In Defense of Food

Here is a brief excerpt from an excellent book I’ve been reading:

People eating a Western diet are prone to a complex of chronic diseases that seldom strike people eating more traditional diets. Scientists can argue all they want about the biological mechanisms behind this phenomenon, but whichever it is, the solution to the problem would appear to remain very much the same: Stop eating a Western diet.

In truth the chief value of any and all theories of nutrition, apart from satisfying our curiosity about how things work, is not to the eater so much as it is to the food industry and the medical community. The food industry needs theories so it can better redesign specific processed foods; a new theory means a new line of products, allowing the industry to go on tweaking the western diet instead of making any more radical changes to its business model. For industry it’s obviously preferable to have a scientific rationale for further processing foods – whether by lowering the fat or carbs or by boosting omega-3s or fortifying them with antioxidants and probiotics – than to entertain seriously the proposition that processed foods of any kind are a big part of the problem.

(In Defense of Food, an eater’s manifesto, by Michael Pollan.)

For more information see:

http://michaelpollan.com/books/in-defense-of-food/

Online GST Campaign.

There is a bit of a protest going on in Australia, with some major retailers demanding online goods purchased from overseas be subjected to GST like locally sourced goods.

But where do most of the retailers source the stock that they sell to the public?

From overseas!

DO THEY expect to pay GST on their imported goods too?

Recently I bought books from an AUSTRALIAN based online book shop. The books they delivered came from overseas and were GST exempt. One book I wanted to order would cost me $55 plus deliver of $6.00.

I have since ordered the SAME book directly from an overseas supplier for $23.00 and free delivery.

Charge me 10% GST for all I care - it would only add $2.30 to the cost instead of $38.00 more from the local supplier!

(The local supplier is part of one of the major book chains found in most Australian shopping centres.)

Blogging My Obsessions…

My profile description exposes me as a man of “diverse obsessions”. My primary obsessions can be determined from the content of my three blogs.

At the top is faith in Jesus Christ. My first blog “Onesimus Files” (focused upon that faith) has now been going for 5 years. It’s something I take very seriously and I have deep concerns about the extent that church tradition and theology have moved away from the foundations of simple biblical teaching. So often theologians spend time explaining why the bible doesn’t really mean what it clearly says and “Christianity” today is far removed from the teachings of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament.

Where the "Blogs Have No Names", is the second blog I started. It has no specific theme, but it became a record of my move from Sydney to the country with a lot of emphasis on my gardening attempts.
I haven’t written much about my garden recently because, over winter, there hasn’t been much to write about. The garden is merely less productive and more lifeless than at other times of the year.
Winter has allowed me to make a start on my front garden – reclaiming more lawn to establish a new native garden bed. Unfortunately winter isn’t the best time for planting. The frost has hit things hard and some of my new plants may not survive.

The blog name was clearly influenced by the U2 song “Where the Streets Have no Name”, and I came up with it on the spur of the moment when I couldn’t think of anything clever to name it.

My most recent blog is “Out of Shadows”. A “literary blog” dealing with books I’ve been reading as well as some thoughts about writing and storytelling. When I started that blog I was going through a period of frustration. Several times in my life I have tried to change career direction, but every time I seem to travel full circle and end up back where I started – and again I’m back in an administrative job little different to every other job I’ve had.

“Out of Shadows” was initially a tool to revitalise the only career ambition I ever had – to be a writer. The first step on that journey was the revival of my interest in reading. I had to find books that I could enjoy, that would maintain my interest until I reached the end. I’ve started far too many books that were eventually abandoned or perhaps more correctly: forgotten through disinterest.

So far I haven’t done too badly with the reading part. By keeping a list of completed books I can see the progress I’m making, but there is the temptation to inflate the numbers through choosing “easy reads”.

Looking over my reading for this year I can see that the majority has been non-fiction, so I’ve drifted away from the aim of re-inspiring my desire to write fiction.
Authors are always being asked for advice from people like me who have writing ambitions, and one of the common pieces of advice they give is to read. I guess reading other writers is supposed to provide inspiration, but there are so few writers today who I would find inspiring.

Yesterday I looked over the list of the fiction I’ve read recently, trying to select my three favourite books. I struggled. There was only one clear choice, and a second that made the grade with a couple of minor reservations. For a third I had to compromise a little by choosing a book I ‘d recently reread – one that I had enjoyed years ago, but not quite so much the second time around.

