Amazing Grace

 This was a new afternoon tea experience for us and the venue has only just moved in to this location. It is half flower shop and half tea cakes with cocktails.  I thought the expresso martinis weren't too bad. There were plenty of cucumber sandwiches to go round and I don't think anyone was left hungry. It was Grandma's idea for a Grandpa 89th birthday and the good old bingo winnings have paid the bill. The birthday cake was previously cut so we could easily take a piece home seeing we had already had a fill from the three tiers. Mt Alexander Rd is still a busy place.

Dead Heads

 I have forgotten how many rose bushes there are at Burnside Village. We got there at midday just in time for some lunch. It was spitting a bit of drizzle but we thought it might stop in an hour or so after our lunch.  The start was ok but steadily the rain increased. There are 12 rose bushes out the front and two bigger ones out back.  Rule 1: cut just above the lowest bud Rule 2: have the bud point outward. The pruning saw was also needed for some ancient deadwood that had survived previous cut backs.  By the time I wheeled the bin out onto the road it was just starting to get heavy, the rain that is. 

Roses are red,
Dead heads to get,
Still cut the roses,
Even if wet

Rowing

This time I tried the rowing machine at Williamstown.  The screen interfaces seem to be different on each machine although I have only tried two so far.  Knees and arms collide when you first get on board both of these and getting the hang of positioning is the first step.  The rowing is working both arms and legs but I seemed to emphasise the arm pull.  I went for 1.2km taking 250 strokes which took around 10 minutes then after a rest did another 500 metres before switching to the bike machine for a leisurely 10 minutes. One of the neighbours came with her swimming harness which has many interlocking pieces but that is something I will look at trying in future.

PS There was a big party here last night that they have each year. This venue is 27 yar old and there are still a few residents that have been here for that entire time.

Under Growth

 Not sure exactly what the goal is for the beach clearance but they are targeting larger trees at the edge of the sand.  They seem to be leaving the ever present salt bush alone.  So the jungle is being hacked back and the cut trunks left insitu but with poisonous paste coated on the cut marks.  The cut brush may be left to whither a bit but hopefully not for too long.  The surrounds of our rock seat has been severely cleared back and I am not sure if this is good or bad.  We will have to wait for Summer.  

cut brush and bagged weeds

rock seat more exposed and blue cap trunk

sunset season progresses but now on the Southerly march

Radio & TV Licences

 I have been working thru a box of stuff and there are people that keep a lot more than stamps. These English TV Licences from the 1980s were in an old stamp album.  I guess they were saved for the stamp that was attached to prove payment.  Stamps can end up on all sorts of documents but I can't believe poms still had to be licenced to watch TV into the 1980s. I can't even remember TV Licences in Australia. I bought my first TV in 1980. Gough Whitlam got rid of licences in 1974 but I did some further digging to find this radio licence for one Fred Roberts (no relation) who was licenced to listen to the radio in the 1950's on pain of six months gaol for using radio equipment for anything other than listening. 

Professional Plant Police

There was one Geelong council gardener who was running the show and has contributed all the necessary tools for the group. I have seen this sort of thing before but the group involved then, was a jobless initiative and only worked along the cliff tops. On that occasion the money ran out and piles of cut underbrush lay strewn about for 8 months. These are volunteers who are on the job this time and are down on the beach proper.  The work requires smaller weeds being bagged at the far end and a mountain of cut brush is being piled at the creek end.  Us amateurs who have cleared small patches may be out of work, although nature never stops.  

another mid Winter sunshine day

BrainFire

Last month I delivered some olives to the Produce Tree where they also have one of those street library shelves.  I figured a book for payment of an olive batch was a good swap.  The standard of books in terms of physical condition and subject type was a bit low. I have only just gotten around to reading it now. This is a cold war story featuring that good old weapon of choice, the minds telepathic abilities to invade another person's mind thereby causing them to lose theirs. Simples!  I did get this book from a paddock shelf.  It was written in 1982 so I guess it was all the rage then.  I am building up another box of books for the handmedown shop so I will just hide it in there.

Gardener's flick knife

 The beach was busy for a Winter's day. Kids were playing in the water and I saw two guys swimming, if only briefly.   Winter solstice is some sort of swimming beacon.  The mystery plant police are still clearing the sands of growth incursions but you never see them doing it.  There is one salt bush that has been gouged so that a path can be walked to its centre.  It has been like this for some weeks with no further activity. So I brought a branch saw to the beach.  There was no doing this quietly on the side. I worked for 10 minutes by which time my fingers had had enough but quite a few branches were now severed close to the main root. There were plenty of people in view but no one seemed to care. I have left the foliage as it fell as the branch bunnies might move it all back into the jungle. 

