Kat’s Return Oct 2023

Just a short update this month, not that that means I haven’t been busy!  It just means it’s been a bit of the same old same old plus some interesting things to shake things up.  This orchid was the last of the ones I inherited from Mum.  The others hadn’t really done well in the various places I’ve tried around my garden so I gave them to my friend Dorothy whose orchids were spectacular.  I believe Mum’s orchids are now in a good home.

Earlier in the month Carrol, a committee member from our community garden, mentioned she was attending a grafting course in Midland.  I asked if I could join her, she said she would pick me up en route.  The funny thing was as I waited at the top of our driveway, a car pulled up and I jumped in.  My neighbour, whose car I had jumped into, asked where I was going.  It was only then I realised I was in the wrong car.  That’s the problem with tinted windows!  We both laughed as I jumped out.  Carrol eventually arrived and we were off.

Although I had done grafting at TAFE last year, I knew every bit of practice helps especially after my disastrous attempts on the fig tree last month.  Good news is that the bud graft survived and is looking very healthy. It will be interesting to see what kind of fig it produces.  I’m hoping it’s one of the earlier ripening varieties.  Anyway back at the grafting class we both took it all in.  Carrol wanted to graft onto an avocado plant she had bought from there earlier in the year.  She had been promised help with the grafting of a different variety to enable cross pollination.  With avocados it’s better to have both an A and B variety as the male and female flowers open at different times of the day.  We also asked if the demonstrator would like to do a grafting demo for our community garden some time in the future to help us fundraise.  After finding out I’d done horticulture at TAFE he asked if I wanted a job.  No thanks, I replied I’m too busy being retired.

Carrol and I attended another workshop a few weeks later.   This one was on marketing and multimedia.  It was a good reminder for me of things I could do with the community garden website to try to get more visitors. It was good to know I was already doing some of their suggestions.

Just after the grafting workshop I was stuck inside for nearly a week with a cold.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had a cold, they are so annoying! I dosed myself up with Vitamin C, Olive tree extract, coated my nose with pawpaw ointment and took Phenergan to help me sleep and dry up my dripping nose. I was really only crook for about three days but wanted to keep away from people so as not to spread it around.  It took me awhile to be able to handle going swimming again in the cooler mornings, although I did get back into jogging fairly quickly.  I’m told it helps boost your immune system.

Just on the verge of my recovery I had promised my neighbour, Guillermo that I would go with him to church.  He wanted to go to the 8:30am service so that he could do his Pilates class at 10:30am  I don’t usually go so early as I can’t fit in all my morning activities.  Praise God the sun is rising earlier which enables me to go jogging just after 5am and without my swim I was just able to squeeze everything in.  We walked to church together, meeting lots of people he had already met from his visit one Tuesday.  It was a very appropriate message on ‘Who is Jesus’.  Unfortunately he has been unable to come again on Sunday but he and his partner Sofia have started coming to ShareIn on Fridays.  Sofia is doing cross stitch and Guillermo has joined my class on Gardening Basics.

As I mentioned, ShareIn has started and this term is only seven weeks which was going to be a challenge with my nine week course.  I asked if I could continue the classes for those who wanted to finish the course and have been given the go ahead to use the church rooms.  I have five students this term, they are all very eager to learn

It’s been a fairly quiet month.  A very hot week to start spring and then some lovely cooler, typical spring weather. When the warm weather hit I decided it was time to get my summer haircut.  I go to my usual $15 hairdresser who always does a great job.  Most of the hairdressers are professionals from Taiwan or China. As she was just about finished I commented that it was xxx still a bit too long.  She told me she had used number four cutters and asked if she should use number three to two. I said use the number two please.  This means I don’t have to come back so soon.  Gone were the long curly locks for another 6 months.

Towards the end of the month my sister Kat arrived.  The night of her arrival she stayed with a friend near the airport then on Sunday we met up at Yum Cha in Morley.  I had contacted another family friend who said she too was having Yum Cha that Sunday so we joined parties.  There were twelve of us including Sofia and Guillermo who had never been to Yum Cha before.  It was a lovely gathering. I then hitched a ride home as Kat took my car to visit more of her Perth friends.  It had been a great spread of dumplings and dim sum treats with me bringing some durian mochi home to share with my neighbour Kathy who also loves them.

