Tricking and Treating in Upper Gully

A few days ago, this notice appeared in our letter box. Click to enlarge. Now, Miss Eagle doesn't go for the great emphasis on Hallowe'en these days. It seems to be an American emphasis and - since not many kids are raised in the ancient Christian traditions - there is no balance with teaching about All Saints Day and All Souls Day, the tradition with which Hallowe'en is inextricably bound.

However, Miss E could not resist this notice with its polite request. So this afternoon, Miss Eagle hung the inflated balloon from a tree beside the letter box and prepared a basket of goodies for the visitors.

And here below are my scary visitors -

Tricking and Treating!

We had a lovely time together. But don't you think the smallest Trickster is so, so cute!

It was lovely to meet such funsters - who had distributed 200 notices in the neighbourhood but as of this afternoon there were very few balloons visible. I hope things improved as the evening wore on.

Photo Friday: Silence

The topic for this week's Photo Friday is Silence.

One of the fascinations for such a topic is how does one grab the feeling visually. When I think of silence, one of the images which comes to mind is something from an old British black and white movie which has a pea-soup fog and the echo-ing sound of footsteps.

It seems to me that such a thick, thick fog provides a blanket or wall of silence against which sound echoes.

Here in Melbourne, we can experience thick fogs - especially in or close to the mountains. Upper Gully is in the foothills of The Dandenongs which are thick with temperate rainforest. The further up the hills you go - on some days - the thicker the fog. My picture was taken early one July morning at the Upper Gully railway station: an early morning blanket of silence which could echo with the footsteps of each new arrival to the platform to wait for the train.

You say to-may-toe : I say to-mah-toe

To-day I found the tomatoes I need for the vege garden - at our Upper Gully week-end market. I purchased eight plants - listed below. I purchased eight advanced plants for $14. To-day has been a very warm Melbourne day 28/29 degrees so I will plant them in the cool of early evening. For more information on tomatoes, and some good recipes go here.

Sweet Bite

Hybrid
Small tomato variety producing masses of good flavoured, bite sized fruit ideal for salads. Sweet Bite is easily grown in the garden or in decorative tubs and contained . Stake to support using a trellis

Patio Roma

An heirloom variety.

A vigorous compact plant that looks as good as freshly picked fruit tastes. Good yields of tasty bright red pear shaped tomatoes with excellent shelf life.

Roma

An heirloom variety.

This variety produces an abundance of great flavoured, bright red, egg shaped fruits. They are delicious eaten fresh in salads, sandwiches and a variety of cooked dishes.

Mortgage Lifter

An heirloom variety.

Bred by “Radiator Charlie” (M.C. Byles) in he 1930s, these meaty mild flavoured tomatoes with few seeds are said to have helped Charlie pay off his mortgage because they were so popular. The fruit is pinkish read, slightly flattened, globe shape, and ranges from 250-1500 grams in weight. Some tomato! It is said they make the perfect tomato sandwich.

Mighty Red

Large tomato variety producing many full-flavoured, globe shaped fruits.A vigorous, disease free plant, easily grown in the garden or in large decorative tubs or containers.

Green Zebra

An heirloom variety./Hybrid

The result of breeding four heirloom varieties. Green Zebra yields rich yellow-green, medium sized fruit with distinctive darker green stripes. The flesh is lime to emerald-green in colour; the texture of the flesh is cream and the flavour tangy. It needs staking and produces a heavy crop. Green Zebra is also low in acid. A great tomato for adding zing to that tired old salad.

Black Russian

An heirloom variety.

Black Russian is a must for black tomato fans with its complex flavour - sweet and spicy with smoky undertones. Drying the fruit enhances the flavour. The fruit is large, round and smooth and almost mahogany in colour. Black Russian is an open, pollinated variety with good disease resistance. It is early to mature and a heavy cropper.

Grosse Lisse

A mid to late season staking variety producing medium to large sized fruit. Excellent summer-autumn flavour.

The Wombat, Spring, and the edible garden

Miss Eagle disguised as The Wombat of Upper Gully

To-day is Show and Tell over at Kelli's.

