Octopus’s Garden

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“I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden in the shade.
We would shout and swim about the coral that lies beneath the waves.”

Ringo Starr wrote this song for The Beatles in 1969. He says “I wrote Octopus’s Garden in Sardinia. Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day… I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked about octopuses. He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden.”

This inspired him to write the song which was featured in the Beatle’s movie “Yellow Submarine”.

Octopuses really are amazing creatures. They are very intelligent and live in cave-like dens in the rocks. They often close up the front of the cave with rocks and shells, leaving only a small entry hole through which they virtually ooze, coming and going from their homes. When they catch their prey, especially crabs, they return to their dens to dine.  Their garden is the collection of bones, spines, and shells left over from previous meals along with any shiny things [Read more…] about Octopus’s Garden

Dancing With Fred Astaire

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I could feel the muscles in my eyelids.  When I blinked very slowly, I could feel them connecting to my face under the skin.  And in my neck, when I lifted my chin, I could feel the fine muscles all through my neck.  It was an amazing sensation.

After nine weeks of dancing lessons, learning  Jive, Rock & Roll, Cha Cha  and some line dancing – I thought I knew every muscle in my body.  I wondered – how come all that exercise hadn’t dealt with every single muscle I owned?

Every Wednesday and Friday night – regardless of the 42° heat – we had stepped, swung and sweated our way through over two hours of lessons in the Baskerville Hall. In the following week we would start Jive again, but this night, this [Read more…] about Dancing With Fred Astaire

Dining Out

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One night while we were living in Stoneville, I decided to take my Dad out to dinner at a very upmarket Chinese restaurant in our neighbourhood.

We had been there before with friends and I was quite happy to spend $120 – 150 for us to have a lovely dinner with wine, beer, desert, coffee, whatever we wanted. I booked a table for two, for 8:00pm.  When we arrived, the restaurant was very busy doing takeaways and a number of tables were set but not occupied.  We were on time.

We were shown to a table for two, just inside the entrance to the dining area.  My father was seated first, with his back to the room of diners.  I was seated opposite him, with a first class view of the staff entrance into the kitchen/ serving area, the rubbish bins into which all plates are scraped before they hit the dishwasher and the repository for all empty bottles.

Suffice to say, I politely and quietly told the young waiter that the table was not suitable; we would not sit [Read more…] about Dining Out

Waterless Garden

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The idea of having a waterless garden has appealed to me for a long time.  I have tried lots of different ways to grow my garden with little or almost no water and, more importantly for me, no watering.  It’s getting away from being tethered to the end of the hose that I want.

Let’s forget for the moment about past experiments and look at what we are trying now.  This weekend, the last weekend of March 2012, we started round two of the new waterless garden scheme.

Around Christmas time, I discovered a potentially new way of watering the garden. The product comes in a plastic sausage shape and comprises a jelly substance that is said to be 97% distilled water and 3% cellulose.  The jelly is cut and placed raw surface down onto the soil, where a microbe action will begin and their activity causes the water to gradually be released from the jelly into the soil.  [Read more…] about Waterless Garden

Interview With Ben (age 10) About Saving Forests

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Today, we had an interview with Ben, aged 10, a school boy in New South Wales who is doing a project on rain forests and the need for conservation.  Ben sent me his questions by email and we hooked up with Skype, so he could record the interview.

I would like to share his questions and my answers with you – along with some of the photographs I sent to him by email for his project.  The questions were all set by Ben and I simply answered them as I saw fit.  His mother was present during the interview and was very pleased with the information Ben received.

 1)     How can we best preserve our rainforests?

Ant Lion Homes In The Sand

It is very important that we understand the depth of their bio-diversity and that habitat is not just trees. Many people overlook little things about habitat: it is the fallen leaf litter and the decaying logs in which the lizards and the beetles live, as much as the beautiful butterflies in the tree tops.

I have been to Cairns in Northern Queensland and to Sabah in Borneo, to visit rainforests and to try and understand how we can ignore their value as part of our environmental health. [Read more…] about Interview With Ben (age 10) About Saving Forests

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