I was intending to write an article about my top three choices (three fiction and three non-fiction) but have decided to wait until I finish reading Slam by Nick Hornby – I’m enjoying it so much that I can already see it will easily push the compromise book out of contention.

Reading back over this article I can see how easily I become distracted. In what was intended as a look at my diverse obsessions, I have touched on merely a few. Maybe a clearer idea of the things that interest me would be found in reading through earlier posts, both here and on my other blogs. And perhaps the books I’ve been reading will also give a clue to some of my many interests.

Books of Interest

On my book blog I have reviews of two books that may be of interest.

Chocolate and Zucchini









Foxeys Hangout

Eventful Weekend.

Often weekends merely provide us with a welcome interruption to our weekly work schedule – replacing our days at the office with household chores; but some are more memorable than others.

Last Saturday and Sunday threw us a lot of surprises.

We drove to Wollongong to visit my parents. For most of Saturday nothing was out of the ordinary until a power cut interrupted our TV viewing. This would normally be a minor inconvenience, but my semi-invalid dad found himself stuck in his reclining chair. Stuck because it is operated electrically and he couldn’t lower the chair to allow himself to get out. It does have a battery back-up for such occasions but he had never bothered to install the battery.
Three of us had to wrestle with him (and the chair) to help him out.

Even though the power returned less than an hour later, we all decided to go to bed anyway. Gloria and I found it hard to settle because of a strange noise that repeated at regular intervals. We were staying in a room usually used by my young niece who has several talking toys in the room so we though one of them may have been playing up. Every 13 minutes we heard something/someone saying “Aha!!!”

After about an hour of puzzling over this our attention was drawn elsewhere by a series of loud explosions. Gloria opened the blinds and for the next 15-20 minutes we were entertained by a spectacular firework display courtesy of the nearby Buddhist temple as part of their Chinese New Year celebrations.

The next morning the mysterious “Aha!!!” was back and after another hour of investigation we discovered the culprit. There was an automatic insecticide spray on top of a book case and every 13 minutes it would attempt to expel a dose of its poison. However it seems to have been empty and could only emit a dry gasp.

We drove home later that day and ran into the kind of downpour that causes nightmares on the road. And it was a nightmare for some. We saw two separate accidents where cars had aquaplaned from the road and into the ditch between the northbound and southbound lanes of the Hume Highway. One the cars had rolled onto its roof and was being attended by an ambulance crew. We saw the Police Rescue racing to the scene a few minutes later.
Despite the obvious dangers due to wet roads and very poor visibility we still had trucks racing past us at high speeds.

The rain eased and the sun came out about half an hour later when we pulled off the Highway to visit the town of Gunning. We’d noticed a sign advertising an antique shop so we decided to have a look. Next door to that shop was an old movie theatre now being used as a book shop and art gallery. I can never resist looking for treasures in old book shops so we went in and looked around. Just inside the door was the old ticket office that the shop owner was using as his office/counter. He didn’t look up when we walked in.
To the back of the room was a set of stairs going up to the old projection room and we followed the signs that told us there was more to see upstairs. I brought Gloria’s attention to a painting by someone famous, Max Cullen, a man perhaps better known over many years for his acting rather than painting. The name wasn’t familiar to her but I said she’s definitely know him if she saw him because he’d been in a lot of Australian films and TV series.

We went back downstairs, Margaret left the shop and I spent a few more minutes looking. On the way out I looked across again at the owner. This time he looked up at me with a big bearded, smile – and it was Max Cullen himself.

The final surprise came when we arrived home.
It wasn't unexpected considering the downpour we'd experienced on the road. There was 67.5mm in our rain gauge.

Last Post for 2009

Almost Christmas again and I’ll be away from my computer until after the New Year holiday. I haven’t contributed much here in recent weeks because I’ve been concentrating on my newest blog which is devoted to books. One of my recent entries on that blog is a review of Linda Cockburn’s new novel Who Killed Dave which many will find to be an entertaining read but overall was not to my taste. Some will know Linda through her blog, her articles in Organic Gardening, or her previous book Living the Good Life.