Kat caught up with our sister, Tricia for lunch on Monday and stayed on chatting for five hours.  I’m so glad Kat and Tricia have reconnected after so long. I’m still believing both Jen and I will be able to do the same one day.  Two Tuesdays while Kat was here, she joined our coffee team after our usual school run.  She knew both Jan and Glenda.  After the first Tuesday she borrowed the car to visit Ray who does the zone therapy.  Glenda and I took a trip to Kings Park to walk amongst the wild flowers before stopping for lunch.  This was the day there were two fires in Kings Park.  I’m glad we had left before they started.  En route back to the house we stopped off at the cemetery as I’d never seen where the plaque for my Mum was, let alone my Dad who had died in 1994. We had put their plaques together.  I was surprised there weren’t more plants especially natives planted in the gardens.  I thought it was rather sparse.

It was Wednesday Kat drove down to see her friend in Dunsborough leaving me without the car for a few days. This is normally not a problem as I hardly use it these days but of course when you don’t have it something comes up where you need it.  On Friday after ShareIn I wanted to close my security locked box as I was told I was not able to put Kat on to authorise her to close the account when I die.  I was told it had to go through the trustee of the will.  This seemed rather ridiculous so I decided to close the account. There wasn’t much in it anyway.

My lizard family are doing well.  Mamma comes to find me when I’m working in the garden.  She knows I will turn over pots to find the slaters and slugs which she loves, flashing her tongue out to sniff out what I have found.  On one occasion she nipped my toe.  How rude, biting the toe that feeds you!  One of the dark babies lives permanently in the broader garden where he will need to be wary of the other bobtail, Bob and his offspring who wander freely around the units and driveway.  On Kat’s return she brought with her some snails which both Mamma and the dark baby loved, crunching into the shell and spitting the remnants out.  Little Girl (the name I call the lighter baby) had other ideas, I’m not quite sure if she knew what to do.  Or maybe she’s like Ferdinand the bull who didn’t like to fight, preferring to smell the flowers.  (A reference to a book by Munro Leaf from my childhood.)  I even took the snail out of its shell for her.  She just let it crawl up her nose onto her head before ignoring it and walking away.  Mamma wasn’t so fussy, she just snapped it up.

There have been a steady flow of jobs around the house and garden.  Plants which I have propagated, I repotted to replace those which haven’t done so well.  I had to cut back the bottle brush to stop it from leaning over the bin area while it was in full flower and full of bees.  I kept the dead flowers trimmed off before doing a final hedge to keep it bushy.  A friend from TAFE came to help me cut down some of the wild acacia so that I have more sun for my grapevines. I bagged up the three bunches of white grapes once the flowers had been pollinated.  I’m a bit disappointed with this vine as it has only ever produced two or three bunches a year and only on one side of the vine.  Still, I’m appreciative of the shade it provides over the pergola near the back door. I’m also very disappointed with my beautiful wisteria which for the past two years suddenly died right back, only sending up shoots at the base and therefore no flowers.  Again I’m not sure why.  I’ve tidied up all the spent leaves from the bulbs.  They always look so messy at this time of the year as I don’t trim back the leaves so that the energy can go into the bulbs for next year’s flowers.

My friend in Sydney, Grace, is doing a TAFE course which has assignments which involve role play and asked me to help out in exchange for her help with the Coastal Community Garden website.  It was quite fun with five of us taking a role and being recorded so that she could submit her assignments for assessment. I couldn’t believe how many she had to complete.  She was saying the TAFE assignments were more difficult and more in number than assignments she had done for university.

As I write this Kat is about to depart again, this time for two weeks north of Newman where she has been asked to take some art classes for the local indigenous people there. This was her main reason for coming west this trip.  She was blessed to have been able to come early so that she could catch up with me and her WA friends.  They have also changed her return flights so that she can attend an art exhibition in Gracetown in the studio she had set up when she lived down there.  Yet again, I’m looking forward to Kat’s return.

Photo:  1. One of Mum’s orchids   2. Graft is growing 3. Dissected flower for Gardening Basics 4. Kat at our favourite satay place    5. Glenda, Kings Park    6. Baby Girl and snail    7. Me at Kings Park

Prayer & Praise Points:

Praise the Lord for His ever present guidance and love.

Praise the Lord for the freedoms we have here in Australia.

Praise the Lord, Jen is heading back to Australia.  Please continue to pray for her safe journey.

Continue to pray for world peace both in the Middle East and in Ukraine and Russia.  Pray with me for the hostages and refugees who are caught up in the suffering that both these wars have caused.

Please keep my sisters, Tricia, Jen and Kat, in your prayers.  Pray that they will come to know the love of Jesus.