Going home to the place where I belong

Recently my sister Doreen in the USA posted this old photo taken (I think) early in 1974 of some members of our family. She sent it round to her three daughters, two of whom (twins) were in utero at the time!

Brother Paul with Fritz, brother-in-law John holding his daughter
Raina and my daughter Zoe, sister Doreen, and Mum and Dad.

In fact I can clearly remember taking this photo of some of the family I was about to leave forever - or so it seemed 49 years ago. Another sister, Nancy, was no longer living near enough to join us on this day. And my then-husband was on one of his final workdays, prior to our scheduled emigration to Australia. I had little expectation then that family would ever visit me on the other side of the world, as both of my parents and then Doreen later did several times. Or that my mother would spend one of her final years with me not long before she died. I certainly didn't expect I would end up working in jobs that would allow me regular visits 'back home' over many years. Or that Nancy would one day join me in Australia, along with her family. So the day that this photo was taken was a sad one for me, even if I was also looking forward to a new life in Australia.

My brother had driven my daughter and me down to Doreen's little farmhouse in Preston, Connecticut - which she and her husband had bought not long before. One reason I probably remember the day so well is because this was the winter of the great Oil Crisis in the States. Some State Governments had decided to lower the speed limit on freeways and highways to 50mph (80.5km) because that was deemed to be more fuel-efficient than the usual 60mph. I don't think my brother was very happy about that temporary regulation - even though we weren't then travelling in one of the sportscars that he would later keep tucked away in his garage throughout the winters (and I think still does!) 

Zoe at Cheney's Apple Farm1973

I suppose it was a drive of just over an hour from where my parents and brother lived in Massachusetts. By then, I think I would have been staying with my parents as my husband and I were getting ready to leave the country for good. We had spent almost a year living nearby after returning from our first three-year stint in Australia. We'd come 'home' from those firsts few years in Oz with a child and no intention of going back. Fate decided otherwise. And glad am I for that. But that's a story for a different post.

After seeing that family photo this week, one of Doreen's daughters (my niece) sent me this message: "Wow, can't believe you have been in Australia for so long. Crazy." Personally, I can't believe there was ever a time when I wasn't in Australia. That's how strange it seems to me that I ever identified as American. And when I became an Australian citizen at an Australia Day Ceremony, on 26 January 1976, dual USA/Australian citizenship was not allowed. So becoming Australian meant renouncing US citizenship.

Our first home as "new Australians": Glasslough, Epping Forest, Tas.

On 27 January 1976 - the day after the Mayor of Glenorchy, Tasmania, granted my Australian Citizenship Certificate at that ceremony - the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Department of Immigration sent a letter to the US Embassy in Canberra, informing them I was now an Australian citizen. But it wasn't until two years later that I received a registered letter from the US Consulate in Melbourne, informing me that Section 349(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that "a person who is a national of the United States whether by birth, or naturalization shall lose his nationality by (1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application..." The letter included forms which we were supposed to sign and return. And I'm pretty sure I did so...

...because in May 1978 I received a "Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the United States". Nowadays both the USA and Australia allow dual citizenship. So my daughter has retained both the US citizenship she inherited by birth, and the Australian citizenship she gained when we were naturalised. Did I care about losing US citizenship? Not in the least. Not then or ever since - though I admit it would have been easier to be a US citizen when I later travelled back and forth to spend time with my ageing parents. I very nearly overstayed the three-month visitor's visa on one occasion.

What surprises me most now is that I'm sometimes treated as if I'm still quasi-American. People who don't know me well - but have some knowledge about my background - will often apologise to me after saying something slightly critical about the United States. Yet I'm probably more critical than anyone about certain US policies and practices - about health care, for example. And don't even mention Trump! I can't help feeling very lucky to be Australian - though that doesn't mean I'm not also critical about some of my adopted country's policies and practices. Take the ongoing incarceration of refugees who arrive illegally by boat. Truth is: there is plenty that needs fixing in both countries. 