According to recent weather reports we can expect some heavy rainfalls over the Christmas break as the remains of tropical Cyclone Laurence head into NSW. A decent downpour would be very welcome to top up my water tank. It is now down to half full, the lowest it’s been since it was full to overflowing a few months ago.

The most productive things in the garden at the moment are the yellow button squash. We have three plants that are bearing more than enough fruit every day. We are also getting a good supply of zucchini, but they have not yet reached the fruitfulness of previous years.

This year I have tried a new type of bean. It has purple pods that are supposed to turn green when cooked. We have now begun to pick the first of these, but so far haven’t had the opportunity to try them. We also have our usual “lazy housewife” that is beginning to provide a promising number of beans. Its still early days, and I sowed fewer seeds this year, but we will hopefully get enough from the plants to meet our needs.

Last week I harvested all of my garlic. It is now hanging in the garage to dry. Likewise my Barletta onions were ready and are also drying out a little more under cover. The rest of my onion crop has also done very well but needs more time in the ground.

We had expected to get our first reasonable sized blueberries this year, but we were too slow in netting them and every bit of fruit disappeared thanks to the birds. Fortunately there weren’t many on the bush so there weren’t many to lose – but it would have been nice to at least get a taste.

At the back of the garden I have two Goji Berry bushes. Be warned – if you are thinking of growing them they send out vigorous suckers. That’s not the kind of thing they list on the label when you buy them. Ours are now entering their second year. I’m not sure when they are supposed to fruit but we’ve had no sign of anything yet.

Our Raspberry is also looking very vigorous, but again no hint of it fruiting. It also has new growth springing up everywhere in its immediate vicinity; but at least I was aware that it would send out suckers and the many new shoots were no surprise.

I now realise that I’ve overplanted my tomato patch. It is very congested and hard to see the fruit. Most of them were from seeds that were free with Burkes Backyard magazine but I did buy one Black Russian plant from Big W. That plant is doing very well and being on the edge of the garden I can a lot of good sized fruit waiting to ripen. Hopefully we can avoid fruit fly this year. It’s been three years since I last tried tomatoes, hoping the break might help us to avoid the problem when we tried again. The first tomato crop we grew wasn’t helped by the fact that a peach tree had been neglected in the garden prior to our move into the house. The peaches became infested with fruit fly so we decided to cut it down and to rely on the many nearby stone fruit orchards for our summer fruits.

Heat Effects and Death to the Lawn!

Apart from a short post about kamikaze insects I’ve neglected this blog for a while. With a couple of weeks of extreme heat, gardening hasn’t been very appealing and a as result the garden itself has taken on a neglected look.

It’s been hard to keep things in order when the temperature made it too uncomfortable to spend time outside. And there was just no way I could keep dehydration of the plants at bay with the hose. Now, most of the roses have crashed and my potatoes are very bedraggled after a very promising and healthy looking start.

With the lack of recent gardening inspiration I have been spending time starting up my new “literary” blog: Out of Shadows and I’ve tried to catch up on some of the books I’d been neglecting. But my garden was not completely abandoned.

On some of the cooler evenings I did venture out to reclaim some of the lawn area by creating two new garden beds. The first of these was next to the new water tank (which is now half empty again). We had three cubic metres of garden soil delivered and only half was needed for the tank area, so I used the rest to extend an existing garden.

To create the first bed I put layers of newspaper over the grass, piled a good thickness of the soil on top and added a covering of sugar cane mulch. Towards the back of this garden I planted a fuchsia that is supposed to grow up to two metres tall. If that height estimation is correct it will make quite an unusual looking plant because its flowers are tiny. Unfortunately I’m not very confident of its future, it seems to be struggling. Planting during an extended period of extreme heat perhaps didn’t give it the best start – although it is in one of the more shaded areas of the garden.

The second garden bed will be left for a while. I approached this one differently. Firstly I marked its borders by digging up the grass around the edges. I then placed the clumps onto the garden area grass side down and covered them with thick biscuits from a bale of “lucerne” straw. [I put the lucerne in quotes because there seemed to be more oats than lucerne in the bale – with an occasional hint of “Riverina bluebell”!]. I covered all of this with a good thickness of newspaper and topped it all off with the rest of the delivery of soil. I won’t plant anything here until the various layers have settled down significantly giving the area a bit more stability. I also used the last bit of my sugar cane mulch to cover half of the bare soil.

