Musing's of a Gardener

After a relatively average winter with near median rain (597 ml so far – 10 ml above the median over the past 18 years), we have had a cool spring with some rain; enough to keep the grass growing although it all has been cut. I began watering in earnest last week, although we have had a few days above 30ºC where I have had to water by hand. This year after a few years of very bare patches in the lawn (we have a small 100 m 2 lawn between the house and pool) I purchased some turf and filled in the bare spots. Spring has been very kind so it has taken off very well – although the dog appears to like the new patches and insists in lying on the new turf! I purchased punnets of tomatoes in August, and put them into 150 mm pots and grew them in a hot house until they were about 600 mm tall. The capsicums are still in the hot house, but will eventually be transplanted into the hydroponics. Tomatoes, lettuce and stawberries Last week I transferred the tomatoes to 10 litre buckets wi...

The Problem Our kitchen has big cupboards. The largest is nearly three metres high which means I need to stand on a stool that is perched on a chair to reach the second to top shelf, else I need to bring a ladder in from the shed! The height arises from the fact the house has cathedral ceilings for its entire length, and these cupboards are mounted in the centre of the house from floor to ceiling. At the bottom of these cupboards are two cupboards, one that houses the hot water system (one day to move out doors) and the second is the pantry. The pantry was old, and was lined with selves, and although relatively tidy was not an efficient use of space. My wife always wanted the pantry changed – getting rid of the hot water service would be one way. Inside the old pantry Doors: these have not changed We finally decided to do something about it, so after examining countless magazines and brochures and visiting local kitchen show rooms, we settled on a pull-out syst...

I took five weeks off in May and spent a few of those on the north coast of New South Wales – mostly in Yamba with friends. Yamba is a fabulous little spot off the main highway and on the mouth of the Clarence River. It is probably over crowded during the summer holidays, but was calm and tranquil during the time my wife and I were there. The water was warm and the weather balmy although it did rain a little in the second week. If you ever visit Yamba – take time to visit Iluka which is a small village on the opposite side of the Clarence River, which you either drive to (approx. 40 km), or catch the small ferry. It has a beautiful beach (one can drive on it) and some beautiful native forests.  Also impressive are the views from the Pacific Hotel in Yamba (18 Pilot Street Yamba) which overlooks the ocean. The dinning room and has a very large expanse of glass allowing 180 degrees of view. We visited both for lunch and dinner – typical pub meals being in-expensive but filling – whi...

The last few weeks my wife and I have been holidaying in the northern coastal region of New South Wales, although we did head inland for a few days; to Armidale and Tamworth. Autumn had truly started in these towns, and much of the autumn leaves had fallen. Not so the coast, especially around Yamba where we spent most of our time with friends. The first week reached 28-29ºC and the water was very warm, much to our surprise. At Byron Bay there were many many people on the beach and the town was packed, as I assume every Sunday is in the warm season.This was suprising as I had come from the cold and dry south. Our second week had rain and the southerly winds cooled both the air and water however it still was not cold on the coast. We went walking every morning, had breakfast that morphed into lunch, after which we read or snoozed. The trip down to Tamworth included a side trip to Nundle, which was initially to visit the woollen mill (the mill was not working unfortunately, although I bou...

Reflections on ‘Policy Governance' – Part 1 How efficient are your Board meetings, whether it is a board of a local sports club, arts association, school or some other association or organisation? Do you spend long hours in discussion over minute details of management or approvals or some other operational issue but never really see any progress in the organisation? Is the strategic plan hidden in some folder? Can your Board really sway the principal or chief coach or art curator and achieve outcomes that the Board's vision has encompassed? Can you define on whose behalf you, as board member, are acting? If it is merely yourself, you may be in breach of the spirit of the law if not the law itself, for most Boards of association are legally acting on behalf specific owners of the association. And that raises the question – can you identify who the moral and legal owners of your organisation are – not your customers – but the owners ? Do you act for them? Can you prove this? ...

I have been keeping bees most of my life – well not quite - from the age of 16 at least. My father was not one for allowing teenagers to be idle, for idleness created mischief. Since my father grew fruit, there was always a worry the flowers would not be pollinated and fruit set. One way to achieve this is to bring bees into the orchards. So he encouraged me to take up bee keeping (I also took up building kayaks with my brothers and a cousin – also a great past time for keeping teenagers out of mischief) . My great uncle (Uncle Carl) was a bee keep as was his family, and we had some bee keepers in the district, so I had a few people to learn from. So from the age of 16 I have always had a few hives – sometimes many more, but over the past few years 1 or 2 – enough to keep the family, relatives and friends in honey. At once stage I was going to expand to 40 or more hives, but interstate employment stopped this as did Ash Wednesday – I lost all but four hives. The timber which I was to b...