I just happen to think that ours is in so many ways a better environment in which to live and work. Maybe not for everyone - but for a larger percentage of the national population than is the case in the USA. I'm not sure I thought about that in 1976, when we left the States for good. Our reasons for leaving were entirely personal, not social or political. But we must have had some inkling that we could make a better life here. It's now 53 years since I first came to Australia - and 47 years since Zoe and I became citizens. That's what I celebrate on Australia Day! 

 

 

John Hazelwood (20/8/1945 - 7/12/2023)

Funerals and Christmastime don't make for a good mix. But I'm just back from Brisbane where I had the sad experience of helping to farewell John Hazelwood - my son-in-law Brandon's father, and part of my extended family for almost 20 years.

Hazelwood-Boulanger family (March 2020)

In a great speech at their wedding, John told the story of how he met Zoe:

It was at around 2am one morning and I had just reversed the car and boat into the driveway at home after a thirteen hour trip. I had just been up to North Qld. for a couple of weeks fishing. As I was heading inside to get the keys to open the side gate, the front door opened, “Hi John, I’m Zoe” There in the doorway was this angel. I thought, Oh no I’ve run off the road and killed myself and I am now in heaven. Just then a voice said “Hi Dad”. It was Brandon opening the side gates for me. I quickly came back to earth and thought, Heyyyy Boy you have certainly lifted your game.

John meets
Charlotte Maudie H.

A few years later, Brandon and Zoe gave us a grandchild: Charlotte Maudie Hazelwood, or Charlie. That middle name 'Maudie' was the name of Brandon's Mum, who had died not long before Brandon and Zoe met. John was deeply touched by their giving Charlie that name. 

From the time Zoe and Brandon met, John and I along with my late husband had become the official family elders at all our family gatherings: Christmases, birthdays, anniversaries etc. It took a while for us to feel comfortable with each other - we had very different backgrounds and life experiences and (I suspect) views about a lot of issues - though we always avoided straying into problem areas out of mutual respect. 

A Christmas gathering of the Harvey-Boulanger-Hazelwood clan.
My stepson Julian (standing next to his father) was celebrant at John's service.

John's and my friendship deepened when I became a carer - first for my mother, and then more intensively for my late husband. Caring for an ill spouse was something John was all too familiar with.

John was born in August 1945, so he was just six months younger than me - a sobering thought when you go to a funeral. 

Sniper Hazelwood

He was the eldest of four children. His sister Pam and brother Ken still live in New South Wales, where John grew up; another brother Neville died in infancy. John completed an apprenticeship in Sydney as a carpenter/joiner. and played rugby there too. 

John with brother Ken and sister Pam

His number turned up in the National Service lottery, but he narrowly avoided going to Vietnam as a sniper. Luckily for him, an eardrum was damaged during the medical so he was discharged.

He had two children - Shayne and Mark - with his first wife Helen, but when that marriage ended he went north and worked on a prawn trailer. Then, back in Sydney, he met Maudie and for a while lived the tough life of a professional fisherman. He was a one-man operation, towing his boat late at night through Sydney to Pittwater where he would either head up the Hawkesbury River or out to sea. On his return he would drop the fish off at the markets and head home for a well earned sleep.

John and Maudie

In 1977 the couple moved to Queensland, where Maudie had grown up. But even before Brandon was born two years later, she'd had one brain tumour removed. Another was detected while she was pregnant and the operation to remove it left her with cerebral palsy - not an easy diagnosis for a new mother. Maudie lived until 2002 - long enough to see her son into adulthood. But it had been a long, hard road for them all, given the sad effects of brain cancer.

With a barramundi at one of his Proserpine visits

Throughout his life, fishing was John's anchor point. As Brandon said in John's eulogy, "What he didn't know about fishing wasn't worth knowing." Brandon continued:

Once he moved up to Queensland and I was born things were a bit more difficult and his boat didn’t leave the driveway again for many years. When I got older his passion for fishing came back and we spent a lot of time fishing together. He joined a group of Barra fisherman up Proserpine way and drove his boat up the highway every year for a number of years to fish their invite-only Barra competition. While he never won, he caught a LOT of large barramundi and was well liked by everyone. His local passion was to chase large Snapper off Redcliffe. He always wanted to crack a metre long; he got close with a cracker at 92cm a few years ago. He had also done a lot of work with Lowrance fishing sounders after retirement and really enjoyed traveling around to the local tackle shops updating their sounders and talking about them on club nights. 