Looking at the back yard now I can see it taking the shape I’ve been looking for. After more than three years of planning and replanning, I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere. There were two clear turning points that started to move things out of my head and onto the ground. Firstly was the relocation of the old Hill’s hoist clothesline which had been right in the middle of the garden, limiting access and mobility. We replaced that with a removable clothesline to the side of the house which opened up many more possibilities. It also improved the view from the windows in our family/dining room.
The second turning point was the installation of the water tank. Now that the tank is in place we can attend to the area that was needed for access for the tank delivery.

Eventually I will reclaim all of the lawn at the back. Most will be converted to garden beds, with a small open paved/gravelled area in the middle. We’ll need to shade that area in some way, but the means of doing that will be considered later.

I’ve written quite a lot here without including any photos to illustrate the things I’ve been writing about. I haven’t taken any photos recently because the decline of the garden (after such a promising start in early spring) has been a bit discouraging. But now the weather seems to have cooled off a little, and after a decent rainfall yesterday, I might take the camera out again in the next couple of days to take a few more photos to post at a later date.

Autobiographical Musings: Ambition, the Arts and Literary Leanings.

When I started this blog it was intended to be an outlet for my thoughts and experiences relating to artistic matters, yet because of changed personal circumstances it has evolved into something entirely different

Most of my spare time over the past few years has revolved around our move from Sydney to the country and the very slow establishment of the garden. I enjoy the productive side of gardening: seeing things come to life and being able to harvest fresh food from the backyard, but I miss some of my other interests that have been put on hold and pushed aside

Some times it’s necessary to step back and take stock; to re-evaluate where I am and where I want to go.

I suppose when I moved to the country it seemed like the perfect escape from a stress and work-dominated life in Sydney. And the emphasis was on the “escape FROM” instead of an escaping TO. What would happen once we left the city and how we would create a viable lifestyle was not given enough consideration. We were caught up in the romanticism of the move, trusting in many impractical ways of supporting ourselves.

After an almost idyllic first year, reality returned and I now find myself working full time hours in yet another admin job, not too different from others I’ve done. No matter how many times I’ve tried to change direction I eventually end up back where I started.

Have you ever had those interviews and performance reviews in which you are questioned about your ambitions and where you see yourself in five years time? I always thought that my presence in those interviews was a sign of my LACK OF ambition. I wouldn’t have remained in those admin/clerical positions if I was driven by the desire to climb the corporate ladder. My sense of purpose has NEVER been connected to career and employment. Spending most of your life working in an unfulfilling job merely to support a barely existent “life-style” doesn’t seem like a very good investment of time, but what could I do about it?

Part of my most recent attempt to escape this rut has been documented on this blog, but this is not the first failed attempt.

In the early 90s I left full time employment to study at University. I enrolled in a Bachelor of Creative arts course to study creative writing.
Earlier I touched on my lack of ambition – but that lack has only related to the business world in which I’d become trapped. Looking back throughout my life I started to remember my childhood desire to be a writer and realised that writing was the only ambition I could recall having.

Throughout primary and early high school years I would write stories and especially plays. For a time I had some very encouraging and tolerant teachers who made way for my creativity, allowing performances of my plays in class. Often these little dramas would be nothing more than a rewriting of recently seen movies or TV shows, but occasionally I’d come up with an original story and have the thrill of having a work of my own imagination performed in class.

I suspect things changed when my family moved from England to a new life in Australia. I was thrown into a very different educational system with very different people. With all of that came a loss of confidence as I tried to adjust to so many new things at the same time as I was entering puberty. My creative output became limited to set school assignments and writing for pleasure became a rare activity.

Fast forward 10 years.
In my mid twenties I decided to put pen to paper again. I started writing a mixture of articles and stories and submitted several to magazines and newspapers. While nothing was accepted I received enough positive feedback to keep me going. I also attended a couple of writing courses held by local colleges. Eventually all of this led to the gamble I took when I gave up my job of ten years to enter the academic world.

Within the first weeks of the course I changed my focus from Creative Arts to a normal Arts degree, majoring in English Literature. I was still able to do all of the writing subjects I wanted, but was no longer under any obligation to include art subjects that didn’t seem relevant. In their place I had more opportunity to study the literary topics that took my interest.

