the farm . the garden . the dichotemy

Lots of pictures today. From Illinois, USA and Melbourne, Australia and Wellington New Zealand! As I walk - metaphorically and literally.

Because I ALWAYS have lots of photos my posts are often too long to read in an email so click on LIKE (or on the header) and that will take you to the source! Plus click on LIKE because you LIKE my writing, Yeah?

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We all know about living in two worlds. In a lot of ways we are all immigrants of a sort if we live a nomadic life, whether emigrating from one country to another or one region to another or one line of thinking to another. We all know the feeling of not quite leaving but not quite getting there either.

My US family sends me photos with questions and milestones and I peer closely to see leaves unfurling on that tree or green grass coming through on that patch. I inspect the garlic for rust from 9,638 miles/15,510kms away.

I look at the shiny throats of the ducks and feel afraid for them. I can almost feel the chomp of the cows at the last of last years hay. I check their coats and look carefully into their eyes. The flies are already active, the bastards, I think to myself. I write a note for Rhonda to buy a fresh batch of pink eye spray with the egg money.

I see the little black pigs out in the grass - that breed needs to eat lots of fresh grass.

I am pleased. Though that fence post needs replacing with a T post. I worry all the time.

Jude looks lonely so his minders and I text together about moving him back up to the field behind the garage so he gets more people and dogs and other pigs to visit with.

I see the photos of the asparagus they sent me. It is a good size for this early. I remember the crunch of it raw as I ate at the same time as I harvested in the spring sun. I know no one will be weeding the asparagus now. You have to weed the beds daily to keep up. Soon the asparagus will be growing in the grass wild. The eight long beds forgotten. They will opportunist pick next year and that feels ok. Wild asparagus is one of the marks of previous kitchens gardens. It is a natural progression.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I walked the Australian dog around and around the Australian suburb. Knowing Boo in Illinois would have loved a walk like this and TonTon would have rather not. I wonder to myself who decided these suburban blocks would be so small, what developer years ago carved up such tiny sections, why they don’t have alleys here, who built these houses and what did the people who lived in them wear and eat- where did they shop before Aldi and Woolies box store supermarkets were built here. I see no signs of the little corner stores we have dotted through suburbs in New Zealand - most of them shuttered or turned into posh cafes but any close to schools still doing a roaring business in ice creams after school from the kids and Dads who walk home from school in the warm autumnal afternoons. And the house sections are so much bigger in New Zealand, and bigger again in the rural midwest.

A few stats I found on Sunbury where I am presently lodged.

Sunbury was surveyed and proclaimed a village in 1851. The railway reached Sunbury in 1859, which helped establish it as a regional center. By the 1860s, it had schools, churches, and vineyards, (lots of vineyards apparently - long gone under housing) and in 1879 a mental hospital was established there.

I am now pouring my full thinking weight down the rabbit hole of finding the old ‘mental hospital’. We don’t call them mental hospitals anymore so surely this one must be closed. I wonder if there are ghosts.

The houses are not pretty where we live here in outer Melbourne. They are functional. There are very few front gardens which makes me worry that the modern water bill might be high. I am not used to paying for water - we have our own well on the farm. Many of the houses here look flimsy and quickly built, like baches at the beach, small and wearing thin. Old. Made of some kind of board cladding. Others - ours and many on our street - are made of real brick not that pretend faced stuff. Solid with big windows.

Dog and I walk these streets keeping our heads faced forward, trying not to look like the nosy researchers we are, trying not to look too deeply into houses shuttered with crooked curtains or old blinds, some have roller doors or shutters that pull tightly down over the windows like large bushy eyebrows when open, blind when closed, they remind me a little of Portugal where less windows and more shutters were used to keep the heat out. The shutters make the houses look inert -barely breathing. I would not like to live in a house with the windows totally covered like that. I need light. Lots of light.

I suddenly miss the huge open skies of the Midwest while enjoying the convenience and smoothness of walking in town, nodding to other dog walkers.

When I think more about it the light here is Australia is similar to Portugal too - Australian light is hard, bleached, beachy, my skin looks spotlit, squinted, whereas when I lived in London I never even wore sunglasses. Only an umbrella. The light there was deep and full somehow, the edges more blurred. Forgiving.

I have seen so many kinds of eucalyptus trees along the footpaths as we walk, I feel I should start a spreadsheet and get one of those ID apps so I know their names but I won’t. There is only so much information I can take in.

I planted another twenty onion slips in the city garden yesterday. Left over from spring onions Daughter bought the other day. I am not sure what kind of onions I will get but in they go. I am in laughing competition with fourth son in his Kapiti Coast garden - though he is garden is huge and much more planned than I am now. My Melbourne garden is very loosy goosy. Very improv. I ask myself a question and say yes. There is even furniture in the beds to stop the dog from leaping through the garden. I wonder if John got the onions in the ground out in Illinois, I left a bed ready close to the garlic.

I have a feeling it will be a good year for onions. I feel this without foundation but am rarely wrong.

Here is the fourth son’s onion bed in Wellington, New Zealand. He has almost two acres of garden and lawn and lime trees.

… and you will remember he got chickens recently so he is the turning chicken shit into the compost which is heating it up nicely. I love that he has chooks now.

I hope he is adding water to the compost so it does not catch fire but I am sure he has it under control. And you know about giving your grown children advice. Don’t. Just trust that you did enough in the days when you could.

And now the dog is walked and the gardens inspected and tinkered with and watered and the sun is shining conveying our free solar electricity so after turning the dishwasher and the washing machine on to use the power before it zooms away to the grid; I am off again walking alone, on my endless search for a cafe to write in. I have found NINE playgrounds close by but cafes - not so much.

And if I don’t get my 8k steps a day I feel robbed! So off I go.

Have a great day and all.

Tell me about the size of your section where you garden. They are so different all over the world.

Celi

I am reading the Canterville Ghost aloud for you and the latest chapters are going quite dark. The ghost is bad! 😂 A real scary ghost. (Do you believe in ghosts?) The humour in the 1800’s was very different to our careful modern humour. And Oscar Wilde is the master.