Dendrobium Pearl Vera

John's other passion was native orchids. He built himself a greenhouse larger than his house, where he spent hours repotting and breeding them. He was an Australian Native Orchid judge for many years. And he'd kicked off Queensland's first native orchid society more than 30 years ago. I saw for myself how highly he was regarded in the orchid growing community when I accompanied him to the 30th anniversary celebration of that group last year. He was delighted when the Dendrobium I won in a raffle at that event flowered for me earlier this year.

Without a doubt, though, what brought the most joy into John's life in his last 10 or so years was the time he spent with our grandchild Charlie. He enjoyed regular weekly visits, but he was also happy to babysit anytime - even on short notice. He hadn't lived near enough to his daughter's girls to play the same role in their early lives, so he took full advantage of this late chance to be a hands-on Grandad. 

When John was admitted to hospital two years ago with an aortic dissection, given his many other health problems he wasn't expected to survive more than a few days. An operation was his only chance, but even in an otherwise healthy person, the average mortality, or risk of death, from repair of an aortic dissection is about 15%. Amazingly, John survived the operation - but he did have several small strokes in the process. And the after-effects of these seriously compromised the quality of his last two years of life. 

John could no longer drive, take his boat out or spend much time in the greenhouse. Perhaps worst of all, his communication skills - both speaking, writing and, to some extent, understanding - were seriously impaired. He found it difficult to accept these limitations but declined the outside help he was entitled to. So for these last two years Brandon became his lifeline. Then on 6 December John went to hospital again where scans showed another dissection - this one inoperable. He died early the next morning, with Brandon and Zoe by his side. 

John with daughter Shayne and son Mark

John's three children - Mark (from Tasmania), Shayne and her family (from Sydney) and Brandon with Zoe and our family - gave him a warm send-off on 15 December. Also present were some of John's cousins and their families, friends and neighbours, and a number of old fellows representing the fishing and orchid-growing groups he'd been part of. 

Some of the Hazelwood clan after the service

Christmas will be a bit subdued for the Brisbane Hazelwoods this year. And I'll miss the phone calls John and I often had after these gatherings, where we old codgers would help each other to process those aspects of our kids' lives that sometimes baffled us. 

Even though we'd lived very different lives, John and I were united in our devotion to the little family our kids had forged. What we had in common far outweighed the differences. It will be lonely being the only representative left of that generation. I will miss him, and the raised eyebrows we shared across the room at times. 

So many of the comments posted on Brandon's Facebook page about his Dad echoed how I too would summarise his character: John Hazelwood was a real gentleman. And the other memory I will hold on to is what a great Grandad he was to our Charlie.

Methinks...

Since beauty is transient...

...maybe enjoy it while you can?

Pre-posthumous note to my kids

Dear Zoe, Julian and Chris:

I guess the 10th anniversary of Dad’s death got me thinking about finality. Then this morning on page 32 of the Sydney Morning Herald I read a frightening article about the spiralling cost of funerals and the whole death business (and it is very big business!). So just for the hell of it, I checked online and was pleased to see that perfectly adequate cardboard coffins are now available at very reasonable prices. 

Zoe and Julian, you may remember we asked about that option at the Tewantin funeral home we chose to organise Dad's cremation. The woman who dealt with us there (Remember how she strove to be friendly but elegant at the same time? And how surprised she seemed that we kept sharing little laughs at bits of the interview that we found amusing - or figured Dad would find funny?) - she told us that a cardboard casket would be hideously more expensive than the options she had available! Good to know that things have improved since then. 

Zoe, then I thought about all the wonderful ways you could decorate either of the above using your expertise on the Cricut printer: flowers, native plants, messages from everyone etc. etc. (I can see a real market there for you in the future, dear, if you decide to ditch the AsPro job*.) Not to mention Brandon's skill in 3D printing. Endless possibilities there for enhancements. And I’m sure Nancy would contribute a garland of her fabulous paper beads to jazz things up (assuming she lasts longer than me and hasn’t gone la-la by then!) 

