Beans

Beans. Not just any old variety of beans, green beans. That’s the full extent of my knowledge on the subject.

One day last century, a long, long time ago, I was introduced to the lowly green bean at school. I am sure that there was a lot to be learned – I’m just not sure whether I added to my knowledge reserves at the time. As far as I can remember,we were tasked to grow a bean plant in damp cotton wool. Initially,my bean seed showed some progress, but I seem to recall that it became extremely waterlogged and soggy and rotted into the past.

Now, in 2014 I sowed quite a number of beans, and most of them behaved themselves and grew into little green bushes. Unfortunately,they were forced to stagnate for quite a few weeks while the veggie garden bed was being prepared, so the fruit produced may not be quite representative of what should have been…

Of the few plants currently growing, I picked some of the produce for our consumption,with pictures as below:

(Above): Our first veggies from the new veggie patch – green beans 249 grams

Finding Nemo

We have reached that part of the year when our drinking water stocks are at their lowest. Clayton took advantage of the situation to do a bit of a spring-clean on the overflow tank and garden storage tank. The overflow tank appeared to have some very fine organic floating matter, accumulated over a long period.

After the largest part of the water had been pumped out of the tank, it became Tyler’s job to scoop out and mop up the remaining couple of hundred litres. The manhole in the top of the tank is quite small, but Tyler assured me that he has articulated independent shoulders,which allow him to enter small spaces.  Here are a couple of snaps of Tyler doing the final mopping up.

The tank dimensions are: diameter 2.000 and height 1.100

Putting My Foot In It…

Whilst puzzling over what to write in this post, I looked down at the floor at my barefoot.

Yikes! A clear dark stain is clearly visible over the top of each foot. I recall that I’ve been wearing my jandals when playing croquet over the past number of weeks.

 

Non-New Zealanders may not be familiar with the term “jandal”. They are known by a variety of names in various parts of our world, like sandals, flip-flops and thongs. My jandals are,of course not jandals,but really a kind of Roman Sandal, as worn by Julius Caesar and others of his time.

After complaining in a number of blog posts towards the end of 2014 about the extremely wet weather and general lack of summeriness, it is clear that, after participating in a few outdoor croquet matches, I have underestimated the NZ sun’s wrath. January has proven to be warm and dry, with panic stations starting to develop at the sight of the water-level readings in our drinking water tank,namely a tad less than 4k (4,000 litres).This represents about five days’ reserve of supplies,without taking into account the irrigation watering requirements of the new veggie bed.

I understand that the weatherman is (sort of) promising that there may be some rain in the “pipeline” for us within the next seven days. Here’s hoping…

We have taken approximate measurements of the roof gutter drip-line and come up with the number of 350. Taking into account that my long-hand multiplication may naturally be a bit slurred, this would mean that we can expect to get 350 litres of water for every millimetre of rainfall.Please check decimal point  350m2 x .001m = 0.35 m3  or 46mm should fill a16,000 litre tank. Or am I in the wrong decimal?

Better Make Mine A Ginger

“Better make mine a ginger, please. You never know, I might have to drive home to-night,” Jacko the billy-goat seems to be saying. He is one of the most friendly and most photogenic billy-goats on Goat Hill.

(Above): Jacko greedily munches at a healthy carrot with his cute white little teeth. He believes in maintaining a healthy balanced diet.

(Above): We cannot confirm with any degree of certainty whether he likes ginger beer or simply wants to lick the ice-cold condensation from the outside of the bottle.Clearly his lips are missing the neck of the bottle in this picture. He is also rubbish at sucking through straws.

2015 Super Garden Trail

My my. A full year has shot by since the last garden show in Waikanae. The 2015 Waikanae Lions super garden trail was held Saturday/Sunday 24/25 January, and this time we attended looking through different eyes – searching for details in planning, design and content similar to what we have tried out during the past year.

According to the show brochure, “A wonderful chance to enjoy some of Waikanae’s most treasured gardens.”

(Above): Bianca and Clayton under a climbing Red Scarlet Bougainvillea in a garden in Ngarara Road.

