2022 A New Start

At the close of 2021 I had started to wake before 4am.  This was due to the call of the lark (or maybe the honey suckle bird) that rises before the first rays of sun lighten the day.  As in previous years when waking so early, I have been returning to bed after my morning activities and trying to sleep a couple more hours so that I’m not feeling exhausted by 10am.  Unlike most people who have their ‘nanna-nap’ in the afternoon, I find a morning nap before 10am helps me get to bed at my usual time between 8-8:30pm for lights out at 9pm.  I don’t know how many people have suggested I go to bed later so I can sleep longer but for me that doesn’t work!  I find it easy to fall asleep but then often wake for 2-4 hrs during the night which throws my morning schedule off, especially in the summer when the sun is over the horizon and scorching hot by 6am.  It’s then too late for my morning jog.  IF I sleep well, I’ve already tossed and turned for 7-8hrs and wake between 4am and 5am but then feel drained of energy before midday (especially if it’s a scorcher of a day).  When the longer days of winter arrive I start going to bed an hour later and find I can often sleep longer.  If I’ve been tossing and turning or been awake during the night I sometimes return to sleep at 4am and wake again at 7am.  I think it’s got to do with no disturbances and longer darkness which keeps my melatonin switched off.  I suppose everyone eventually works out what is best for their body and routine.  It took me many years to work this system out.  Retirement has been such a blessing as it enables me to arrange my activities in the afternoons instead of the morning when I may need a ‘nanna-nap’.  How blessed am I!  I thought it quite strange going back to bed in the morning until I met another lady at the beach who does the same.  Things of course change, which they will with starting my studies this year.  I wonder how that will go.

The morning of New Year’s Eve on my walk to the beach I saw a guy with his pet Macaw.  En route home he was still there so I stopped for a chat.  The owner told me it was a four year old female who loved to go for walks and chat to all the passers by. I asked where he had bought her and was told he had gone to Rockingham to buy a car and came home with a bird instead. I commented on the bird’s magnificent striking, long aqua blue tail feathers and was told she was a typical woman of vanity as she had pulled out the two longest feathers because they were not quite sitting right! She sounds like quite a character.

Then on New Year’s Day I woke at 3:15am! No I didn’t stay up to see the new year in! Anyway I woke early, very early and decided there was no point in trying to get back to sleep, which usually takes me hours anyway.  So I waited till it was light enough to see the path and went jogging. I’m glad I didn’t stay in bed as that morning at the beach I spotted the resident seal. He was watching us swimming and I’m sure was wondering why so many people were in HIS pool!  He kept popping up, surveying the scene. Simon, one of the regulars, joined another regular who had paddled up the coast on his surfboard. The seal had swam to meet the surfer and was frolicking alongside him as he joined Simon.  As more regulars began to arrive at the beach, the seal lost interest and swam further south down the coast. It was fun watching and such a joy for our first day of the year.  I truly am blessed to live in such a lovely area.

Bought myself a Christmas present, surprise surprise, a gardening book!  It’s an introduction for this year’s Horticultural course:  Gardening Down-Under by Kevin Handreck, which was recommended by the teacher of the two-day course I did at TAFE last November. Together with four other gardening books plus some research on the web, I am putting together 10 short courses on gardening skills that I can teach at church’s ShareIn once I’ve finished the TAFE course.  I’m so enjoying putting these studies together.  I do hope others will enjoy and benefit from them.

In preparation for TAFE, all students were required to download Office 365, which I did on to my Surface Tablet. I was also informed that once I had paid I would be able to access the calendar to find out my timetable for 2022.  Well I couldn’t. Eventually I sent an email to TAFE asking how to access my timetable.  Automatic reply ‘we are not back till 5th January’. Ok, be patient even though others are asking for dates in 2022 to put into my diary and me praying I have both Monday and Tuesday free for my usual activities.  Finally the wait was over when I received a phone call. Wow! How nice and personal and a very understanding lady who tried to explain how to use Office 365.  Hmmm still not working. She said I should be able to access the calendar through Outlook on my computer.  I explained my Outlook was a very old version and may not synchronise with a later version.  And of course I have forgotten the outlook password which I’m concerned if I change, will change my Windows password, so I have a bit of a dilemma!  I’m hoping the TAFE library can help me out on orientation day.  In the meantime the lovely lady who phoned was able to give me a few dates to put in my diary.  Praise the Lord I have Mondays off to attend my Bible Study group, but not Tuesday to help out with the school coffees. It seems the first seven weeks at TAFE I will be attending Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, thereafter from Tuesday to Friday till the end of second term.  I’m still not sure if it will be a whole day or just from 8:30am to 11:30am.  That would suit me as I will have every afternoon off to do something else or to complete my homework.