I have been s-o-o-o busy the last few weeks - for a number of reasons. The over-riding reason though has been the garden. Miss Eagle has been carrying on in the backyard like she's The Wombat of Upper Gully.
About a quarter of the backyard has been dug up and given to veges and herbs.
I have been wombatting in a most determined fashion, dear Reader, because Spring does not wait for anyone and can, at times, be quite anxious to turn into Summer and all that growing time is gone and cannot be reclaimed.
One of the difficulties in this mature garden is light. Fruit trees planted in the long ago are of great height and are heavy in branch and leaf - not to mention roots. I got quite carried away with the pruning of the plum tree to get extra space by the provision of more light. Above, can be seen a piece of the pruning I have rescued which I hope can do duty as a trellis for the snow peas whose seeds are planted beneath and around it.

I have tried to stretch my budget (if you could call it that) further this year by using a lot of seeds rather than seedlings. The wisdom of this decision will depend upon how many seeds come up, won't it?

A few notes of interest.

• I am fortunate in the provision of various bits and pieces through "hard rubbish": waste items put out on footpaths for collection. Herself says that at The Trad Pad we are not into Retail Therapy but Refuse Therapy (Opp Shops and Hard Rubbish). And, guess what? No credit cards required!


• Garden Picture No. 2 shows a white lattice propped against a plum tree. Garden Picture No. 3 shows a garden gate propped against the corner of the garden shed. These, if all goes to plan, will be trellises: the former for the ivy geraniums and the latter for golden zucchini.


• In Garden Picture No. 2 you will notice in the foreground a wire edging. Hard rubbish again - in sufficient quantity to go around the areas I have dug on either side of the shed. Herself had expressed a desire a couple of months ago for some garden edging but hadn't got to Bunning's to do anything about it. Just this week the very thing has been provided! It has a tad of rust - but we find rust in our vintage a bonus!


• Can't recall where the wire object from which the pots are hanging in Garden Picture No. 2 came from. Methinks that Herself acquired it in a swap or some long ago hard rubbish. The pots I have had for the best part of ten years and they are still going strong and they are planted with the seeds of cherry tomatoes.


• The toadstool sitting under the pots was a gift, more than a decade ago, from some very good friends. Now this sort of garden ornament is not really my style but my friends are very dear. To make it more me, I have a friend who does a very good line in frogs drawn in an Aboriginal style so I got him to draw such a one sitting on the toadstool. Now this quirky object and I have a whole lot more in common.


• In Garden Picture No. 1 the child's outdoor setting, the little wooden wheelbarrow, and the two wooden tubs are all found items. The large painted metal wheelbarrows I have had for a number of years. They came from garage sales.


• The area dug is on three sides of the tool shed with a small bed (planted with nasturtiums) on the fourth side. In these three areas are planted: sage, parsley, basil, coriander, silver beet, rocket, climbing beans, golden zucchini, beetroot, cherry tomatoes and snow peas. I have seed-boxes containing capsicums (peppers) and sugar-loaf cabbage. I need to find a home for cucumbers.


• My two yellow wheelbarrows contain: penny-royal, sage, thyme, common mint, Corsican mint, and oregano. In other parts of the garden I have other herb plantings with the addition of golden marjoram and lavender.


• I have not yet planted tomato seedlings. I can only find Gross Lisse seedlings. I am looking for heritage tomatoes such as I planted two years ago. I will take a drive into The Hills later to-day to see what I can locate up there. And maybe I'll let my fingers do the walking using this list.


• Here at The Trad Pad, we compost. We have two bins - but two older single women don't make a lot of compost very quickly. I add to our household scrap pile in the bin by adding, every few months, some additional layers. I will put in a layer of cow manure; a few months later, a layer of lime. Sometimes I find I have left a small amount of potting mix to its own devices in the tool shed, so it goes into the compost too. I didn't have quite enough from the two compost bins to provide an adequate layer over all of the dug area so there was a narrow patch on the long side of the toolshed where the rocket seeds have been planted which received cow manure. I prefer manure to blood and bone. Blood and bone is an organic fertiliser/nutrient but I prefer not to use it. If I could be assured that it comprised the remains of old and injured animals who have been killed in a humane manner, I would use it. However, most blood and bone would be the detritus from meat processing facilities which kill animals for food. So I prefer to go with cow manure because it means that an animal has not given its life for the main purpose of providing humans with food.