(Above): This hexagonal rotunda blends in very well with its surroundings.

(Above): Some gardens just have that extra bit, don’t they?

(Above): While others are less formal. Sometimes you tend to forget that you’re in a private home garden in the middle of town!

(Above): All kinds of pretties…

(Above): A view in one of the more stunning settings, a 2.5 acre property, very well laid-out, on the outskirts of town in Ngarara Road.

(Above): A superb garden with its very own “lake” pond.With a troop of pilgrim geese,too.

(Above):A well-kept potting shed.

(Above): Some people quite obviously put a lot of time and effort into their gardens, paying attention to all the details.Well done.

(Above): One of the homes had a small photographic exhibition detailing the transformation of their garden with “before” and “after” pictures.

Bubble bubble

It must be about 46 or 47 years ago since I made a brew. It was while I was boarding in Jeanette’s mom’s house in The Strand circa 1968-ish.

I can clearly remember that cleanliness and hygiene were two of the critical ingredients for the success of a good beer. So, I applied my well-studied knowledge of chemistry. Caustic Soda  would surely get my 20 litre glass carboy. And solubility in aqueous solutions is better under warmer conditions,yes?

I have never since added caustic soda to hot water. It “wooshes” up into your face, if you’re not careful, like I found out back in 1968…

Then,I stored the brew with all that yeast and sugar in the bottom of my wardrobe,carefully checking the number of bubbles escaping from the pressure vessel through the glass and rubber tube. 

It tasted awful,to say the least. Twenty litres of the most expensive beer I’ve ever discarded.

(Above): In 2015 I bought a ready-made so-called fool-proof brewing kit from Brewer’s World in Param. It consists of a 23-litre plastic vessel with a tight-fitting lid and aplastic dispensing tap. A built-in tape thermometer is affixed to the side,as the brewing temperature is important.

 
(Above): The glass U-bend trap through a tight-fitting rubber grommet, filled with water serves as a comparative measure of the degree of reaction of fermentation still taking place.

The batch will slow-brew at18 degrees or lower for another three weeks,and then we’ll bottle and wait another four weeks for the secondary fermentation process to run its course.

We are making Black Rock Mexican lager,which,hopefully,will turn out something like the Corona imported from Mexico and on sale locally.

Update on Greenstuff

After all the fencing and painting and manufacture of gates, our first veggie-bed is now officially in production. Rather than number them (that’s so boring, don’t you think?), we’ve decided to name them after indigenous (native) New Zealand trees.

And our first one is called ‘Karaka’, which measures 3m x 3m

(Above): Karaka is home to two varieties of tomato and a miniature salad tomato. We have also planted ten miniature tomatoes in plastic buckets (at the back). We have green bean bushes and a grid for little gherkins. There are also a couple of rows of spring onions seeds as an experiment, and some Coriander seeds which may also produce results. In the last space we have a few sweet peppers.

(Above): The main entrance pergola over the two gates. The smaller gate is three-quarters the width of the one of the right. Climbing roses will be grown to the left and right of the pergola. There are plans afoot to dolly up the walking spaces in the area with small pebbles and stepping flagstones.

(Above): The shady sitting area for teas and meals on hot days. We have had a few lunches here already. Most pleasant in the natural surroundings.

(Above): The sitting area is quite secluded from the veggie area by these lemon trees.

CXLVI and counting. Let’s Rock

“ CXLVI? Huh?”

“ Yes, m’lud, it’s the old way of saying these new-fangled numbers that they have been using in Londonium . It’s the way this invading Emperor Julius does numbers – it’s 146, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Huh? 146? What’s the significance?”

“ None, m’lud. It’s a fact: its the number of submerged rocks that we’ve dug out of the lawn so far. And we’re not done yet. It could conceivably be as many as CLXX, or perhaps even CC. Who knows?”

No, I am not talking to any strangers. Just thinking aloud, what it would feel like if I suddenly made a significant “discovery”. You see, the lawn-mower blades take a regular hammering from all the half-buried half-exposed pebbles, stones, rocks and boulders. Its not as if the rocks jump out and try to hammer the mower blades, they simply whack the stones as if they’re blades of grass. And then , wham!

