To Restore or Replace?

What a wonderful start to autumn here in Perth.  We ended March remembering the death of our Lord and celebrated His resurrection as we entered April. It’s olive season and now that I had more energy I picked and started soaking them in sea water.  This took a week before bottling in vinegar solution.  This year I only did two lots, the first I filled a very large jar, the second a medium size and a smaller jar. I still have some from and the previous year, and yes they are still delicious, so didn’t want to make too many more.

One of my banana plants has produced fruit. When the female flowers have finished producing mini bananas you are left with the heart.  This is the dark red-maroon cone-like part which hangs at the end of the stem holding the bananas.  In some parts of Asia this part is thinly sliced and made into Banana Flower salad.  It’s similar in taste and ingredients to the Thai Beef salad.  I first tried this Vietnamese dish in Sydney many years ago and I relished the idea of making my own from my own produce. Not wanting to waste any of my recent home grown banana heart I decided to have a go.  It wasn’t bad, it would have be nicer with sticky rice but I was happy to forgo the effort in making the rice to eat the salad on its own.

A neighbour gave me some native plants which she had collected from council.  She was unable to use them all in her garden. I knew I could plant them across my driveway in my neighbour’s garden and a few more in mine too.  I also helped man our Coastal Community Garden marquee during the Biodiversity Day held at the Henderson Environmental Centre which is at the bottom of my street. It was from 8am to 2pm one Saturday.  We needed more exposure to encourage locals to become members and get involved with the establishment of our garden.  There were lots of interesting stalls including one with horticulturists from King’s Park, and native birds of prey and reptiles.  This stall reignited my love for snakes. I would love to have a children’s python (Antaresia childreni) they are so cute.  Stirling Council were giving away more plants so I jumped to the head of the queue to see if I could get some more for our community garden.  Fiona, one of the council workers who has been working closely with our committee saw me and said ‘Look out here’s trouble’, I laughed. She told me to help myself to anything I wanted, which I did. Collecting mulberry plants, and lots of natives including native tamarind and native berry as well as plants good for native fauna.  Nearly all of the plants desperately needed repotting especially as it would be a few weeks before they were planted in the community garden.

Still on the topic of gardens, the rats have been playing havoc with my fruits.  They have demolished my Chinese gooseberries, nibbles on several figs, my goji berries, eaten the bobtail snacks and found a way past the netted pot over my nashi fruits to nibble them too.  Praise the Lord, I’d picked all bar the last nashi which was a relief.  I hate sharing my fruits with rodents!  My greatest disappointment was the beautiful rockmelon I had spotted on my arrival home from Sydney. I had kept an eye on it and was about to pick it when I was struck down with a really bad cold.  By the time I remembered it, it was too late!  It had been eaten from the inside leaving only the shell!  It was my very first and only rockmelon!  I was so upset. I started to wonder, is it really worth all the effort to grow edibles?  Mind you I’m also grateful they haven’t found the pawpaw!  Still another disappointment was to find the only orange that my tree produced dropped off before reaching maturity. I’m praying that next year there will be more and they will remain on till maturity. There are still two mandarins hanging on. God willing they will ripen later in the year. The limes seem to be doing better due to the foliage spray, which I will continue to use for all my citrus plus the passionfruit which is starting to produce fruits.  Oh, yes, the rats have been nibbling these too!

Some more sad news, my beautiful scented wisteria has died.  It was amazing for the first three years then last year it died back to the main trunk and this year did the same again but this time eventually gave up the struggle.  I’m not sure why. So out it came roots and all to make room to try something else.

Good news is that my doctor and I continue to swap plants.  The last time I went, she saw I was booked in and had prepared some goodies for me.  I was given several seeds to try including Incaberry which is of course a superfood, longan and loofer seeds along with a Moringa sapling just under a meter tall.  She suggested I repot it and keep it trimmed. I gave her one of my Jackfruit seedlings which is now 400cm tall. We then got onto my medical issues.  I needed a referral for a biopsy which, praise the Lord, was nothing serious. And more specimens to see what my gut was doing as well as blood tests.  It seems I had to wait six weeks after the antibiotics to test if the parasites were gone.  The good news is that my blood results showed I wasn’t lacking any nutrients. Praise the Lord!