I can't imagine a more appropriate image to grace the cover of my box than the drawing Charlie made of me 4 or 5 years ago.

Just keep all of this in mind because I’d be extremely disappointed if you guys went out and spent thousands of your inheritance on my funeral. (That's assuming there is anything left by the time I shuffle off!) I would much prefer you spent it on a big party to get together all who wanted to help decorate my box – while I waited in the fridge somewhere to be laid inside for the fireworks (maybe wrapped up in the patchwork quilt of my mother’s, which I now use as a bedspread! Just a suggestion!)  

That SMH article says you mightn’t even have to use a funeral parlor! Some states allow you to keep the body at home for up to 5 days! I don’t suppose I’d fit into your downstairs fridge, but if I did the smell couldn’t be much worse than the fishing bait Brandon keeps in there. 

Oh, and you’re also allowed to transport a body around yourself if you so desire – though maybe you'll have a new car by then and that wouldn’t appeal. I could suggest the Cruiser has carried worse loads. But OK. I'll agree you should fork out for commercial refrigeration and a hearse. 

Your loving Mama,
Chartreuse

PS:  Just don’t think I won’t be watching. If you waste my money on funeral frills, be prepared for payback!

* Just to explain: My super-achieving daughter was made Associate Professor recently - I guess they figured what little free time she had available in her hectic life really ought not to go unused!

Granma, Charlie and Sam at Dad's
'funeral' breakfast on the Noosa River.

Requiem

Roland Allen Harvey

1929 - 2013
"Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will."
(from 'Requiem' by R.L.Stevenson)

On a Monday morning 10 years ago today, in a quiet light-filled room in Noosa Hospital my dear husband took his last breath. It was just a gentle inhaling, nothing dramatic, made easier, I suppose, by the morphine meant (officially) to minimise his pain. He simply inhaled. And then he didn't exhale. That was all.

I looked up through the window to see, beyond a covered walkway, a pretty little grove of young ti-trees in an internal garden of the hospital. I'd sat there many times on previous hospitalisations that had ended less sadly. Just at that moment, two of our children came down that walkway. They'd driven up from the city as soon as I'd rung, coming to say their goodbyes. I like to think he waited as long as he could, and let go only once the kids were near enough to give me some comfort. 

We all sat with him for quite a while. Some Mozart played softly - his favourite composer. I don't remember any of us crying too much. By then it was as much relief as loss. It had been a long, slow road - but an inevitable outcome with dementia. And really, we'd been luckier than many. He always knew us, lived at home till his last few days and could call on plenty of memories even as it became more and more difficult to express them.

Allen had squeezed into his 83 years several lives - including three families he'd created with three different women, all of us eventually becoming and remaining friends. In fact, I don't know anyone who had an unkind word to say about him. And no one whom he disliked enough to do more than make the subject of an amusing story. He had three young adult sons when I met him. But less than a year later, one of them died in a tragic accident. On the day of that funeral, we made a commitment to live the rest of our lives together. Life's too short to hold back, we decided. 

By the time I met him, Allen had made a living for more than 30 years as a stage manager and then theatre director, working and touring Australia and New Zealand at a time when a life in theatre was an even more precarious profession than it is now. But he redefined himself to follow me around wherever I might work - first becoming an ABC scriptwriter and all-round theatre jobber (actor, director, playwright, theatre manager) in Tasmania, then moving into arts management with the Australian National Choral Association and other groups in Queensland. Coming with me to London on a Fellowship year in the 1990s was an easier assignment - even if the Welsh Choir he accompanied on a European tour (a group destined to travel to Australia the following year) caused a bit of a stir and no end of paperwork when one of the elderly choristers expired while crossing the Channel. 

When I started doing overseas consultancy work on development projects, Allen confidently ran our various households, not only in Queensland but also in the Philippines and Laos for several years each and sometimes from hotel rooms for months at a time. His letters to friends and the stories he wrote about some of his own experiences in these places never failed to amuse - for example, one about a colonoscopy he had in a Manila hospital while lying on a guerney whose wheels kept failing to lock in place. He also had two hospitalisations in Thailand while we lived in Laos, quite enjoying being fussed over by caring nurses and always coming away with great stories. 