It hasn't all been veges and herbs. Pretty baskets a-plenty are decorating the trees in the back yard. Here are some of them. And I have not included any pictures of the succulent collection in the courtyard outside the sunroom. BTW, these wire baskets are found items!

Kath and Kim: tunnelling through

It is nearly ready! Melbourne's latest Freeway - the Mitcham to Frankston or the Scoresby as it is often known. It is only ten minutes from Upper Gully and Miss Eagle will probably love its convenience. Shame on me - as I remember the beautiful farmland it subsumed - including a place with miniature ponies.

Now they are asking us to name the twin tunnels of the project.

Herself can be a clever drawers at times and - as soon as she heard the announcement - she had the names: Kath and Kim.

I don't think the names are worth entering because you see, dear Reader, there are guidelines. And, after a read of those, it seems that Kath and Kim may not cut the mustard.

But that, dear Reader, should not really matter. The tunnels can have a flash, guide-line meeting name for the toffs. But for the rest of us we know that, just as at Fountain Gate in south-east Melbourne, Kath and Kim are stars so their names can become through common and widespread usage the names for the stars of convenience in private transport in south-east Melbourne.

,

Melbourne: The City

It is Photo Friday. And the theme is The City. The photos below are of my city: Melbourne, Australia. They are slightly different from a lot of south-facing views of Melbourne. These are taken from the First Floor corridor in the offices of Flinders Street Station. The photos look across the tracks and platforms of FSS. The first one looks south-east towards the tower of the Arts Centre. The second looks south-west.

Extracting magic dust!

To-day is Show and Tell Friday.

This is hosted by the gracious Kelli over at There's No Place Like Home.

If you pop over there, you will see the guidelines for this little weekly fiesta.

Now you can see this item from both sides - above and below.

Do you know what it is?

This is the only one that I have ever seen.

If you have one or have seen one, I would like to know.
It has a polished wood side for gripping.

The business side is corrugated or ridgy.

Down

Down

Down

HERE IS THE ANSWER

IT IS THE MAGIC DUST EXTRACTOR

I have photographed all four sides of the box.

Click on the photographs to enlarge so that you can read the print.

The photo above has the price on it - 29/6 (AUD equivalent $2.95 cents)

Decimal currency came to Australia on 14 February 1966 - 41 years ago.

This may be even older

When my aunt, Molly, died I cleared out her apartment.

This item was in it.