As you can see it’s been a hive of activity here lately!  This has been a very busy month of deciding if I should do some restoration or replace a few things. For some time now I’ve been meaning to sand back and revarnish my outdoor bench. The pergolas need doing too but with all the vines over them it’s rather tricky!  I’m thinking painting them instead of re-staining them may be more lasting, as I was told I should be staining them every year!  I finally got around to sanding the bench, then using my neighbour’s blower I blew away all the cobwebs and leaves from between the slats. I then went on to blow all the leaves and debris from off the paved area. I’d just finished when I felt drops of rain.  Oh! No! Not now!  I hadn’t applied the stain!  I quickly covered the bench with a large piece of black plastic but still the wood got wet. I had to wait another day for it to dry out again!  I eventually got two coats of stain applied which made it look very plush.

I’ve also been having trouble with my back gate, it keeps catching when I close it.  Looking closely I saw it was coming away from the stonewall fence it was attached too. While I was getting a quote I asked them if they could do a small gate at the side of my place instead of the trip hazard which now keeps my bobtails safe.  I’m hoping it can be done before I go away.  I was also needing new security screen doors for both front door and sliding back door.  The day they were to be installed I had a call to say they had made a mistake.  They had made both doors sliding.  Oops!  Praise the Lord they have both been fitted and look very smart. I’m thinking the old screen doors can be used as a trellis to grow things on in the community garden.

I enrolled the help of a friend, John who I knew from church and from TAFE to help me replot several large plants.  He also helped me with a tricky paving job.  The hot water system drips onto the pavers as does the overflow from the water tank.  Both have caused the soil under the pavers to erode and seep into both the mains water and the reticulation hub. I dug out most of the sand before John came, we then decided to remove all the pavers, replace the sand, then re-pave. After fixing the pavers John helped me with some heavy lifting.  There were two very big palms that needed repotting into bigger pots. The old potting mix was taken out and bagged for use later and new potting media put into the bigger pots.  Under my New Zealand Christmas tree, John helped me empty one very large pot that was full of the Christmas tree’s roots.  It had grown into the pot through the drainage holes in the bottom, smothering and killing the plant that I’d planted there. I suggested we put the pot onto a saucer and raise the whole thing on bricks to stop it happening again.  We then checked the other pots under the tree to make sure they were all safe from the invading roots system. It was a big job which I couldn’t have done without John’s help.

John has also suggested I buy some foam filler to fill in all the gaps where the sand was seeping into the boxes.  Hopefully this will prevent the pavers from being disturbed again.  He also suggested I get a plumber to come and see if he could stop the hot water system from leaking.  That afternoon I called the plumber, and headed to Bunnings to buy the foam filler and two more ferns to put into the vacated pots.  With foam filler in hand I did my best to fill the gaps in the mains water hub.  I had put an old ice-cream container around the tap to protect it from the expanding foam which just seemed to keep expanding!  I then left it till the next day.  In the meantime I started on the big clean up and packing away, what a mess the patio was in!  I didn’t stop till it was too dark to continue. I was exhausted and surprised I had lasted so long.  It must be the Vitamin B3’s I’ve been taking.

The following day, I cleaned up the expanded foam using the hacksaw. I cut away most of the excess foam to enable me to turn the tap off or on.  It was then I realised some of the sealing foam must have got onto the tap as it was stuck fast, I struggled to budge it till I sprayed it with WD40 and wrenched it with a spanner.  Praise God it worked!  Now that I knew how the foam worked I did a similar job filling the gaps on the retic box as this was continuing to seep sand from under the pavers.  If not fixed it would end up exactly where we had started.  This one was a bit trickier as there were reticulation pipes and wires.  This time I used some cardboard to help keep the foam in place.

Another thing I have been looking for was a couple of small firm lumber pillows to use on my lounge.  Spotlight only had the large ones which meant I would have to make my own.  I pulled out an old pillow, rolled it in half long ways and sewed it together. Hummmm too long. Cutting it in half made them a better length, but it was harder to cut through all the stuffing than I thought.  I then covered them with an underlining.  They then sat for several weeks while I looked for the motivation to finish them.  I’m yet to made two covers which I can remove to wash.  I have the fabric, taken from cutting down a queen sheet to make a king single but I’m yet to find the motivation!  Just a bit more procrastination.