Fern Tree Alley

Last Winter we had a very large fern fall from the fence again. The orchid man said if you get it to me I will try to have a backing board on it by the time I close for the season. We never got it there.  Two of us struggled to lift it but moved it out of the way where it sat all Summer.  It is so light now I can easily lift it.  Meanwhile, the tree fern we gave to Daniel and Bianca fell from its perch in Pascoe Vale.  Now having moved house it is also likely to suffer the same drying fate, being low on the job list. Debbie wasn't having that so we carted it all the way back to it's starting place at Clifton Springs but this one is heavier. We had the emergency clearing out of the back of the car quickly for the bicycle ornament. (See previous post).  So I got that one back into the car plus the second one now being much lighter, balanced against it.  The tree fern procession then made it's way to the orchid man who was not happy to see us. No I don't have time. No it will cost too much. No I don't have any staff.  OK leave them here and I will get back to you in four or five months.

on the ground again

5 Minute Bicycle

 A picture perfect day requires some form of outdoor activity.  Debbie had been working away since 4:00am and saw the Moon go down and the Sun come up to a cloudless blue and when I wandered passed at 7:30am, she says we have to get on the bicycles. You don't have to ask me twice. On the way back from a standard Drysdale circuit, we passed a decorational garden bicycle, complete with flower rack baskets on the front and back. It was being disgarded and was placed on the free market nature strip.  We flew passed it on a downhill run but knew its value in seconds.  We were home in less than a minute. Unloaded the car quickly and drove back there in less than five minutes. We saw a guy loading it into his car as we crested the hill then drive off just as we arrived.  

Another long moving in day

 Some people were still in their PJs when we arrived, like very small people namely Kaia. We kept them occupied for most of the day while a few moving jobs were done. The nearby park has a few challenging pieces of equipment which will take a while for Asher to master. We have returned with KitKat and a tree fern.

why is my foot out here

sloping bars

SaltBush

 This stuff can pop up in the middle of the beach then take hold and spread into a huge bush. The anonymous beach clearers have hacked into one large bush so far and partly demolished it. I wandered over to another one and sure enough someone thought they could throw some drink containers in there and it would not be noticed.  The branches break easily and getting those cans out meant I broke a few of them so I guess I have started the job for the plant police. Debbie says they can act as a wind break provided they haven't spread over the whole beach.  PS the navy pier is empty again as the cargo ship has now left after a week of unloading.

vodka in the bushes

saltbush, sand ,sea and sky 

More Butts

 A cold night but then a very sunny morning meant I just had to check out any beach developments. The naval pier has a large cargo ship moored to it at the moment. It has been there for week. As I was walking along it let out a typical horn blast. Just one single blast. In the calm you can hear when its cranes are in operation.  As for beach flotsam the most picked up item was ciggy butts, all in a line along the high tide. Those bored fishermen are always throwing their stuff overboard.

Fire Hazard

 Some things you never think about. The last few days I would turn on the ceiling fan in the ensuite and notice the absense of the usual hum but by the end of a shower it was grinding away.  It is one of those combined heater units.  Grinding is the right word. It was jammed with congealed dirt, some of which had turned white up against those heat globes.  We never use the heating part of it. I would say it has never been cleaned out in 30 yar and I had to use a knife to scrape the junk out as the vacuum did nothing.  Should have a drier bathroom now.

Reframed

The large format picture frame has been rather neglected in the last few years. There are two trips represented on there and the European one was as much as six years ago, which shows our lack of travel lately. I have stripped out those ones from 2018 but left the Hawaii lot from 2000. I printed up to eight photos last week from our tour of the Pacific but when I cleared the previous older frames you could tell there is a large weight difference in the quality of the photo paper I used back then compared to what I printed on last week.  I was using up older stocks of A4 photo paper but maybe that is why it is left over becuase it is light weight.  I thought we had a guillotine for trimming some of these but had to use precise scissoring for cutting down the margins. I still replaced seven photos so hopefully they wont warp and fade over time. Maybe we have to travel some where more up market than PNG, sooner rather than later.

The Bungalow

Birthday Ride

 For the third day in a row we ate out and this time needed to work some of it off. So we got the bikes out for a birthday ride of less than 20km and stopped for lunch at the Bungalow.  This is a good spot where they have a fire going and tasty food. The veggie pastry rolls are a winner.  It was overcast with some light drizzle around.  Along the way the Q train followed us for a while and we spied another ship docked at the Naval pier.  No Navy proper as yet.

birthday roses and terrarium

yesterdays' dessert - whiskey ice cream, figs and tart

Jack Rabbit

I am running a day behind again. The next party venue was at the Jack Rabbit winery, this time in the fine dining hall rather than with the plebs in the mere cafe/restaurant.  We have tried this one some years back and the service and food  are right up there. The views here are out across the water to the You Yangs. We had lunch with one of the neighbours, Jill who is also having a birthday in June. Again the weather was accommodating as we could stroll around the grounds before heading off.

The Spit is a Hit

 Spit roasts at a minimum need some mid Winter cover unless you get one of those occasional sunny days. It was mostly sunny for the few hours that it was turning over and James was on the job the whole time while Heidi worked the salads and platters.  Grandma's cooking resurgence produced the birthday cake as well.  Debbie was quite astounded by not doing a thing except play with grandies. Kaia needed a sleep in so there was no touching the spit until she got there.  This was the start of a Debbie three day party which often seems to be the way her birthday goes. Mind you at the moment there is still 5 hours of work being done from the wee hours before the partying starts.  Plenty of photos were taken in Estelle's backyard from bouncing, to riding. to witching.