The Issue The Camera (Panasonic Lumix HDC TZ10) developed a fault displaying the error as shown in the photograph below – “system error (focus)”.  When turned on and off, the lens would not retract, and it showed the error message. What was uncertain was where the problem was – for instance was the problem in the cams of the zoom lens (there are three sets of lens that slide in and out on cams) or was it within the focusing element which focuses the light on the light capture device – a CCD in the case of the Panasonic? It turned out to be grit on drive of the 4th focus lens which jammed it. I found a service manual for the camera at http://www.scribd.com/doc/96821254/DMC-TZ10-ZS7-Service-Manual (assessed 29 March 2013) which made repairing the camera very much easier. Other models might be found on http://www.statmyweb.com/s/repair-guide-tz10 Dave Baar has a detail description of his ordeal at the link below, for a slightly different  camera - Panasonic L...

“When asked about the purpose of medical research most people would hopefully reply: to advance knowledge for the good of society; to improve the health of people worldwide; or to find better ways to treat and prevent disease. The reality is different. The research environment, with its different players, is now much less conducive to thinking about such noble goals. Funders have often adopted long-drawn-out bureaucratic processes for their grant giving, and yet rarely ask for a systematic assessment of the need for the proposed research. Full costing is often demanded at first submission with enormous waste of time and resources. Funders operate within political frameworks that emphasise short-term successes and outcomes. Decisions are dependent on opaque peers' and experts' assessments within each field and take many months. Pharmaceutical companies and industry-sponsored research seek a maximum profitable return on their investment. And academic institutions, which are mor...

“Nudging” the public to get them to change their extraordinary bad behaviour – the UK is apparently moving from nudge to nag: “use every contact with patients and the public to help them maintain and improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing”. Public health in England: from nudge to nag The Lancet,Volume 379, Issue 9812, Page 194, 21 January 2012 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(12)60082-8

Just spent the last few days cleaning up my garden after a very dry summer, although we did not have any major heatwaves. The BOM says we had a hot summer, but on the whole I found it rather mild - no endless nights above 30 °C, although we did have a few very very hot days (I was in Port Pirie for day of 48 °C). For SA: February 2013 was 0.9 °C above the long-term average, the warmest February for the state since 2009.In comparison, February 2012 was 0.9 °C below average. The tomatoes are still bearing and the strawberries are putting out lots of runners (in the hydroponics). However, something large is eating both the tomatoes and capsicum - perhaps a possum as the animal ate one half of a capsicum - very neatly!  I put some broccoli seeds into perlite in the hydroponics, so hopefully they will be ready to plant out in mid-Autumn (I'm a wee bit late). Also very late I removed the heads of the Agapanthus, which did suffer during the >40 °C days, with the outer leaves burnin...

I found the following video very inspiring – What is Love < http://vimeo.com/59208864 accessed 28 February 2013 >. It tells of the love of a man for his wife, based on how Christ loved the Church – indeed how Jesus Christ loves you. When one gets married, for better or for worse, I dare say that few think about what the “for worse” could ever mean, or the implications of “in sickness” – perhaps a day off with the flu, but never the need to care for your partner-for-life, who can no longer recognise you, and who will never get better. I have met Bill and Glad. Bill is a wonderful Bible teacher, with years of experience from missionary work in many countries. I once spent a weekend listening to the implications of the writings of Amos (a book of the Bible) on my life, although I cannot remember much now. However, what did strike me, and I do remember today, is that Bill had read the book more than 40 times in order to prepare for the weekend (it could have been an Easter long ...

We have just returned from five days on a houseboat on the Murray River (with Church friends) - the cliffs, as shown here, are beautiful especially in the evening and in the early morning (my wife, an avid photographer, took the photograph shown here). The weather ranged from very hot >37'C through to raining (the first in 6 months) - and the water was a wonderful 24'C - ideal for swimming.

Highlighted in Medscape: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/779232?src=wnl_edit_medn_wir&uac=18725MT&spon=34 “The nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) diclofenac , a drug that is frequently used for the treatment of pain and inflammation caused by arthritis, is associated with a significantly increased risk of cardiovascular complications and should be removed from essential-medicines lists (EML), according to a new review [1].” The study showed that diclofenac increases risk of an cardiovascular event occurring by 38% - 63% (absolute 95 th percentile range across all studies -15% to 199%). It is clear that long term use of some NSAIDS is associated with increased risk of coronary events, especially those with previous myocardial infarction. I don't think at this stage the report needs to be acted upon by withdrawing from sale all diclofenac, but rather, a much better targeting of its use is required, with better appreciation for its potential interaction with ...

I grow many of my vegetable using hydroponics, and have done so for more than 25 years. However, the summer heat is too much for tomatoes and many other vegetables, so I usually drape 50% white shade cloth over them This is not very satisfactory, so at the end of 2012 I set about constructing a shade-house. What I wanted was a simple and cheap structure that would enable shade cloth to be hung over the vegetables, but allow it to be removed in winter. Searching the web gave some ideas, and with a bit of experimentation I arrived at a structure, which is functional but not yet completed. The hydroponics is laid out in a rectangle about 7.5 metres by 1.5 metres, which consists of a number of long containers – troughs, and large diameter pipes cut in half or 90mm storm-water pipe filled with perlite. I purchased 50 metres of 50 mm agricultural green “poly pipe”, which comes in large 100 m rolls. The irrigation shop was very happy to cut 50 metres of his large roll. This cost $183. I ...

This is the very beginning, therefore I am still learning how to manage blogger. Therefore, much more will come in the future.