Is there anyone like me who prefers to shop in a store not online?  The thing I don’t like with shopping online is you can’t handle the merchandise, you can’t ask the sales rep questions and you can’t return it to the store if it’s not what you wanted!  And if it’s not what you want then you have to pay extra postage to send it back!  Needless to say I bought a product which I’m not sure if I will ever use.  I’ve been looking for something to wear to bed instead of earplugs which don’t seem to keep the noise out as I can still hear the ocean even though I’m about a quarter kilometre from the beach! I looked on line and found a head band with speakers which you connected via Bluetooth to your phone on which I have some white noise playing and you guessed it sounds of the waves crashing on the shore.  I was hoping this would drown out the unwanted disturbances while I slept, especially when travelling and there’s unwanted external noise. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise there were difference models of headphones.  One for back sleepers and one for side sleepers.  Well you can guess which ones I bought!  Yes and I sleep on my side most of the night so now I have the speakers pressing into my ears! Very uncomfortable!  Hmm how to resolve this?  I found some padding which was for the cushions and stuffed them around the little speakers which seemed to help.  My next challenge was how do I listen to the chosen track only when I need it and not have it playing all night?  I only really want to listen when I wake in the middle of the night, and I certainly don’t want the Bluetooth zapping my brain all night!  It’s a conundrum!  Something to pray about. Any suggestions?

Something strange has also been happening when I order things online.  My friend in Sydney is receiving email notifications of my packages.  I haven’t put her contact email on any of my parcels so I have no idea how she’s receiving the notifications.  I contacted AustPost but they said her contact details were not in my online account details (I can’t seem to get my account to work so couldn’t check them for myself) so where do I report it so this error can be correct? Another conundrum!

After this I actually had to buy a few more things on line. It annoys me not being able to buy things from a walk in store! Something I did buy in-store was a coffee aeropress which I thought might be good for my travels.  After trying it out I realised it wasn’t what I had expected so took it back to the store. That’s the good thing about stores, you can take things back.  While I was there I looked for another that would make espresso shots. I found what I thought was appropriate and dismantled it with the shop attendant to make sure I understood how it worked and came apart for cleaning.  It was quite weighty 36gms, but very compact making one shot to which I can add my milk.

While out I stopped at Bunnings to pick up another two ferns.  One to put in a spare pot under the New Zealand Christmas tree and one which had three ferns which I planted where the wisteria used to be.

My neighbour, Kath, recently had some of her walls and internal doors painted.  She stayed away while they were being painted but then found when she had returned home the smell of the acrylic paint was overpowering.  I offered for her to stay at my place which she accepted, staying three evenings.  She would wander across with her pillow and favourite blanket for what she called a ‘staycation’.  It was lovely having someone stay who had her own place to go to during the day.  LOL Not long after this she called on my help to collect some outdoor chairs she saw beside the road.  She wasn’t game to take them herself so came to find a partner in crime.  I knocked at the door of the house but it was empty, being sold, so we helped ourselves as the chairs were beside the road.  We then set them up at Bob’s place (he had been wanting some more outdoor chairs).  Bob was out so we put the chairs in a circle with some empty beer cans, an empty bottle of wine and an empty pizza box to make it look like someone had come into his garden for a party. Kath then sent him a photo saying she had heard people having a party at his place.  I later got a text saying “Thank you for your assistance in stealing the chairs for me.” I replied sorry about the mess from our party.  It’s lovely having such a close friendship with neighbours in the units.

What a wonderful surprise!  Sofia my old neighbour came over to Perth to visit her boyfriend and called in to see me.  It was so nice to catch up with her again even if it was such a short visit.

This month hasn’t been good for sleep which means I’ve not been out early for my jog.  It’s been so lovely jogging in the cool of the day. One morning I was just coming home and passed someone parking their car.  I think he was working at the school on their new transportable classrooms. Anyway, I called out ‘Morning’ to which the reply was ‘No it isn’t’.  I think he thought I said Good morning.  ‘Oh!’ I said ‘Sorry to hear that, I hope it improves for you’.  I couldn’t believe how grumpy he sounded.  Some people have a challenging life.

Photos:  1. My new Mexican desert rose    2. Coastal Community stall    3. Rat eaten rockmelon    4. Bench half completed    5. Pavers needing attention    6. Pavers and foam filling    7. Friends from Tuesday coffee team    8.  Bananas are maturing

Prayer & Praise Points:

I just love the way the Lord helps me out daily.  Praise Him for His faithfulness.  I’ve called upon His help in many areas especially when I can’t remember where I’ve put things and within minutes I’ve found it even after thinking I’d thrown things out.

Praise the Lord for the rain which finally came after such a dry summer.  The driest on record.  Still the Lord controls our weather for which I’m so grateful.

Please continue to pray for my missionary friend, Ross Winchester as we trust the Lord to bring total healing while he goes through chemo.

Please pray for me as I apply for both my Indonesian and Vietnamese visas. I’m always nervous when it comes to official paperwork.

Continue to pray with me for world peace both in the Middle East, Ukraine and Russia.  Pray for all those caught up in the suffering that both these wars have caused.  Pray that God’s peace may be known by all people especially for those who live in despair, that they will find hope in Christ Jesus.

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