Willie Gym

On Saturday mornings the main centre is a bit of a ghost town. You have to let yourself in with a key. I am particularly interested in the bike machine in the gym.  The last time I was there, a bloke was sitting on it reading the newspaper.  It is the seated style of bike machine with a back rest so sitting there with paper opened is possible but I doubt it would allow for serious pedalling.  This time I had the gym to myself but only used the bike machine. It is an older style but still allows for 6 different hill profiles to choose from.  I did 30 minutes and worked up a sweat. It looks out over the pool thru to the green court where a few were doing some croquet. 

Williamstown Revisited

I moved the photo printer here when we first got into Williamstown. I have not used it since then and have completely forgotten how it works. For one thing the black cartridge had run out but it took me half an hour to work that out. Surprisingly there was a spare black cartridge in the drawer. The photo frame we have in the kitchen area has not been updated as I usually put some travel photos in there and we have not been anywhere for a few years, except now for the Solomon Islands and PNG. I am also trying to fool it into using A4 glossy sheets instead of 8" x 10" which I have run out of.  Two hours later I have got some prints.  There are always changes afoot here and the latest is the government policy of turning off the under floor heating. They say it is inefficient and will give us two freebie wall mounted heater/air conditioning units instead.  

We have three orchid spikes at the front

Beach Report No 944

 I have been down to the beach with the rubbish bag at least twice in the last week however tides and fog had reduced visibility.  The seagrass wrack, as ever, is building up with each strong wind that also corresponds with a higher tide. I am not picking up a lot of rubbish of late, mostly small plastics along the high tide line where it is washed in, rather than being dropped by anybody.  Just when you think you have seen the You Yangs in every possible way, the foggy view reminded me of hilltops that I have seen in Tassie that poke out of fog.

Physical Philately

 We have had a fair bit of rain of late which allows for a stamp reorganisation. Stamps don't take up a lot of room unless you have thousands of them. I was getting the latest Australian stamps by making a once a year single purchase of a book containing the whole year's catalog. Now after 43 yar of amassing these books, the weight and size of storing them on a certain bookshelf is bowing and straining the whole structure and of course there are no stamps in them any more, as they have long been placed in albums. These books have now all been transfered to the garage. Last year I changed tack and am only purchasing new stamps via the post office but using a mailout service, so no more of these books.  The albums which are now numbering 25 are also straining some shelves but can now be better spreadout.  Finally the en masse crates of stamps, which must be at least 40 kgs by now, have also been placed in the garage.  It was around an hour of heavy lifting, from top shelves, down stair wells and into new positions. Who said stamps are not physical.

This tub is only 7kg

Dentist Cramp

 I had this nasty cramp around 3:00am. It was behind my right knee at the top of the calf and I could not properly unknot it.  Then the purebookkeeping minions started chatting to each other on the other side of the world. If you forget to set phones/computers/ipads and watches to mute then most likely you will hear the constant pinging of Canadians, even if the phones are at the other end of the house. On top of this I had a mouth problem, as a large filling fell out the day before, so sleeping was always going to be a problem.  I am impressed with the local dentist here.  There seems to be a rule that dental problems happen on a long weekend. Anyway I rang them and they said no problemo come straight in, we have a cancellation.  Fortunately it was a quick fix, as they just replaced the gaping hole with another filling, as there was no decay and no infection.  I did not tell them there was still the after effects of a cramp twitching in my leg.  I know a lady who also has a tooth problem and the quote to fix her teeth is $50,000.  There is always someone worse off.

Celtic Festival

 We have been to a session of this Festival in the time we have been on the Bellarine. I can't remember if it was from the van or the house. We went back for a look from the outside eg we had no tickets but Dennis and Wendy were attending, so we teamed up afterwards for a catchup. The festival goes for three days and one interesting thing they did was to attend one of the sessions out on a three master boat for an hour or so. We might think about this for next year.

Asher & Kaia show

 I am still not used to this King's Weekend business. Other people have to tell me it is a long weekend. Asher and Kaia have been for a visit and you could not get a more physical time in a gym.  The chalk drawing started things off and this was an hour of low knee work before the rain came. Later it was out with the bikes as Asher demonstrated her improved bicycle skills. Of course we did some off road here as there are a shortage of paths but when she is on a path it is easy rider.  The quiet paper aeroplane making also got physical with the flight testing going to higher and higher launch sites and eventually making it  upstairs to the deck and launching off the balcony.

flowers are always a hit

fast walker

road walker

Bluey time

Liposuction really sucks

Debbie went for a procedure to get a small raised knot taken off her face after the previous graft from some years ago. Initially this job was much bigger, being an infill of the graft area as well but the decision was to limit it to just reducing the small raised area. The doc could not help himself, so at no extra charge, he took some tissue from inside the thigh and used it on her cheek.  Now the bruise is coming out and the thigh is a purple morass of soreness.  Should all be worth it in the end.  I don't recommend this as a weight loss method, just eat less and exercise more.