Don't you just love this statement -

UNCONDITIONALLY GUARANTEED TO LAST A LIFETIME

It has outlasted Molly. Will it outlast me?
~~~~~~

POSTSCRIPT

Decided to do a Google search and came back with one entry - over at Ebay Australia.

A picnic-ing we went

Left to Right: Miss Eagle, Lindsay, Gina, Val

On Tuesday, some bloggers had their picnic. Not down in the woods but at Westerfold Park, Templestowe in the north-east of Melbourne. We were five. Gina of Patra's Other Place, Val of Val Has Her Say, and Lindsay of Lindsay's Lobes and his good wife, Anne and moi, Miss Eagle.

It was a bright, sunshine-y day but, oh, the wind, THE WIND!

Did it play havoc!!!

But did we have fun. Great conversation, great laughs, great sharing. Should be more of it! Can you please note the demographic. All of the above are retired! That's our demographic - like it or lump it! We are not Generation X or Y. We are not the yummy mummies. Nor are we students - we are graduates of the school of life! And we are literate, opinionated and we do stuff.

Out came the picnic basket. We each contributed to the lunch with food and so many bottles of the good stuff you would have thought we were digging in for the winter! Needless to say, our optimism was not equalled by our capacity.
My menu contributions were 4P Rolls. These are rolls in which the main ingredients are Puff Pastry, Potato, Peas and Pesto. You will have to pop over to Oz Tucker for the recipe.
For afters, there were fruit and cheese skewers. I am sure, dear Reader, you can figure these for yourself - but, just in case, a fuller description will be over at Oz Tucker.

Dear Reader, you will note another person in this photograph.

That's Anne, Lindsay's spouse, on the left in the sunglasses.

Please note how everyone is huddled and cuddled because of THE WIND!

Controversial crafts and feminist foibles

Miss Eagle has the glisten of a tear or two on her cheek. You see, I have just been reading Jane Brocket's latest post over at yarnstorm.

If there was only one blog I was allowed to read out of the whole blogosphere, it would be yarnstorm. Apologies to friends and fellow bloggers but that is how it is. I admire Jane's layout, her beautiful photographs, her interests, and her writing. Over the last twelve months, Jane's readers have lived with her the writing of her first book, The Gentle Art of Domesticity. The book has only recently been released and Jane has had to embark on the usual media round to talk about herself and the book. You can listen to Jane being interviewed on October 9, 2007, on BBC4 here.

Jane's post, linked above, brings a tear because there has been so much comment that has been questionable and invasive to the extent that Jane has had to go beyond her usual privacy boundaries to clarify a few things. For those of us who admire Jane, this was wonderful to enhance and round out our view of her. But those of us who admire Jane have also felt her pain - and we think why the h#ll should she feel compelled to do this if she does not want to.

Clearly, fulfilling one's creative instincts by knitting, quilting and making rock buns is controversial stuff.

• It clearly is not enough to have come from limited financial circumstances and earned a first class education by using one's intellectual capacity to win scholarships and grants.
• It is clearly not enough to have become a Master of Wine.
• It is not enough to be able to capably review both wine and fine English lit.
• It is not enough to have the tenacity to have won through difficult personal circumstances to build a secure and enjoyable family life - and to use your income to invest in the materials of your creativity.
• It is not enough to have one of the most popular blogs of its genre on the net and to have spun it into a published book.

Miss Eagle has earned long ago her stripes as a feminist but some of the thought processes of those who claim feminist instincts and leanings is stunning.

Some of us remember when girls were advised not to learn to type in high school. The 'wisdom' was that if you could type you would only ever be treated as a secretary and never make your way to management.

Well, didn't they get that wrong.

We now have droves of women in their middle years who wish they had first rate keyboard skills for the computer age - like being able to touch type.

Fortunately, Miss E's mother, Phyll, who spent years in the workforce as a secretary believed that office skills are something a woman could always fall back on - so not only can Miss E touch type at pretty phenomenal speeds she can also do Pitman's Shorthand at such a level that she can do verbatim minutes of meetings. Miss Eagle left school at 15 with these skills. Later came the degree. Later came management experience.

These days I see women like Jane and Di over at Clementine's Shoes and Suse over at Pea Soup - who are professional and academically qualified women - taking the traditional domestic crafts to new and imaginative levels. They combine careeers and professional demands with family life and personal creativity.

Duh! What is wrong with that! What sort of female oppression is that!

None of these women are forcing others into their mold - but plenty of women are queuing up to join in their conversation!

And isn't that what we feminists are about first and foremost - choice: choice in our personal lives, choice in our working lives, choice in our family lives; choice in the public sphere, choice in the private sphere.