I have devised a cunning plan to cheat the rocks of their weird pleasure : I will remove them all and banish them to the Land of Harmless, which is situated under one of the trees on the northern boundary.

Easier said than done, I have discovered.

Rocks, especially boulders, are much like icebergs. A tiny bit sticks out above the ground, just enough to whack the lawnmower blades. But more rock, anything up to fifty times its size, lays out of sight, buried beneath the surface, just waiting to smirk at me.

Locate and eradicate. That’s my current motto. And its easy enough. Except for boulders numbers LXX11, LXXIX and XC. Yes, yes. 72, 79 and 90. Here is a photo of XC. His dimensions exceed that of our garden wheel-barrow, and his weight is in the ultra-obese category in boulder-speak – even for a river rock.

 
Then, while I was grunting and huffing and puffing in my feeble efforts to get him released from his cosy bed, Brynn came skipping along the grass.

“Hi Grandpa. What a humongous rock you have there! Is this perhaps the meteor which fell out of the sky and killed off all the dinosaurs? It looks like its big enough to kill a dinosaur.”

I agreed with her that the boulder certainly looked heavy enough the give at least one dinosaur a ticket to the next universe. One might wonder how such a large rock came to be here in the first place. I have not been able to lever him out of his grave without doing myself an injury, so I will wait for reinforcements. I’m not quite sure what we’ll do with him.

Oh well, enough of this idle chatter. I need to get multiple barrow-loads of sifted sand and cart them to fill each of the void created by the rock removal process, and to top-dress the lawn in those areas.

 
(Above): Some of the rocks which have been removed and relocated on the northern boundary out of sight. And out of reach of the lawn-mower blades once and for all.

Waiting for the 4:50

I guess that the next paragraph no longer applies to a large percentage of post-Y2k-born youth, because of the type of education being delivered nowadays, but in my day things were totally different.

Whilst such differences are numerous and diverse, I am particularly referring to the aspect of human development in which mainly one’s parents, but also other elders, teachers and clergy may have guided us. Such as how to behave as a teenager adolescent, how to act as a twenty-somethinger, a thirty-somethings, a middle-ager and then an advanced-ager.

I suspect that I lack most of these, hence my hesitance in being able to judge whether I am “normal” or simply untrained. In particular, my emotions.

What specifically has caused me to reflect on emotions, particularly the teary-eyed type, which traditionally was reserved for the ladies?

An advert photo in my inbox caught my eye this morning, and did it.

In October 2002, a little more than a year after 9/11, we considered the air-lanes safe enough once more, and I found myself on Paddington station a few times. I can still remember the time spent there, including the orchestral performance by a large group of musicians late one afternoon.

My travelogue, A Walk In The Park, records:

“…29 Exploring Paddington.Plate 45 shows Paddington Station from Praed Street, an unassuming and narrow gated entrance at the top of steep stairs. The downramp road on the left leads to the GWR railway station and the departure point for the Heathrow Express, while the small entrance on the right goes down to the Underground station. London Road is on the extreme right. Royal Mail vans and trucks are constantly going down there to some kind of sorting warehouse in the red-brown brick building. If you go right into London Road and past the Royal Mail building, around the domed station towards the crane visible in the sky, then you’re on your way to Little Venice canal landing stage…”

I still get a lump in my throat when I look at the pictures. Can this be normal? After all, it is simply a railway station, like so many others…

I still don’t know whether my feelings are normal, or whether I am simply an ungrown-up softie.

Good Garden and Greenstuff

Now that the construction of the fencing around the veggie garden (‘potager jardien’ for the more eloquent readers) and a simple abbreviation to ‘potager’ kitchen (herbs and veggies) is, so to speak, complete, bar the painting, we find ourselves in the position where we can start the cultivation process.

