Here's a synopsis of the week 23 - 28/03/09
After a week off in Kapunda SA where we: stayed with old friends and enjoyed much food and conversation, spent a very pleasant evening with dinner at Ngapala, followed by numerous Bundy & Cokes and much deliberation about house plans. Slept. Visited my oldest mate and his wife for long lunch at Westlakes, had dinner and stayed overnight in Morphet Vale. Stopped briefly somewhere at a Delfin Estate shopping centre I've forgotten for a coffee and a kitchener bun - when will I realise that they never taste as good as I remember - more food and conversation in Kapunda, interview with a charming newspaper person dinner sleep.Visit to a very good nursery in Nuriootpa followed by an excellent lunch at the Kaisler restaurant in Nuriootpa. Highly recommended. Dinner - Sleep - back to Ngapala to finalise a few house details and get my council homework, back for as final cuppa in Kapunda and then we flew home and collapsed.
Actually it wasn't quite as hectic as that, because we had a lovely time and mostly also ate breakfast - I've just crammed it all together so I'm not tempted to try and expand it and get very far behind.
The most useful thing post the trip, distilled from the many conversations, was the realisation that trying to fight or speed up the various systems, departments organisations et. al. with whom one has to deal in building barns or houses or even one suspects breathing, is an exercise in futility and once again the bamboo provides a better model than the oak - grasshopper!
30 April, 2009
We'd come back to Vic on Saturday because the Royal Commissioners examining our little bushfire experience were having what they termed informal meetings with those who had been effected by the bushfires in the St Andrews area. They were seeking the answers to three questions which I will include tomorrow because they are upstairs and I don't want to disturb Ros by ferreting around.
The proceedings were introduced by the facilitator, closely followed by the Royal Commissioner who explained why they'd come and what they were hoping to find out.
The process was to have tables of 6 - 8 with a scribe provided by the commission and a table spokesperson loosely elected by those around the table. All of the tables considered each of the questions in turn and provided via the spokesperson, the concensus of the table. this was taken down on the inevitable butchers paper for subsequent compilation and review
The whole process was professionally facilitated and in my opinion, very well managed. In the next week or so we should all receive a summary of the responses. There will also be opportunities to make separate and detailed submissions to the Commission or in fact to appear before them if one so desires.
No details are provided because the whole exercise was effectively held "in camera".
Monday 31 March
Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show - (MIFGS) preparation
Some of you may already know but for those who don't, last year I completed a Certificate 3 in Horticulture at the Greensborough campus of the North Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT). I've almost always had a bit of a vegetable garden but this was primarily begun as both a therapeutic (I was suffering from depression at the time) and a vocational opportunity, although I wasn't exactly sure where it might lead other than out of IT.
During the course I discovered that I was not only interested in garden design but actually reasonably good at it and was encouraged by my lecturers to enrol in a Certificate 4 Garden Design Subject, which included designing an Achievable Garden for MFGIS 2009. An Achievable Garden is required to be designed and built in a 3m x 5m space, cost no more than about $1,500 and be something that the average gardener could reasonably be expected to build without needing recourse to Jamie Durie or any of his mates. Greensborough NMIT was allocated 4 spaces including mine.
Prior to the fire I had been working on a design based around the impact of the ozone layer, climate change and the notion that despite all the doom, gloom and gereral lack of water it was still possible to have a green and colourful garden.
Feb 7 changed all that and up until the last evening before the designs were due for submission, I had been struggling to work out how to incorporate the drama of the of the destruction of our house and property into a design which also reflected the sense of hope and regrowth and rebuilding that had inspired me when a blackened and seemingly dead lemon tree had burst into leaf and bloom less than two weeks after the fire.
I had arrived at tech on the final Thursday evening, having pretty much decided that I wouldn't enter the competition but would instead design our new home garden. I had reckoned without Rhonda, one of my lecturers who cajoled (she would use the term "bullied') me into picking up a drafting pen and putting my ideas onto paper. She wasn't giving an inch and by the end of the evening I had completed a design and plant list that I was happy with and what's more had discovered the benefits of horticultural therapy. I was and am most grateful to Rhonda who had the insight to know that I just needed a fairly hefty shove in the right direction.
By the weekend, I will have learned how to use my new scanner/printer/coffee maker and will include the design philosophy, design and photographs of my display during and after construction.
This space deliberately left almost blank
Suffice it to say that on Sunday evening, I filled a 6'x8' trailer with burned half bricks, roofing iron and sundry other blackened bushfire artefacts including two very dead and blackened Grevillea and carted it all to the display area on Monday morning.
The whole of Monday and Tuesday were spent in constructing the display, including all of the plants, shrubs and trees By Tuesday evening I was a very tired little vegemite, having among other things dug and redug the holes for the three spotted gums three times, Before I was satisfied that they were in the correct position.
My reward for all this effort was an interview for a magazine article by Alan the Plant Industry Association Chair and a TV interview with Graham Ross of Better Homes and gardens which unless it gets the chop, will be shown on Friday evening on Channel 7 at 7:30 pm EAST.
That's it for tonight.
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