I’m not one for holidays. However all sorts of commitments have fallen by the wayside recently so that’s kind of a holiday.
I’m sorry for taking a very long holiday (aka resigning) from my part-time job as Thursday Ragtag Daily Prompt contributor without so much as a goodbye.
I’m sorry I resigned from a couple of environmental committees today. I’m not really a fit and proper person at the moment. It’s true. Not quite a write-off though, so no sympathy. Got that?
I’m embarrassed and remorseful that I told the lads from Ventia today to go forth and procreate kinda when they were surveying our verge for a new NBN (comms) upgrade. My tree might have to take a holiday if they rip its roots. There are no holidays from Type 1 diabetes because I was exceedingly hypoglycaemic at the time so I was extra obnoxious to those fellows. I may take an even longer holiday for that interaction. At least I didn’t hit anyone, except my husband.
I am sorry for constantly being on holiday when it comes to listening to my poor husband.
Because this sorry saga gets even worse, if you can believe that, I hope you will not take it personally when I password protect some of my blog posts while I get my sorry ass in order.
Of course, I shall let you know if I go to the clink, or for that matter, the clinic. You know, the one for very unruly minds.
I’m sorry mum. Don’t worry about me. Worry about the long suffering one.
I often finish my blog posts by saying “Take care”, but today I will go with it’s okay to stuff up every now and then. What’s the worse that can happen? I will leave comments open for the very long list that I am sure you can come up with. Play along, I would rather that than sympathy.
My father is definitely thinner. Frailer. His kidneys are failing him but I can’t decide whether he has lost his mind. He probably has, but I don’t want to face it. Most likely because, if he has lost his mind, I am not far behind him. But this is not about me.
My father needs to decide whether to go on dialysis. He’s old. And frail. And forgets things. Did I mention that? However, he has always been rather forgetful as he doesn’t pay attention.
There’s probably only one sure thing. Ama, our little dog who is supposed to be dead by now, will probably outlast us both. She doesn’t forget anything. The diagnostic blood test clearly didn’t tell the full story. The excess insulin in her system was from her pancreas correcting for the dawn phenomenon and not from a tumour. Ama is unusual but not that unusual. Thank Dog!
So here we all are. Not going strong, but still going. Hope you are too.
I thought now would be a good time to repeat this post about my little dog, Ama, for she is now 12 and has been quite unwell again. She recently spent a week in the vet hospital with severe pancreatitis and left with a diagnosis of insulinoma, an aggressive cancer. She’s been home for two weeks now and is still quite bright. Not at all like a dog on her last legs. “Perhaps the diagnosis is wrong?” I entreated the vet on our last visit. He didn’t think so based on a relevant blood test. I still hold out hope. That’s quite strange for me because I am usually such a catastrophiser. In the meantime, we continue to enjoy her company and deprive her of cheese. Life is so unfair.
*****
This post is dedicated to my little dog, Ama, who is not well. So far we know that she has copper storage disease but not how bad it is or whether we can mitigate it. I’ve not had much time for blogging lately as we’ve had a lot of medical appointments and I’ve been researching treatments, including low copper diets. It helps to be informed when talking to veterinary specialists. It also gives me something to do while I worry.
Ama’s birthday is this Saturday. She’ll be six. When I was looking for a pet name for her, I read that Ama meant born on a Saturday (in Ghanaian). As she was born on a Saturday, and the name had a nice ring to it, we just went with that (plus we like to say Um-ah when she is naughty). She also has a pedigree name – Eurabbie Taehti. Taehti means Polar Star in Finnish. Everything does seem to revolve around the little minx so it is fitting, but more importantly, she lights the way.
Yuma, everyone. After months of no rain, the temperature and humidity is rising here in Canberra, Australia’s national capital. In West Belconnen, the rain often splits around us, a promise broken. For example, Canberra airport had over 30mm of rain today, while we had only 0.3mm. So when it rained in our patch recently, I draped my camera in bubble wrap and took to the street. I thought I would share a few photos of one of our Landcare sites.
The rain is magical, turning ugly duckling trees to swans.
The drain rapidly turns green.
We cut off the seedheads of the African Love Grass by hand. No electric tools allowed. And sneak in some carex and poa to hopefully out compete the ALG one day.
The casuarinas like wet feet.
Not sure about this magpie chick.
The new plantings are enjoying the rain. Newly arrived rabbits are enjoying the plants. We need a chicken wire fence around the bare patches to allow the winter-dormant redleg grass to re-emerge. But the wheels of bureaucratic approvals move slowly, if at all.
As for me, I’m feeling a bit flat. 600 trees nearby will be cut down for an “upgraded” road to a new sustainable housing development. I think people are oblivious to the irony. Or just oblivious. Or they don’t care or feel they can’t do anything about it. It certainly makes me kind of depressed. Same old, same old, eh?
Hug a tree, readers. Save a tree. You’ll feel much better.
A couple of photos so that long time readers will know that I am still alive. I want to say something, anything, but more and more, I am silent, assuaging my conscience by tending my garden.
Alpine Daisy Bush (Olearia phlogopappa mauve form)
The daisy bush is a mass of flowers this year but there are few insects about. We expect to see more now that we have had a few drops of rain.
Bulbine Lily
Gardening in the backyard has been on hold for the last two years. During this time, the bulbine lilies and the weeds have been multiplying gaily.
Back garden gets a reno.
I thought we might try to grow some of the native plants we have been trying to establish in the front yard in the back garden too. The soil is much better because it is has been left to go to weeds. The thick green patch at the bottom of the photo is an exotic cud weed. The work is strenuous and maybe a little mind-numbing, er, I mean, relaxing.