Drop in on The Dandenongs

Hat Tip to Winza for the photographs This post is blatant promotion. Miss Eagle lives in Upper Ferntree Gully in the foothills of beautiful Blue Dandenongs. The Dandenongs comprise large tracts of temperate rainforest - tall, ever so tall Mountain Ash and valleys of tree ferns.
For more than 100 years, The Dandenongs has been a leisure and pleasure getaway for Melburnians - particularly in a hot, dry summer. Sometimes they come from day trips. The wealthy had/have week-enders in The Hills. These days it is B & B territory with wonderful restaurants.
At the moment, there is a competition on and you could win a wonderful week-end experience in my neck of the woods. So, I didn't want you to miss out on an opportunity. So please go here and enter. And when you win, please email me so that we can do coffee up at Sassafras or Olinda.

Art outs visitors all of a sudden

Estevão Silva da Conceição at work

OK, please let me in on the secret. Back on April 20, 2007, I posted on the documentary, Gaudi in the Favela. It told of Estevão Silva da Conceição's home in a favela (shanty town) in the centre of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Today, I have wall to wall visitors to The Trad Pad after doing Google searches. So, I assume his work and his name are in the media somewhere - because the visitors are from around the world - including my neck of the woods in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. So, dear Reader, please tell me what has started this? Is Gaudi in the Favela showing or in the news?

Postscript: 8.10pm

Please note the comment from tavella.

The reason for the visits is due to a BBC news item.

I hope everyone gets to see Estevao's work in Gaudi in the Favela.

Beauty can be created anywhere if we have the eye and the spirit for it.

As Estevao shows - these are more important than the materials, which can be quite basic.

Garage Sale at Upper Gully - Reflections

The second day of the Garage Sale is drawing to a close. Just a few more hours and the gates will close and the signs will come down. It has a been a moderate success. A lot of stuff has gone. A lot still remains. But, dear Reader, if you couldn't make it or you don't live in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne don't fret. Before the month is out, it is expected that a By-Online-Blog will emerge: The Doll's House. You will be able to see the pretty things. If you are in town, by appointment you can come to play in The Doll's House. So stay tuned for more. You can always email for more information.

Australia and Bowen: films. tourism and memories

I am getting in early this week for Show and Tell Friday.

So early that Kelli over at There Is No Place Like Home doesn't have Mr Linky up yet for this week so I will have to go back later and do the link up.

My Show and Tell this week is centered on Bowen, in North Queensland. Miss Eagle was born in Brisbane and lived there - at Wynnum and at Manly on the shores of Moreton Bay - until, in 1955, at the age of 11 she went to live in Bowen because her father, Jack, got a very good job there. There Miss Eagle grew up and married Joe, the Dear Departed Dearly Beloved - Phyl, her mother, said she married half of Bowen when she married Joe and she wasn't far wrong - and Herself, the first of three children was born in Bowen in 1964.

Miss Eagle and Herself, Bowen, 1964

In 1968, we left to follow the now widowed Phyl to live in Toowoomba where my sister, The Director, was now in high school at St Saviour's and two sons, The Nerd and The Actor, were born. So the thirteen years of my life lived in Bowen were formative - to say the least.

Bowen is a quiet tropical town at the northern end of The Whitsundays. One of its nicknames is Sleepy Hollow - not without justification. There is also the joke that it used to be called Blowen but it blew so hard it blew the 'L' out of it. That's not wrong. In Miss E's childhood, Bowen had three cyclones in three years. The first was an afternoon breeze by comparison with the next two which were severe and without any meaningful warning. The up-to-the-minute warnings that there are to-day have their genesis in the Bowen experience.

Our family home, 46 Powell Street , Bowen - destroyed cyclone, 1959. Could have been worse except for a new roof holding walls up.

Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman starring in Australia

Quiet Bowen is now in the spotlight. It is the site and set for Baz Luhrmann's latest film Australia which is due for release next year.

Australia is an historical drama set in northern Australia prior to World War II and centres on an English aristocrat (Kidman) who inherits a cattle station (ranch) the size of Maryland, USA. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn cattle driver (Jackman) to drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier. It stars some Australian greats including Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Brian Brown, David Wenham. For more, see here.

Now the story has nothing to do with Bowen. It is centered on Darwin. Bowen was selected because of its round-the-year good weather - well, not counting those strong south-easterlies. Darwin is in the wet tropics; Bowen the dry tropics. And needless to say the filming is the talk of the town, the talk of North Queensland, the talk of Australia. Welcome to BowenWood.