Step One: This is to get the materials, namely timber for the bed edges, compost to complement the soil, mulch to aid in weed prevention and slowing down evaporation. This is mostly complete, except that the compost will be delivered as and when, because the total requirement would take up too much space…

Step Two: This is to measure and mark out the beds. So far, we have identified (a) a long one of 3m x 9m, possibly to be subdivided into three of 3mx3m. These will probably be named Kowhai, Rimu and Totara all indigenous (native) trees; (b) two beds of 3m x 3m to be named ‘Karaka’ and ‘Pohutukawa’ and (c) a 3m x 4m plus one smaller bed, called bed #6 and bed #7 in the meantime.

Step Three: This entails, bed for bed in turn, removal of grass, weeds and other vegetation, as well as removal of tree roots and rocks will may be lurking below the surface. At the same time, the remaining soil will be sifted and aerated, ready to be mixed in with organic compost.

(Above): This rototiller, borrowed from a kind neighbour, is proving to be worth more than its weight in gold! The hard rocky ground can be “ploughed” with relative ease, compared to trying to dig over with a spade. Note that I use the phrase “relative ease” with relative ease, rather than a great deal of truth.

 
(Above): The outer edges of each bed will be cleared and excavated to a depth of 200mm. The edging timber will be measured, cut, and fitted together to make the required shape in the required dimensions. In this instance it is a square,  measuring 3m x 3m.

(Above): Some of the roots dug up out of ‘Karaka’ bed.

(Above): Part of the Great Wall of China – Boulders, rocks, stones and pebbles are all sizes dug out from the ‘Karaka’ bed. These may be used in future in some of the landscaping we may tackle.

(Above): Clayton carpentered a sieve of 10mmx10mm mesh in a decking timber frame. It works like a charm and allows us to sift the soil to a manageable degree of purity before adding the organic compost.

(Above): Nearing the end of ‘The Karaka Project’.

12 Days Ago

If I’m to judge my writing ability for 2015, then I must come to the conclusion that the total posts will be nowhere near the 362 which were written in 2014. In fact, this is the first for the year, which gives a projected meagre average of only 30-odd posts per year…

That said and set aside, we, like many others around the globe, celebrated the dawn of the new year at midnight on 31 December 2014, in the company of our family and a fair number of friends and acquaintances at Chartwell. I think there were just over 20 people in total.

(Above): A total of six bedrooms, a lounge and conservatory, as well as a tent camp on the lawn together provided sleeping accommodation for everyone. New Zealand enforces extremely strict drink-drive laws, and New Zealanders in general observe these very strictly. Unlike partygoers which we have encountered in other countries, we found that revellers in NZ are a pretty responsible lot. That doesn’t mean that there are no drunks at all… that would surely be unlikely.

(Above): Delicious dishes fit for a king, ready to satisfy the hunger of the merry-makers. Each person supplies their own liquid refreshments.

After the stroke of midnight, several Chinese lanterns were fired up and released into the sky amidst secret wishes. The glowing craft could be watched for quite some time as they soared up and away into the atmosphere, stratosphere and, possibly, other spheres.

Some time later after a bit of a tidy-up (and yes, NZ men do their bit and certainly help with the dishes and collecting empties), it was beddy-byes for the weary revellers for the last time in 2014.

After breakfast, and after a few games of petanque and backyard cricket, some of the guests made tracks for home, while others remained for a lazy day in a hammock or on a recliner in the generous shade of the trees on the front lawns.

(Above): A nail-biting finish to one of the games. Drat! The girls win again…

(Above): The ladies throw the jack. Nice shot.

(Above): Some of the finalists trying to make out the lie of the boules. It’s hot work and probably time for a beer or a cuppa.

(Above): Backyard Cricket: A minor dispute ensues as to whether the bowler’s arm action might perhaps fall into the category of “chucking” or not. The jury is still out on a decision…

(Above): Backyard Cricket: A view of the game while relaxing in a hammock in the shade of a favourite tree. The pitch was specially prepared and close-mowed for the New Year Test. There are still a few bumps which may favour the bowler or the batsman, one can never be sure…

(Above): Strangely enough, Labradors also like Backyard Cricket, and also like lawns and the shade.