The thrill of growing your own fruit and veg is the anticipation of the harvest. This year I have been very frustrated and disappointed as both the pawpaw and four of my 5 pears which are supposed to ripen in March have, I thought, been eaten by birds.  Then I saw it.  A rat!  Oh no not again! Yes, in fact I saw it twice running around my garden and I had been blaming the birds. Two of my pawpaws I had netted had either had the net removed or eaten through!  Sorry guys but rats are the one thing I don’t tolerate.  It’s time for them to go.  The problem with baits is that if after eating the poison, the rat is then eaten by a Tawney Frog Mouth owl, then it too will die. Fortunately both the rats that succumbed to the baits died where I could see them and dispose of them safely in zip-lock bags so they didn’t stink the bins out. It’s been quiet since so I’m hoping there were only two.

During the scorching weather some of the grapes were withered on the vine and both the vine and the fig leaves suffered heat shock, turning the leaves yellow before they dropped off.  Other leaves were burned, turning them brown.  I did rescue a few of the currant grapes and two bunches of seedless sultana grapes.

There is some good news though.  One of the two banana trees I was given by my nephew Michael has flowered and borne fruit.  When the little hand of bananas were starting to remain small, I cut off the rest of the flowers to help encourage growth to the remaining hands. Don’t worry, there’s no waste here as over the following three days I converted the banana flowers into a Vietnamese salad and shared it with my neighbours.

Some more good news.  The City of Stirling council is starting a Woman’s Shed.  Jan W and I went along to their pilot group for interested women.  This project, we were told, has been 8 years in the making and now was about to open.  There were a few more things to put into place before opening their doors for the first time.  This meeting was to find out what women wanted from the Woman’s Shed.  Interestingly enough, both men and women wanted different things from their Sheds. The men wanted time to work on projects while women wanted to learn how to do and fix things.  I whispered to Jan, “that’s because most men know how to work on what they are doing but the women need to learn before they too will want to work on a project”.  Jan agreed.

The majority of women were very interested in learning skills such as woodwork and working with power tools.  Some of the other categories included: household maintenance, gardening, mechanical repairs, crafts, health and well-being and general advice for wills, enduring power of attorney, finance, superannuation. I was interested to see that many of the women put down their skills as gardening and others put down they would like to know more about gardening. This gave me an idea to see if I could initiate a meeting between the Woman’s Shed and the Costal Community Garden so they can help each other.  After speaking with one of the organisers, she agreed and gave me her contact details to see if she could liaise with the officer in charge of the gardening project.

That prompted me to try to get hold of Natalie again, she is one of the organisers of the community garden.  We had a long chat about some of the possibilities of both projects working together, and as I was hoping to be involved with both, she asked was I interested in being the liaison officer.  Why not, I didn’t have much else to do during my busy retirement and studies!  Natalie also brought me up to date with where they were with the garden.  There has been a lot going on since my last contact.  They needed to form an organisation, open a bank account, submit plans to council who were working on taking back the lease from the tennis court, sort through matters with existing trees and irrigation plans. There are more gardening plans to be submitted to council, their approval required and then it will go back to another community meeting to see if all are agreed with the plans before it can finally go ahead.  Let’s see, this may take at least 6 more months, which will be perfect timing for me to finish my horticultural course.  All in the Lord’s perfect planning.

