Child of the Planet

I thought, ‘wait until Tuesday, cause all the panic buying will be over and I’ll have the supermarket to myself’. Drove up there this morning to find the car park was full, and a huge queue waiting to be let into the building. ‘Bugger this’ I thought as I stayed on the roundabout, and came back down to the local shop at the beach. It was empty and so I purchased milk and bread. Beautiful sparkling day and as it warms up, so do the locals. Guy on the hill is playing his blues guitar (I hear his wife makes him go outside). Finished a pallet box out in the wood shed for loose shit such as pine cones and banksia nuts... This guy is going to become the letter box, and legs for a garden chair… Lunch was a leftover sausage sandwich. Sometimes i like to lie down in the afternoon and meditate. Ideas and plans tend to formulate at this time. I can hear the neighbour's daughter noodling on her guitar. Laughter floats through the bathroom window. My other neighbours kids are pla...

Sun is up, the wind is down. The beach and surrounding roads are packed with people out walking. Packed isn't really the right word, more lots of individual little groups of people moving about in a complex dance to avoid each other. Lots of couples out walking babies, lots of dog walkers, couple of cars. As mentioned in a previous post ( click here ), I’m building stuff out of pallets. The rain over the last couple of days has stopped me from doing any real work, but it has been washing down the wood I’d arranged out the back. Really pissed off, that Hardware shops aren’t classed as an essential service. What if I run out of screws? I was moving through the arrangement of pallets today, sorting and marking. I don’t want to plough ahead and start breaking things down, only to discover that a pallet that I’ve made something out of, would have been better used somewhere else. When dealing with pallets the ‘recip’ saw is your best friend. I used to us...

I can't stop watching the news broadcasts. It was the same for me during 9/11 when I was living in the U.K. There were these really crazy pictures on the tele of planes flying into buildings. In response to the emergency, the grounded local aircraft had wiped the London skies clear of contrails. This time it's a bit different. The news reports change almost hourly. I remember getting a bit bored during 9/11 because after a couple hours all the reports were rehashed. Lunchtime and I’m reheating a sausage and onions for a sandwich. Someone has cranked their stereo up, and it’s nice to hear that other people are still out there. Went out for a walk and noticed a few teddy bears in windows. Then I saw this horror... Last century I visited the U.S. of A. Every day during that trip I felt a little bit uneasy. My whole life, I've been consuming American media. When I actually visited the place the whole country seemed a little bit unreal. Like it was all one bi...

Proper rain set in last night and is still going strong this morning. The rain is being pushed up here by some strong southerlies. Going to be an indoor day I reckon. Sent out an email to anyone who doesn't regularly post on FB to see how they were going. Speaking of FB, I’m finding that this event is helping me work out who has common sense, who has a sense of humour, and who is susceptible to conspiracy theories. There are the obvious ones who have always been part of the tin foil hat army, but it takes some sort of traumatic event to prod some people to ‘let their freak flag fly’. Lunch rolls around and I’m still in my pyjamas. Cracked open a two-year old jar of pickled cucumber and layered up some open face, cheese and pickle sarnies. Real quiet. Like super quite. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and roof. Very Wuthering Heights. Someone started a car a couple of hours back, but I don’t think they drove it anywhere? So far everybody seems to be complyi...

It was raining when I woke up this morning. Rain on a tin roof isn’t the worst way to regain consciousness. Anyone with a garden up here is happy with a bit of moisture seeping into the dirt. The channel out to the lemons ( read about it here ) is doing its job, but I might tune it up a bit once the rain has passed. Popped down to the dairy to grab some milk and bread. The bread bin was empty, but I’m still really glad to have a local shop for local people. Lunchtime and the air is filled with sparkling sunshine. The diesel engine of the‘essential service’ garbage pickup truck broke through the calm as it drove down the street, flinging lock-down garbage into its hopper. Touched base with the neighbour over the back fence. I’m pretty fucking lucky with the neighbours that I have here. I have absolute confidence that within reason, ‘they have my back’. Went down to check out the beach this afternoon. Unlike Bondi beach, we don’t have a crowd of oblivious self ...

I'm not at work today because the government shut the country down. All over Aotearoa there is no sport, no employment, no movies, no hanging out at the pub. Home improvements are starting, and children are being conceived. In the last couple of days everybody has been desperately polite. A smidgen of stress is adding a bit of edge to everybody's interactions. When I woke up this morning, there was some wind and the occasional rain shower. I lay in bed and through the open window I could hear somebody moving about. The neighbours on either side received firewood deliveries yesterday. Somebody must be transporting bits of log from the pile out on the street to a wood shed out back. The air outside is filled with the sound of the surf, and that’s it. It's amazing how much background noise, traffic adds to the environment. The most peaceful day of the week is usually a Sunday, but even then there's a background hum of cars and trucks. Even the modded Subarus and...

Not grown a lot of product this year and it’s allowed me to spend my time on garden structures and water works. I haven't been good at keeping the lemons hydrated, so I’ve decided to dig a channel to take water from a gutter straight to the lemon hedge. I’m dry laying all the bricks, mainly because I might need to move them about at a later date. Also, I’m not a fan of the bricks and mortar ‘look’.      I’m undecided about how the channels will work, and might need to install an underground pipe?

This is the Mk2 version. It was originally situated in a spot next to the house. I realised it was getting too much afternoon heat . I’ve moved it to behind the garage, which after midday sits in shade. I’ve rigged up some shade cloth to keep off most of the morning sun. I’m still in that ‘new toy’ stage where I can’t help prying the lid up to see if anything has happened. I’ve been told it takes a month or so for the worms to get a head of steam up.

Completely ignored the saffron planting last year. ( Read about it here ) Decided to do a cleanup of the bed. Cleaned out all the grass and carefully sifted out the corms. Spaced out the corms and covered with dirt. Mixed up some horse shit, composted soil, and comfery to improve the soil a bit. Covered the whole lot up with a layer of mulch.