Over the years much of the major industry and employment in Bowen - sugar, beef, railway - has declined. Tourism is an important lifeline for the town and Baz Luhrmann and his movie have undoubtedly given that a boost. But tourism is a major industry for the real Australia and it looks like "Australia - the movie" is going to be the central theme of tourism promotion to attract visitors to this country. It is expected to have an impact comparable with the impact of Crocodile Dundee.

Back to the Bowen of Miss Eagle's memory - explaining the picture at the top of this post.

In the background is the facade of a movie theatre. It is the Summergarden at Queen's Beach. In Miss Eagle's youth, this was the only movie theatre to screen on Sunday nights. But...it did not commence screening until 8.15pm on Sunday nights. This was because the last church service in town, at St Mary's Catholic Church, did not finish until 8pm. Then there was the travel time from town to the beach and the houselights dimmed and the movies were on.

The man is holding the poster of our Nic is Ben de Luca. Ben owned the Summergarden in Miss E's young days and still does. His brother, Frankie, was in Miss E's Grade 8 class. The rushes of Australia are being shown privately to the relevant film personnel at the Summergarden.

And if you are one of those who chooses your tourist flings around movie themes, here are some Australian suggestions:

Wolf Creek - South Australia, Northern Territory and Broome, Western Australia The Proposition - Winton, Queensland

The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith - Various locations in New South Wales

Man from Snowy River - Snowy River, ACT

Finding Nemo - Great Barrier Reef and Sydney

Mad Max - Broken Hill, New South Wales

Storm Boy - Coorong Wetland, South Australia

Ten Canoes - Arnhem Land

Crocodile Dundee - Kakadu, Northern Territory; Mackinlay, Queensland

Picnic at Hanging Rock - Mt Diogenes, Victoria; Mintaro, South Australia

The Castle - Melbourne, Strathmore, Bonnie Doon, Victoria

The Dish - Parkes, New South Wales

Kenny - The Melbourne Cup, Calder Park Street Drag Racing, Australian International Airshow, St Kilda Festival , Murchison

Jindabyne - Jindabyne, New South Wales

Babe - Robertson, New South Wales

Rabbit-Proof Fence - Flinders Ranges, Lake Torrens, McLaren Vale, Onkaparinga National Park and Recreation Park, Parachilna, Nilpena Station, South Australia; The Pilbara, Gibson Desert, Western Australia;

Astolat: now and then

Further to my previous post on Astolat...
I have found some older photos taken on 5 September, 1970...
by John T. Collins. See them here.

Brighton, gossip and the Willy Wagtail

Photo: Canberra Ornithologists Group

The Willy Wagtail (pictured above) is an Australian bird with a bad reputation among Aboriginal people. You see, he is seen as a gossip. He listens in on conversations and flies off and spreads what he has heard. Not nice. Miss Eagle thought of the Willy Wagtail yesterday when she was walking down the shopping strip at the Middle Brighton shops.

I love to see people stopping to chat while shopping. As communities become large and impersonal such individual signs of community diminish. So I noticed when I saw two middle-aged women in conversation in the middle of the footpath. One woman spoke as the other looked at her intently with mouth agape. As I walked past I heard only the words "and he..."

From the aghast look on the listener's face, I could only imagine what horrible news might have been imparted:

...and he sent the family company to the wall because he gambled everything away in the Mahogany Room at Crown Casino and now the children have had to be pulled out of Brighton Grammar because there's no money for the school fees.

...and he cleared out with the nanny. They are now living in France and his wife has been left with STD - sexually transmitted debt.

...and he......(you can complete this one, dear Reader)

Garage Sale at Upper Gully -and- Bluster and beauty at Brighton

Divestment

Rescued and refurbished - from the Hard Rubbish
We at The Trad Pad are divesting again with a garage sale on Saturday. Please email me for address and details. Piece de resistance will be this charming two seater cane lounge all freshly refurbished. It has a shabby chic-style bench pad with roses one side, as you can see dear Reader, and the other side is in an elegant pink and white stripe. Lots of other good things, new and vintage, will be on sale at reasonable prices.

~~~~~~
Blustery Brighton

I was in Brighton this afternoon. The beachfront was blustery. These pictures were taken at the end of North Road. The tide was in and the wind was making sea spray and white horses. Not quite cyclonic but significant force in the wind. Reports say 60kph - I'd say 60mph!
Away from the blustery beachfront and around in Durrant Street, I discovered the charm of Flower mee at No. 43. The talented Kathryn Weichmann pulls an array of wonderful goods and material together into a memorable whole. Kathryn told me she was in the process of clearing the decks somewhat to make space for the Christmas goodies. Can't wait to get Herself to schedule a visit with me to see what Santa has in store at Kathryn's hands.
Flower mee - Kathryn Weichmann, principal, 32 Durrant Street, Brighton. Phone: 9592 1480 Mobile: 0414 917 070