An update on the bobtails, Rosy and her baby.  Both come and find me now and run out to lick my toes looking for their treats.  My local shopping centre gives me bruised fruit to keep them happy. They are so spoilt!  By the end of the month, I hadn’t seen Rosy for over a week but Baby was coming nearly daily for snacks.  Then he/she was missing for a few days wandering around the other units.  When chatting to a neighbour across from me, another neighbour arrived carrying Baby.  He had left his door open and Baby had wandered in.  He brought Baby over to show the neighbours as they hadn’t seen a bobtail before.  I was fine with this but when they started trying to force feed Baby I was annoyed.  I had to leave as I didn’t feel it was my business at that time to intervene.  I don’t mind people feeding the wildlife as long as it’s not unhealthy food for them but I’m not happy when they pick them up and over-handle them like pets.  When Baby visited me next he was rather timid, I suspect very wary of being picked up, suffering a bit of PTSD. I gave him/her some rockmelon and left him/her in peace.   Hmmmm I think I’m going to have to decide which it is, a him or a her.  I think she is female as she seems to be more like her mum in colour than her dad who doesn’t have any golden colour on him.

Another Ex-Christmas Islander and I were working together to take over the organising of our yearly gathering.  The usual meeting time was in November, but by the time we had arranged to help, we didn’t have much time to organise something before the end of the year.  Plus we had a few challenges to face, including not being able to access the old bank account, as one of the original officials had passed away some years back.  The other gentleman who was organising things was unable to access or close the account. We also wanted to have the get-together during the Christmas holiday break so that those who worked or had children at school could come, meaning we were encouraging younger blood as most of the members are over 80 yrs old.  These families were some of the original British Phosphate Company employees who had worked on Christmas Island between 1950 – 1960’s.  After much sorting out of old contact details and searching for an available venue we settled on the Floreat Bowling Club. The day went off well with 39 people attending and some positive feedback.  It was lovely to see familiar faces, albeit getting older.

We also had a get-together for an Ex-Christmas Islander’s 90th birthday party with a few of those who knew her from the Island.  It was such a close-knit community there, with us younger ones relating to our parents’ friends as extended family.

During the first week of January I also caught up with church friends, which was lovely. The middle of the month we had heatwave weather in high 30’s and low 40’s which sent me in a scurry, covering areas of my garden with bedsheets to shade them from the scorching heat. There were so many buds on my roses, I refused to let them burn like last time.  They have rewarded me with amazing blooms.  Both lots of grapes have been eaten either by me or by the birds, which I found flying in through a small gap in the netting. The figs are ripening and should be ready in March as will the lone pear that survived the rat invasion which was also the demise of some of my strawberries and Chinese gooseberries.  My vegie garden suffered, with so many silverbeet dying in the heat but the zucchini has given me three wonderful fruits with a fourth on the way. I’ve also had a few capsicum which unfortunately succumbed to the heat and were burnt before ripening.  I’ve not had much success with the eggplants as they keep dropping their flowers and the okra I planted may soon not get the sun it’s needing to set fruit as it’s planted where the sun’s shadow falls during autumn and winter. I do have a lovely genetically modified pumpkin that looks like a cross between a butternut and a JAP.  Did you know the JAP pumpkin doesn’t mean Japanese pumpkin it’s an acronym given by the growers “Just Another Pumpkin” to get it to market.  I call my variety ‘Butterjap’.  They are bright orange inside with a thin stripy skin.

At the end of January I had my orientation to the North Metropolitan TAFE to begin my time of learning the skills of horticulture.  I shall fill you in on this new adventure in my next blog update.

Photos:   1. Three of the frangipani colours I have    2. North Beach at low tide    3 & 4. Garden produce    5. Banana flower    6. Banana Flower salad    7. Christmas Island CWA ladies    8. C.I. family friend Jena and myself    9. Last sketch – the younger me     (There is also a link to Baby having a snack video)

Prayer & Praise Points:

Praise the Lord for our amazing summer with long days, abundance of fruits and warm nights.

Praise be to God for another year full of expectancy, surprising challenges and unknowns to help us grow, mature and look to Him for our strength and guidance.

Praise the Lord for reuniting us with friends and family old and new.

Please continue to pray for the government to have wisdom in handling the Covid situation.

Please continue to pray for my sisters, Tricia, Jen and Kat to come to know Christ’s love for them.