Saturday, October 9, 2010

thrips mark II

ooosh. just looked at the clock. I was buried in writing. The thrips were a steady and advancing wave (and I mean just that - tens of thousands of the little beggars by this afternoon. There were hundreds yesterday. Roberts - the only place you can buy gardening chemicals and most hardware stuff is closed on Saturday, just in case you might have some free time on the weekend to do some gardening. (Max at the Lady Barron store is getting there - for exactly this reason). Fortunately one of my gardening gurus came to our rescue with some pyrethrin which seems to have killed them off. It's nerve-wracking this farming stuff. Got a call from the deputy Mayor - some people coming out to write up the island. I presume he was wearing his Tourist association hat - not a really a group that seems to have made itself popular with the islanders in general - which is very awkward for them as the islanders friendliness is probably their single largest asset. It's that in combination with the 'island' feeling of security and remoteness, and the combination in close proximity of a range of varied natural beauty features that make this place special. If you want the best mountains, go to New Zealand. If you want the best beaches, the Comoros. The best bushwalking - the west coast of Tassie. We're not as good, and cost more :-/ for any one of those. Yet the intimacy and friendliness of small island community Flinders is pushing at places like Arran - and while getting to the beaches or mountain or bush bests is cheaper than most of the remote island communities you could visit, very few of the other islands could claim to also have good climbing, beaches, diving, fishing, bush walking... all pretty good, and so close together. That's what they should be selling, and that means not getting up local noses and itching, because that welcome could vanish. Anyway these blokes want to climb next week. I'm cool with the idea - especially seeing as the French kids will be here too.

Had a very strange meal for our evening tea: steak and onions and baked potato and some of Rosemary's lettuce for supper. A really weird meal as none of it came out of our garden (just sprayed), and much of it (the onions, the steak, the potato) from off island.

Barbs put in some time working on the showgrounds and cutting grass. I wrote and fetched poison. Another exciting day :-)

2 comments:

  1. I spent a fair amount of time today mowing with my new little push mower - no engine! I quite enjoy using it around the yard, but I don't think I'd want to attempt to mow showgrounds with it.

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  2. I think we need to give up the idea of gardening until we can move to the country. Between dogs and squirrels and grass it's almost impossible to grow anything. I'd love to take a class on southern gardening.

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