I’ve also started a campaign on face plough to save some big remnant eucalypts in my local area that are going to be cut down to make way for progress, er, I mean, for a road. I have all of 7 followers. A pointless exercise. Globally we are on track for a catastrophic 2.5c degrees warming and species extinction, but at least we will have good roads (until some disaster destroys them). Aren’t I a little ray of sunshine?
Below – one of the trees that may be cut down. I posted it first here in 2021. I knew blogging would come in handy one day.
Almost a quarter of a century ago, I asked someone why our emissions reduction target was so low. Emissions were increasing. That was the point. I had better stop there or I will start to sound self-righteous and, as you know, words are cheap but also powerful, which perfectly sums up many of life’s conundrums.
Well, better get back to my plants. As they say in the classics, “Have a good day.”
If you are staying home due to the long weekend traffic jams or for any number of other reasons, perhaps you would like to play a game with me? It’s called Caption This Photo. However, if you are on a long trip and actually stuck in a traffic jam, you could modify this game to suit your circumstances using the scenery on hand.
I’ll go first.
“Will those dogs ever shut up?I can’t hear myself think.”
Your turn now. Entries in the Comments Section below. No prizes, no glory.
It’s official, ladies and gentlemen, I am now a landcarer. I join over 100,000 volunteers across Australia working on landcare projects that are focused on sustainable land management practices and environmental conservation. I’m also a newbie Canberra nature mapper. Better late than never, I guess. Over the last six months, I’ve teamed up with some of my neighbours to form a registered group to look after our community park. It is lucky that we had our own resident ecologist because, with his assistance, we identified something that needed protection. Even our ecologist was surprised.
My family has known for years that areas of the park had some lovely native grass – spear grasses (Austrostipa sp.) and kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra) – as well as some native grassland plants, clinging to the edges, or under, trees. We also had an inkling that if the native grasses were allowed to grow rather than be mown, they might out compete some of the weedy, exotic grasses. But who would believe us? Nothing to see here, right?
When the drought broke, the resident ecologist discovered more and more native woodland and grassland plants at the park, and I started to incorporate these plants into my verge garden. My neighbour had also seen many interesting looking plants popping up down the park and she talked to me about starting a park care group. So our little adventure began and soon we were joined on this journey by some other enthusiastic neighbours. We embarked on months of self-initiated environmental assessments, community engagement and government liaison.
It is fair to say that not everyone is on the same page. Myths of snakes in long grass, experience of devastating bushfires and differences in aesthetics, beget many different reactions. I certainly get it because that was me. Of course, I am “passionate” about conservation, as was pointed out to me, but it is knowledge, not passion, that motivates me, ladies and gentlemen. As a team, we did our homework (ie. the biodiversity surveys, etc) and the park woodland did the rest.
And the result? A small patch of the park has now been officially recognised as critically endangered box-gum grassy woodland. This is both horrifying and exciting. It is horrifying because there is so little box-gum grassy woodland left in eastern Australia due to urban development and unsympathetic agricultural practices. It is exciting because we now have the chance to work together – both government and local landcare volunteers – to ensure that this precious ecological community is cared for appropriately. Well, that’s my view anyway. I can’t speak for the government or the broader community.
So we’ve planted a few plants, not many, to shelter the small birds. We have also been weeding, weeding, weeding. It’s been wet so there are many weeds. Weeding has been a learning exercise in itself because we are no experts on what is and isn’t a weed. Thankfully there are a lot of resources, including the resident ecologist, to help us make those distinctions.
I haven’t had time to swan around taking photos. I tried to combine my photography and land care interests at one point but I ended up leaving my camera in the grass when I got distracted by some weeds. Don’t worry, it was still there when I realised my error. I do, however, encourage swanning around with a camera because images (plus the expert narrative that goes along with them) tell a story and the story can lead to understanding, and understanding can lead to action. So I haven’t completely given up.
Because the conservation patch is a grassy woodland, it has delivered, once left unmown, an outpouring of beautiful native grasses the likes of which I have never seen in our park. Let me show you.
Austrostipa, once clinging to the edges of trees, goes wild.Who wouldn’t want to live across from this meadow of kangaroo grass?
Like the rest of Australia, Canberra has a growing multicultural population. Although my ancestors arrived here in 18th century, I include myself in that multicultural group. This multiculturalism extends to our weeds, gardens and pastures. Our nature reserves, and the indigenous species that depend on them, cannot withstand the onslaught of these “threatening processes” unless we do nature differently.
Exotic wild oats, St John’s Wort and Yorkshire Fog grass in Kama Nature Reserve
I’ve got lots of ideas about “ecologically sustainable development” and probably not very original ones. Improved community education about environmental conservation needs to reflect where we are as a community, so tailoring nature “education” to Australia’s increasingly multicultural population, through programs and materials in languages other than English, could be really helpful. I would also love to see even more community and government initiatives to re-wild and connect our urban green spaces. Canberrans, the latter is already happening and you can join in now. Contact Landcare or the ACT government to find out how you can get involved. The work is intellectual; it is physical; it is communal and I love it. Don’t wait until you are over 50, like me, before you get your A into G. There’s a job that suits all abilities.
In closing, I offer my best wishes to all who celebrate the coming festive season and to those of you who do not. My hope for the new year is that you too may have access to a resident ecologist and/or team up with likeminded friends to turn your dreams into reality.
Take care, everyone. Don’t be too naughty. Maybe I’ll stop for photos.
During the week about a dozen yellow-tailed black cockatoos visited our park. They were having a field day, chewing on branches and pulling out borers. My True Love snapped these photos. One of the young ones got caught up in a branch that it was chewing and it tumbled to the ground when the branch finally gave way. The youngster was unfazed by this. Check ’em out.
Reflections of An Untidy Mind 