After three years I graduated with very pleasing results and I spent a year applying for work in fields that would utilise my writing skills – with no success.
One employer replied to my application with the suggestion that I seek employment in heavy industry and manufacturing because that was more suited to my previous work experience.

Again my writing started to take a back seat – or more accurately it was banished to another vehicle entirely, until I discovered the internet world of the forum and the blog. And perhaps that brings me back to the present.

My writing in its current stage has been focused on two main areas of interest divided between two blogs. This blog in recent years has been mostly about my garden and the move to the country. The other blog “The Onesimus Files” has been an outlet for thoughts on theological topics.

I am now considering a third blog that may put me back on the literary path. The seed of this idea perhaps started to germinate when I came across the website of one of my former lecturers. He is now a successful full time author and his site contains interesting and useful information and links that have helped to rekindle my desire to explore some literary possibilities.
















I will probably stick with “blogger”. It is a familiar format and I don’t have the time or the will to play around with something else. I can also keep all of my blogs connected and easily accessible by sticking with what I know.

After making this decision I have already run into the first obstacle – what do I call it? Coming up with suitable names is not something I find easy – as can be seen from the name I gave THIS blog.

The first two names that I came up with have already been taken – either the world is far smaller than I realised, or my talent for original thought is severely lacking. Clearly that is not a good omen at the start of a new creative journey…

Killer Frosts and Bargain Hunting

Half way into spring and we’re still getting killer frosts. My butternut pumpkin has shrivelled to nothing after a night with a minimum temperature of -3 Celsius. The frost got to it despite being covered. At least I have an abundant supply of seed to try again,

I have also had slight frost damage on my squash and potatoes which were also covered. My first bean seedlings are also a bit iffy at the moment being the only frost tender things I forgot to protect over that cold night, but they may pull through since they had a little cover from some surrounding plants.

Around here the growing seasons are seriously affected by the two extremes of frost and heat. We seem to get only a month between the late frosts after winter and the early scorching heat leading up to summer. The same kind of effect can be evident in autumn, with early frosts dealing the death blow to the last crop of frost tender veggies.
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A week ago Gloria and I went on an “antiques” quest, starting at the Wagga Wagga antiques fair and then doing a circuit of the antiques shops in nearby towns. Mostly we tend to treat these places as museums admiring the artistry of earlier ages, but when we stumble across a bargain we occasionally make a purchase. Gloria was able to pick up some Art Glass vases for a very good price. Not only do they look good they can be put to practical use to display flowers from the garden.

She also bought a less practical vase, a piece by Colin Heaney from Cape Byron Hot Glass. She has liked his style of work for a number of years after buying a piece in Sydney and she was hoping to find something else by him. However, being very much amateurs we had to rely on the dealer’s labelling to be aware that Heaney was the maker.

The vase was the first thing that Gloria saw when we entered the fair. It was in a cabinet at the entrance. It was identified only as “Art Glass - signed” with no details of who made it. It was a very attractive glass vase covered with various vivid colours (mainly blue) in a metallic like finish. We made a note to check it again when we’d been around the rest of the stalls.

Eventually we went back to the vase and after attempted haggling the vase was purchased. The stall owner suggested that it dated to the 1930s when that particular style of glass was popular (I had my doubts – the “88” etched beside the indecipherable signature gave me a clue). When we got home I had a closer look at the signature and for some reason I compared it to the signature on the Colin Heaney piece Gloria had bought before. It was the same. Without knowing, she had actually bought the piece of Colin Heaney glass that she had hoped to find and the “88” beside the signature DID indicate it was made in 1988 and not in the 1930s. She also bought it for half the price she had paid 10 years ago.

While Gloria got a little carried away with her glass purchases, she was not the only one to make an exciting discovery. I picked up a hard covered, illustrated copy of Richard Adam’s “Watership Down” enclosed in a slip case for the exorbitant price of…

$3.00!!!

Autograph Collector (part 2)

While buying autographed photos can make elusive signatures accessible, it is not the most satisfying way of building a collection and the cost is often more than most can afford. It’s not a method I would use again.
Affordability is one of the reasons I have chosen to continue collecting autographs as opposed to collecting other things. It’s a hobby that can be adapted to suit your financial situation.

In my previous blog entry I mentioned some of the ways I’ve used to obtain autographs. They are mainly low-cost. At most it has involved the purchase of a CD or a book at a signing event.

