Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Red Lettuce

Pads got his subwarden position, and I got some red lettuce. I'm afraid my achievements pale into insignificance today. And James so loves red lettuce - well I'll try and grow some iceberg too. Anyway, B also had long day - selling plants and flowers for the CWA in the freezing breezes. We haven't had snow but the wind feels as if it is coming off places that have. I finished the next raised bed and planted Scorzonera, Salify, Radiccio, red onions (for spring onions) and Cos lettuce in it and strawberry spinach and sea-kale in pots. It's been raining all night so that'll give them a good watering. On other positive plant developments I see two rubarb plants I grew from seed are making spring emergences. I planted about 8, got 4 up, and have 2 survive... well, once they get going they are hard to kill. At this rate I'd better plant 50! I am SUCH a talented gardener. The mint I planted from seed, and had despared of, and got plants from Rosemary, have also decided to grow. That's fine, we can use quite a lot of it.
Carol brought us a bag of lemons - I must get a lemon tree established in a big pot. We use a LOT of lemon juice, and they seem to do well on the island. The weather is being windy or wet at the moment, and this is eating into the seafood stocks - we need to go on an expedition to collect more soon.

We're heading rapidly into the next Australian Election which has been quite an educational experience for us. The pollies cheerfully say stuff about each other that'd get you killed back in SA. Maybe because voting is obligatory, there is actually less noise about it all, compared to South African campaigns.

3 comments:

  1. It is a university residence position. Which means he helps/works with the other students in the residence, but it is a paid position, which basically covers his residence fees for next year!

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  2. University. It's a principally residential University he's at - with IIRC about 3500 students in res, mostly undergrads. Paddy has been in one of the medium sized residences, on house com, head student (the student who represents students in that residence in their dealings with the uni. Unlike the SRC which is largely political and deals with academic and wider social issues, and largely is drawn from what you would refer to as Liberal Arts, the res students tend to elect popular but rather conservative members to actually deal with their own problems of living in residence, quite an interesting as sociological trend! The ones I've known were either commerce or science students. The Warden is the non-student employee of the university, who administers, deals with disputes, discipline, problems etc. He lives in a house attached to the residence. The Sub-warden is also a university employee, a third year or post-graduate student who lives in Res, and acts both as enforcer and court of appeal, and first port of call if you have any problem from homesickness to illness, and minor admin officer, and deputises for the warden at functions the warden cannot attend. For this he gets paid more or less his res fees. It does however look very good on a resume to any SA employer (and possibly elsewhere) as it means the University rated the person as capable of dealing with a couple of hundred high-spirited fractious young men. There is a lot of competition for the post, as it saves you about half your fees, and is not very ardurous, and carries a lot of social cachet. It's also very good for Pads as being given authority, and the fact that he actually would make a very good, fair officer, will help him in life, just as once having been made an NCO helped me.

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