to see you all posting again except for Brian who I have heard from and expect is busy with work and not absent due to illness.
I must say I was feeling pretty down when I last posted and was sure this little forum had died and to top it off my peripheral nerve disease started to act up again and for three days and nights in a row I was getting what I would describe as little electric shocks down my left lower leg every couple of minutes which made sleep impossible.
I don’t know what stirred it up but the day before I did spend a pretty solid day in the garden weeding and tidying up in general and maybe the twisting, bending and pulling out and re-locating plants may have impinged on a nerve somewhere and all I know is that it was most unpleasant.
During the nights I spent several hours in the lounge chair with my foot elevated, and then with it down on the floor, but still no reprieve so at one o’clock I usually went to bed hoping a change in posture would settle things down, but no such luck, and at around three o’clock I was up again and on the computer to try and take my mind of it by sorting out brom pictures.
Thankfully after three horrible nights, it settled down again yesterday afternoon and so I can get back out into the garden again today. I’m just hoping it was a “one off” episode and the gardening won’t stir it all up again today.
I never realised in my wildest dreams there would be so much reading after just a short break away and I’ll do my best to catch up and start with Trish.
Trish – It’s great to see you back again and to hear that you and Joe (and the girls) are OK. I’m very sorry to hear of the loss of your friend and I know just how “down” such an occasion can make you feel, but at least you have each other for support.
I’m sorry to hear both you and Joe copped a dose of food poisoning, there’s nothing makes you feel worse and you just have to put up with it until it’s out of your system. You were wise to report the incident as an investigation is required to see just where it came from.
I know poultry and seafood are the two most common causes of food poisoning and like many other just thought it was due to dirty kitchen management or the product being “off” and never thought about the causes until I had cause to report some “off” chicken I got from Woolworths a few years back.
They were very good and I got emails about the investigation progress every couple of days. It seems the chicken came from “Ingham’s” another well-known and respected producer and after an investigation which involved checking everything from the actual slaughtering of the birds right up the line to checking the temperatures in the fridges in Woolworths. They finally tracked it down to one of the refrigerated delivery trucks which had a faulty thermostat in the cooling system which wasn’t re-setting once the temperature started to rise.
When I thought about the mammoth size of this investigation which would have involved hundreds of trucks (as Ingham’s deliver all over the country), plus doing comparable fridge temperature checks in all other Woolworths stores, it makes you realise just at how many points in the distribution of these products something can go wrong. Maybe we should go back to keeping our own chooks and catching our own fish.
Wow!, talk about getting off track; anyway back to brom’s and gardens now and your mention about my old Brassia verucossa reminded me that yesterday I counted over twenty five new flower spike starting on it so it will be a picture again this year.
Your pond looks great and what an asset to the yard. I didn’t expect the water to have cleared to the extent we can see the fish at this stage. Do you have a filter in it? What’s the yellow eye-catching flower? It’s certainly something very different to any I’ve seen before.
I’ve just been studying your statue picture, as it seemed familiar, and now I remember seeing one when we went to Bali. I’ve been trying to find a picture to show you and I’m still searching without much success. The thing is though, I think you’ll find it was originally designed as a water feature or maybe it’s a basic model which can be used as a statue and/or a water feature.
The one we saw was located on a pedestal in a pond and had water flowing from the upturned container, as well as coming from an area just below the waist of the statue and down onto the first (I’ll call it a shelf for ease of explanation) and then this overflowed to the one below it and was repeated again onto the one below that before falling back into the pond and gave the appearance of what looked like a small three tiered waterfall. Not a very good description but I can’t find the picture so it’ll have to do.
Great pic’s you’ve posted once again, however they bring back a bad memory as the Ae. 'Rodco Inverta' was one of my favourites which I lost to the cold in the recent winter. I love the Neo. 'Meyendorfii 'Spiral', I’ll have to ask to be put on the list for a pup of that one if you don’t mind.
Jean – You mention about your Cymbidiums how some are lovely pendant ones and how you have to keep them up a bit to allow the spikes to grow down. When I grew cymbidiums, these types were known as decorative Cymbidiums and there was a special section in the show just for them. My (late) old mate who grew wonderful cymbidiums had a beautiful pale green decorative type which I unfortunately can’t remember the name of. It only had smallish flowers about two and a half inches across but it wasn’t unusual for it to have in excess of forty flowers on a beautiful arching pendulous spike.
I vividly remember seeing John regularly taking this plant to the show and he had a Holden panel van with this right at the back and the flower spike hanging over the tailboard a few inches from the ground. Fortunately he only lived a short distance from the show venue and could travel down at a snail’s pace to avoid any damage.
I’m pleased to hear that you are going to exhibit some of your paintings in the show and it will be great to share their beauty with others.
I like the Canistrums also, the one I have is called Canistrum fosterianum and as you say they are a bit slow, but the brilliant scarlet flower more than makes up for that.
Teresa – You’re quite right, I shouldn’t have given up on you all so soon as it’s happened in the past and we all came back again but as I said above, I just had a bad week and was pretty cheesed off with everything.
I’m glad to hear you’re doing a first aid course, I personally think they should be taught in schools and be compulsory before you can get a driving licence like they are in some Scandinavian countries. It’s been proved time and time again that good first aid correctly applied does save lives and it’s certainly no load to carry. So good luck with your course.
Being involved in ambulance work I was also a first aid instructor for many years before I and many other instructors had disagreement over the re-structuring of the courses. Up to the late 1970’s, first aid courses in our area were taught over 14 weeks and involved two hours per night each week broken into one hour for theory and one hour for practical.
You had to have attended at least 75% of the classes to sit the exam which was on a separate night. The theory paper contained 50% written answers and 50% answers to multiple choice questions. The practical was a set scenario where you had to assess the area, prioritise the injuries and treat accordingly within a time limit. The resuscitation examination was a separate section altogether.
People who did these courses had one week to study their manual between lessons which prepared them for the next subject being taught and also allowed them to revise what had been taught the previous week, and at the end of these courses people went away feeling they had learned something.
When a new bloke from Canada became the head training officer, he changed the whole curriculum and condensed the whole of the 14 weeks training (28 hours) into what was called a “weekend course” consisting of 12 hours of training and 4 hours for the exam. The general feeling among instructors was that it was a very intense course which just allowed them to absorb sufficient knowledge to pass the exam but insufficient to retain it over time. They overcame this criticism by recommending students did a refresher course each year.
The exam consisted of 25 multiple choice questions and the practical was based on various injuries written on bits of paper one of which the student had to pick out of a hat and treat it accordingly. The resuscitation was five oral questions and a few minutes to demonstrate their skills on a manikin.
Generally speaking a lot of instructors disagreed with the new format and felt students didn’t learn enough and thought that the certificate they received after the exam was “just a receipt” for the class fees. It was at that point a lot of us parted ways with the organisation doing the training. Having spoken to numerous students who had done both types of courses they all said the same thing; although the new course was more convenient and less time consuming you didn’t learn anywhere near as much as the in the old courses.
As usual I’ve been here too long and have to go, so I’ll catch up with what I missed in your posts tomorrow.
All the best, Nev.