He would accompany me on visits to remote areas in these countries - saying he felt like Prince Philip walking behind the Queen (and sometimes making the kind of indelicate observations that Philip was known for). He once agreed somewhat reluctantly to go along to a cock fight in one place we were visiting because he didn't like to upset my driver who felt that that Allen deserved a break from following me around to meetings. He sometimes took on voluntary work while overseas - helping students at an international school to make a film, or visiting potential suppliers of learning materials to help me evaluate their products and manufacturing processes. All that practical stage management experience came in handy when assessing the quality of different plywoods, for example, to make 2000 boxes that could safely take classroom materials out to remote school sites! 

On our return to Australia after one of my assignments, we visited a specialist, thinking Allen may have had a small stroke. But brain scans resulted in a different diagnosis: Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), a relatively rare form of dementia. One of Allen's first reactions after some of PPA's early effects were explained to us was to turn to me with a mischievous look I knew too well. "See, it wasn't my fault that I stuffed up the chequebook account, forgot to pay the electricity bill and can't tell left from right!" Our peripatetic lifestyle was now over. We would have to learn to live with dementia. 

And I think we did it very well in the years we had left. How we dealt with it, how it dealt with us and what I learned through it all - that's what I set out to share when I began this blog in August 2009. In 2010, Allen was even a guest presenter at the National Conference of the Australian Aphasia Association in Sydney. His progressive form of this brain disorder was not well known even to most of the speech and occupational therapists who made up most of the audience. By then he could barely string words together coherently in casual speech, but he could still write himself a script and read from it almost perfectly - due in part to different areas of his brain being differently affected, but also to all those years of theatre experience! My only task as his assistant was to show the slides that he'd selected to accompany his story (My Life in the Theatre...and Afterwards).

Learning to live meaningfully without Allen has been much harder for me than being his caregiver was in his final years. But even though he's not here to share the rest of my life, I'll be better able to deal with whatever life throws at me because of what I learned from how he lived his. 

Red-rimmed trainers

I wrote this piece not long after my husband died.
Hard to believe, tomorrow it will be 10 years.

I walk in your shoes
The red-rimmed trainers we bought for rehab.
Your physio noticed and smiled.
Your doctor too.
Not the shoes you’d expect an 80-year-old to choose.
And maybe you didn’t.
But comfort comes before style
When a body’s been through hell.

Four years on they’re still like new
You were always easy on clothes, shoes
And people. You wore them all lightly,
Your presence never heavy.
I loved his feet, your ex once said,
The most beautiful feet of any man I knew.
The toes curled up in conversations
Of which there once were so many.

The children came and helped clean out
The cupboards just days afterwards.
Perhaps too soon, but later it would
Have been too hard to discard
All the folds of a long and lazy ending.
A grandson adopted your wardrobe
And when I hug his six-foot frame
I have your shirt in my arms again.

It takes my breath away to see you
Standing there in him
As if you don’t want to leave us
Any more than we wanted you to go.

But you did want to go.
Die, die, the only words
You could sometimes find
And then, soon after, sorry, sorry.
Still trying with what little you had left
Not to give pain, or make a fuss.
So we let you go and a whiff of smoke
Rose up into the blue Noosa sky

And now I wear your shoes
Our feet, like our minds, the same size.
A joke,when different coloured slip-ons
Were how we knew whose feet wore what.
Now only my feet are left
To slip on the red-rimmed trainers.
And I’m walking again with you
My body in step with yours forever.

The First 20 or so Things That I Love as They Occur to Me in the Moment

A blog-friend I recently rediscovered after my 10-year absence from posting gave me the idea for this post. I'd say he's about my age, and his occasional posts on this same theme always begin: "Peggy, my wife of 51-years" - or whatever the current tally of years might be.

 

I wish I could do likewise, and then my list would begin: "Allen, my partner-then-husband of 45 years". Alas, it will soon be 10 years since Allen died, so our partnership only made it to 35 years. Even so, he deserves a mention here, because no list of Things I Love is complete without at least a glance back at Things I Have Loved.