I also request autographs via mail, which is another low-cost method. The only expense being a couple of stamps and envelopes (I always send a self addressed, stamped envelope to be used to return the signed item) and of course, something to be signed.

That brings up the question about what kind of item we can post in the hope of getting it signed. Personally I’ve not been willing to take the risk of sending things of value through the mail. Not only is there the risk of losing the item, but the postage costs also increase.
My preference has been to send blank index cards or if I’m writing to an author I’ll send a book label. The cards are reasonably easy to find in stationery shops but I had a little difficulty obtaining suitable labels.
Most of the more common book labels stocked by book shops are too ornate. It took me quite some time to track down what I wanted and then I had to order them in. I therefore ordered extra to make sure I had enough to last for a few years. (examples can be seen on my previous blog entry).

Both the index cards and book labels are easily enclosed with a letter to the targeted celebrity and neither cost so much that it would be a disaster if the desired reply was not received.

When I send a letter I usually enclose three index cards. Sometimes all are returned signed, sometimes none come back. The occasional non-return of book labels is more disappointing because they were not easy to get and they cost quite a bit more than an index card.

However there are compensations that make up for those disappointments. Occasionally a reply will be received that contains much more than a signed card or label. I have received handwritten letters from several celebrities. Some authors have included promotional postcards associated with their books. Others have returned signed photographs instead of the cards I’d sent to them.

I’ve found it helpful to keep a record of the letters I’ve sent out, including address details and the date of mailing. When a reply is received the date of receipt is also recorded. Some replies come back within a couple of weeks. Others can take months. Some requests remain unanswered.

What do I do with the autographs that come back? The book labels are of course stuck into one of the author’s books. I keep the index cards in albums I’ve created out of loose leaf folders and plastic pockets. I try to mount the autographed card alongside a photo of the celebrity (see the Geena Davis page on the previous blog entry), or if there’s no photo available I’ll try to find something else that’s relevant; for example I have a card signed by Arthur C Clarke mounted with a handbill advertising “2001 A Space Odyssey”.

While I said that affordability is one of the reasons that I collect autographs, sometimes cost should not cause us to hesitate if a signature can be purchased at a reasonable price. There is always the likelihood of missing out on something special if we are too reluctant to spend a little money. Fishermen are renowned for their stories of “the one that got away” and I have a comparable autograph-hunters story.

It was a signed, first edition of Peter Carey’s “True History of the Kelly Gang” that was being sold soon after the books release for around $50.00 (AUD). The book went on to win the Booker Prize in 2001 and now a first edition UNSIGNED copy of the book is selling for $450.00 AUD.


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Autographs above are 1) American Country singer Chely Wright 2) Australian Country singer Kasey Chambers and 3) American Country Group SheDaisy.

All signed on the blank index cards I'd provided. SheDaisy also returned a signed black and white photo, personally addressed to my wife "Gloria".

Autograph Collector

Several years ago I started collecting autographs. It is a hobby that probably had its roots in my childhood when my parents bought me an autograph book while we were on holiday. The first entry in the book was the signature of a well known British comedian of the time who was performing in the town where we were staying. He very patiently waited as my mum searched her handbag for a pen. I’m surprised the experience didn’t become part of his comedy routine as my mum pulled all manner of things from the bag as she tried to find the pen she knew was somewhere in there…

I’m not sure why I renewed my interest in recent years. Maybe it was because I’d accumulated several signed items and realised that I was the owner of a small collection. That realisation became the motivation to add to what I already owned.

Like many hobbies, collecting autographs can be a very expensive hobby to pursue. There’s always someone trying to get us to part with our money. It all depends on how extreme we are willing to be. At first I was a bit too extravagant and spent quite a lot obtaining signed photographs of Hollywood stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves, Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder and others. That initial obsessive burst came to an end when I realised I could not justify spending that kind of money on things that had no real value. I also became aware that there was a much more satisfying way to increase my collection.

I now want to share some of those ways.

Firstly my collection is more or less focussed. While I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity of obtaining a worthwhile signature I concentrate on areas that interest me and restrict my active pursuit of autographs to those areas of interest.

My collection consists mainly of authors and country singers/musicians. I also have several sporting autographs which came about mainly through working for a company that sponsored several Olympic swimmers like Grant Hackett.