But as they occur to me in the moment, the First 20 Things That I Love (now):

1. Living in Australia, not the USA, and feeling in my bones that I'm more Australian than not.
2. Being free to live each day as I please and being able to do (or not do) whatever I feel like doing on most days.
3. Having my daughter and her family near enough to visit regularly and feeling I'm always welcome when I do visit.
4. Daily texts or phone calls with my sister who's on the same wavelength about so many things and knowing we can share our woes as well as joys without being judged.
5. 
   The blousy white hydrangea that's flowering right now in my garden, reminding me that Spring has arrived and there'll be weeks of blue hydrangeas to follow.
   
6. The little brown honeyeaters and double-barred finches I can see from my desk, as they take turns to bathe in the bird bath.
7. Rays of afternoon sunshine lighting up the top of the hedge along one side of my yard.
8. Being fit enough to maintain my house and garden to a satisfactory standard and, when necessary, being able to afford the services and products I need to keep things ticking over.
9. Cooking interesting food - and then eating it - sometimes with friends to share it with.
10. Reading good books - especially newly published ones - and sharing this pleasure with....
11. ...the lovely people in my book club - their kindness, generosity, intelligence and the fact that none of them are right-wingers or nutbags!
12. 
    A nicely cleaned house after I've finished a really good round of housework.
13. The wonderful opportunities I've had to do interesting development work in several countries.
14. Writing a few good sentences now and then - and sometimes sharing a piece of writing here or elsewhere.
15. Visits by family members and old friends - though I only wish more of them were closer and could visit more often.
16. 
    All my gardening activities - turning over the vegie patch, planting, composting, pruning, harvesting, repotting, pulling on my Redback boots and just getting dirty and sweaty.
    
17. Knowing I don't have to worry about possible future medical bills or access to medical care because I have access to government-subsidised medical and pharmaceutical services as well as affordable private insurance for extras.
18. Being cancer-free 23 years after breast cancer. 
19. Having nice neighbours who agree we will look out for each other but without being too nosy.
20. Having a green outlook over the back fence, with beautiful trees, bushes and an adjacent wetland that I don't have to maintain.

Postscript: I can't end this list without mentioning my dearest A.B-M. (You know who you are!)

Queen of the night

My cactus orchid (Epiphyllum oxypetalum) seems to be happy in this warm, north-facing spot. It's well protected from midday sun by a pergola that's currently overloaded with the fading purple flowers of a sandpaper vine (Petrea volubilis). But though it's hung here through several seasons, until last night I'd never actually seen the cactus orchid's flowers open. I've only seen the long ivory-coloured buds turn to dead flowers (see the top ones) and later bulb-like fruits emerge (green at first, turning to red later). 

The reason why, of course, is because the flowers open at night - Queen of the Night is another name for the plant. So if I wanted to see this plant's night-blooming flowers, I'd have to get out there in the dark. And sure enough, last night over the course of just a few hours from sundown to bedtime, the funnel-shaped flowers emerged and fully extended their petals and other parts toward the moon. 

Alas, the sweet smell and glowing ivory colour is probably all in vain. Whatever insect, bat or other creature it would have appealed to in its Central American homeland isn't hanging around here in south-east Queensland. I don't know how long it stayed open, but by morning the flowers had closed. At least I got to enjoy them for once.

2023 Brisbane Portrait Prize

While in Brisbane on the weekend, I visited the Powerhouse to see the exhibition of finalists in the 2023 Brisbane Portrait Prize. 

This year's exhibition included 70 finalists in the Main Competition and 14 Next Gen entries. Any artist with a connection to Brisbane is eligible to enter. The sitter must also have a connection with Brisbane. In 2023, prizes totalled $90,000.

Entries included both conventional painting and digitally produced work - the Brisbane Portrait Prize website has all the details. And there's a full gallery of finalists online too. I loved the documentation posted with each portrait, which made my viewing a richer experience. Here's an example: the label that accompanies the portrait above - "Brothers", a digital artwork by Marco Eychenne. All of this information is also available online for each of the finalists,

I don't pretend to have any expertise in judging art. But I was blown away by the quality and variety in this exhibition. The friends I was with considered this selection as exciting as the recent show they'd visited celebrating 100 years of the Archibald Prize. I suspect this has something to do with vitality - there were quite a few works by young artists here, as well as many that had also been Archibald finalists themselves.

Anyone wanting to see the exhibition will have to be quick, as tomorrow's the last day (29 October). 

Springtime puffs of white

This white hydrangea is always the first hydrangea to come into flower in Spring. My garden has more than a dozen beautiful hydrangeas, but only one that is white. When I bought the house it was midwinter and these plants had been given their winter trim so they were not much to look at. I actually thought I might remove them once I'd moved in, since I associate them with cool climates and don't usually grow anything that I think is wrong for this climate. For example, I know I'd never be able to grow them as beautifully as I did in Tasmania. 

Luckily, I didn't move into this house until early summer, months later, because I went overseas on assignment right after I signed the contract. When I finally did move in, I was blown away by the beauty of the hydrangeas in full flower. Most of them are planted along a south-facing wall, and get no sun at all in the hottest months and only weak morning sun in winter. They are also planted up close to the house, and the roof's overhanging eaves shelter them from getting too drenched in our tropical summer downpours. Hydrangeas don't like hot sun or wet feet and mine are protected from both. 

Among the predominantly blue hydrangeas, few of which are yet in bloom, I have this one white-flowering one. I don't know if it flowers first because it's white or because it happens to get an hour or two of sun - the only hydrangea that does in Spring. 

White hydrangeas, as any gardener knows, always stay white. And they're prized for that, so my Garden Club friends are always pleased to get cuttings when I prune. Blue-flowering plants, on the other hand, will be blue, pink or some mixture of both, including shades of mauve, depending on soil ph. Red or pink blooms result from neutral or basic soil (pH 7 and above), whereas blue blooms indicate acidic soil condition (pH less than 7). Apparently the color is not determined by the pH itself, but by the amount of aluminium a plant can access in the soil - and that is what is determined by pH and phosphorus levels. 

In one of my first years here, my grand-child and I tried an experiment. My hydrangeas then were mainly blue (except for the white one, of course.) So Charlie and I gave every second blue-flowering plant a good dose of garden lime. That should have produced pink flowers. It wasn't a great success in the that year, but ever since then I have had a nice variety of colours, including different shades of blue and some mauve streaks. 

I like the blue ones best, though, so this year I'm going to give them a liquid fertiliser called Hydrangea Blue (which probably contains aluminium sulfate). That's on my shopping list for the next visit to Bunnings! However, I've already given them all a good dose of mushroom compost, which I suspect is a bit acidic. So anything could happen. 

These photos show the hydrangeas some years ago, before we tried making some turn pink. The two close-up photos feature a few of our pink results a couple of years later. It will be interesting to see what turns up this year!

I did it (but it almost did me!)

Here's where my troubles began! Well, recent back troubles anyway. I should have tried harder to find someone to take on the job of moving aside all the little stones covering this messy parking space alongside my garage. Previous owners used it to park their caravan; I used to keep my trailer there before I gave it away. For the past few years the car-size space has just been a throughway from the front of the house to the back garden - not used for much except a few pots of plants. 

The whole area consisted of river gravel laid down over sheets of black plastic. Trouble is, the layer of stones wasn't thick enough to prevent the weathering of the plastic, which had never been secured to the ground beneath. Round stones never settle on slippery plastic. And dirt from areas where the plastic lifted had mixed with stones - it was an unsightly mess. 

The only solution: move aside the stones, rip up the old plastic piece by piece, lay down and fasten in place proper weed matting, then clean the stones of accumulated dirt and put them down over the new matting, maybe topping up with extra stones to make a good thick covering.

I thought about leaving some areas of soil exposed for planting ground cover plants, since I don't use this area for vehicles. And on the very rare occasion when I might need to let a service vehicle through to the back yard for some reason, it's easy enough to dodge ground covers (or move pots). But as soon as I began the work, I realised that the whole area has a vigorous set of roots criss-crossing the ground, coming from the neighbour's very healthy row of small trees planted as a hedge along the fenceline on his side. So rather than compete with all the roots, it made sense to create a weed-free surface and plant things in large pots here and there. (The neighbour and I did remove the largest of these surface roots though, and so far at least his hedge plants haven't seemed to mind.)

I had contacted a few handymen to quote for this work, but I no one wanted to do it. (I should have realised then what a slog it would be.) No doubt a landscape company would have taken it on - but at what cost! And I could well imagine the mess they might make of it - they'd want to strip the whole area clean to start with, which meant moving all the stones and piling them up somewhere. But where? I would have stones scattered in nearby lawn for months. So I decided if I could get it done before the hotter weather arrived to make outdoor work too onerous, I would do the job myself. 

And so I did - section by section, one barrowload of stones at a time. It took me four weeks, working 4 or 5 days a week, 5 or 6 hours each day. About halfway through I began to think it was all just too difficult. And I made another attempt to employ someone to help. But I couldn't find anyone. So I pressed on. 

At the end of it all I did hire a nice young man with a truck (thank you, Airtasker!) to pick up, deliver and unload a trailer-load of additional stones to finish the job. 

I'm very happy with the result, but can hardly believe I got through it. It's taken weeks for my body to recover. Not surprised that I came down with a terrible bout of winter flu shortly after finishing. I think I had no reserved energy to fight off germs. But I've learned one thing: my days of heavy labour are over. This Amazon lady is hanging up the workboots. Only garden-variety stuff for me from here on. 

The grass is greener (or at least shorter)

I am struggling to work with this blog software after a long absence. Formatting seems more difficult than I remember. But I would like to get back to talking about my garden and other topics now and then - after years of silence (at least on this medium). So let's see how we go! 

Today I mowed the lawn, so that's what that expanse of green is celebrating. Since moving to this smaller property almost eight years ago, I've been paying someone else to mow and trim the lawn. But a few months ago, I decided I would try and do it myself. After all, I'd bought a battery-operated mower when I moved here but have rarely used it. For the first five or six years that made sense, as I was lucky to have resumed work as a consultant and was overseas for some months of each year. But I called a halt on work just before Covid - if I hadn't, Covid would have done it for me since Australia closed up tightly for more than a year. And even now, overseas travel is not as easy or carefree as it used to be. So really, there's no reason why I shouldn't care for the grass myself, since I'm caring for the rest of the garden. It's good exercise, it's better for my budget, and it prevents someone bringing in weed seeds and other things with their equipment. 

It's Spring here, however. It was autumn when I made the decision to take care of the lawn myself. Over autumn and winter, even though this is a subtropical climate, grass doesn't grow too fast. But as the weather warms up, the grass grows faster. Soon it will need to be cut at least once a fortnight and the weather will be too hot to do that for much of the day - for me, at least. So either I will have to start getting up earlier, or resign myself to mowing late in the afternoon, when I'd prefer to be sitting down with a whisky! So we shall see. 

For the moment, anyway, I'm managing it pretty well. But I don't have a whipper-snipper for trimming the edges. And I don't dare to buy one because I think I'd be too likely to do myself damage in trying to use it. I can ask my son-in-law to bring his whipper-snipper along the next time they come for a weekend visit - and he might do some trimming for me (as long as we agree he can go fishing the rest of the weekend!) Until then I will just have to do a bit of selective trimming by hand.  

Flower of the week

It's just a humble creeper - but boy can it creep!

I only remember buying two hoya plants (genus Asclepiad) in all the years I've lived here. But as the creepers grew, I would stick pieces here and there - usually in hanging pots.

I don't know what it is about these tough little guys with their leathery leaves that always fascinates me. I've never seen a bird feeding from the flowers, though I suppose insects must.

But once a year - in late Spring - they flower. And it's always such a pleasure to see where these appear.

'Wax flowers' is the common name - and as soon as you handle one of the multi-headed blooms you can see where the name comes from. The waxy flowerheads don't smell, they fall to pieces as soon as you pluck them so are no good for picking. But...

...appearing as they may do anywhere along the creeper's roaming stems, they're always a delight to behold, even if I know that after flowering is finished I'll have to disentangle some of the plants from places where they have no business going - e.g. under the gutters!












Let's hear it for tough wiry survivors.

No flowers yet on this one, even though it has colonised much of the pergola that it shares with a number of other plants and with frangipani (plumeria) just now coming into leaf.