Very rarely would we regularly stumble across celebrities in our daily lives, so we need some way of contacting those in whom we have an interest. The more high-profile the celebrity, the less likely it will be that attempted contact will succeed.
After turning from my earlier extravagance most of my autographs have been obtained through the following methods.

Meet and greet opportunities after concerts. Many of my country music autographs were obtained in this way. The most profitable single occasion was a music “expo” which featured several artists performing prior to spending time meeting fans. Keith Urban also made a brief appearance here in the very early days of his solo success in America. This event was not restricted to the country genre. My daughter was also able to meet the members of Killing Heidi, a band she liked at the time.
I have found that country artists tend to be very generous to their fans. Maybe it’s because their genre does not have the profile given to commercial “radio-friendly” music. Australian country artists have also been accessible through in store appearances. If you can’t personally attend, some stores will allow you to purchase signed merchandise through mail order. Similar opportunities arise quite regularly in the literary world. Major book stores and publishers will hold book signings to promote newly published books. When I worked in Sydney the major book stores would often host visiting authors at signing events. Again if you are unable to attend, the stores will often take mail orders of signed books.

Apart from these public commercial events, I have had success through writing directly to a celebrity of interest. With musicians and authors this is usually done via their record company or publisher. Some of these are more helpful than others. I have always found MacMillan to be a very helpful publisher who in the past has forwarded correspondence to the intended author.


AUTHORS

A valuable resource for finding addresses has been the local library's copy of Who’s Who. Included in its brief biographical details the book often provides a mailing address. Most of the times I used that resource resulted in a signed reply including one from the cricket great Don Bradman.

One of the most memorable signatures I obtained personally was actress Geena Davis. She competed in an exhibition archery event prior to the 2000 Sydney Olympics. I was fortunate enough to be working nearby at the time and was able to call in to see her compete during my lunch break and was more fortunate to meet her on two separate days. The illustration at the beginning of this blog entry is a compilation made up of media photos, her autograph and a photo I took of her competing.

Kitchen to Garden

Several weeks ago I ordered “Chocolate & Zucchini” by Clotilde Dusoulier.
I came across the website of the same name by accident and loved the title. I couldn’t resist ordering the book from my local bookshop.
I picked it up on the weekend and don’t regret the impulsiveness of judging a book by its title. When I get the chance I intend to have a go at making her Beef Bourguignon: perhaps attracted by her use of chocolate in the recipe. The mere fact that I’ve been inspired to make a meal that needs to be prepared over a couple of days and requires more than three hours of cooking is a significant endorsement of this book, considering my cooking ventures to-date have been very limited.

Continuing with cooking related matters, the first series of Masterchef is over, and Julie came out as the winner. On the night of the final I think she was clearly the better of the two contestants despite the almost immediate claims of the result being rigged.

Overall I think Justine’s record throughout the series showed that she was more worthy of the title “Masterchef”, having won more of the shows challenges than any other contestant. The show’s format was not necessarily geared to finding the best chef/cook in the competition but was primarily focused on entertaining the viewer. That aim was certainly achieved considering the size of the regular audience which reportedly rose to a peak of 3.73 million for the finale.
Halfway through the last week the show also out-rated State of Origin football. Maybe next year the Blues and the Maroons should head for the kitchen for a cook-off if they want to regain their usual TV audience.

Finally, moving from the kitchen to the garden, the last part of my order from the Digger’s Club has arrived. Now I need to find the time to plant the following:

Blueberry ‘Northland’
Blueberry ‘Denise’
Chilean Guava x 2
Raspberry ‘Willamette’
Gooseberry ‘Roaring Lion’

I also received two free plants of Salvia Azurea and Comfrey.

Gardening "Progress".

I’ve recently been reading about gardening achievements that others have described in their books and blogs. This has made me think more about what I’ve done in my own garden and what I want to achieve in the future.

The reassessment of my gardening “progress” perhaps started a few weeks ago when I came across the book “Velvet Pears”. This in one of those very attractive books full of gorgeous photos interspersed with personal memoir.


The book details the creation of a stunning garden and the restoration of a house, at Tilba Tilba on the south coast of NSW. It’s the kind of story that will inspire any gardener; but also has the potential to plunge them into frustration and despair when they realise their own efforts fall well short of the apparent perfection the book portrays.

Moving on from the book I came across the blogs of two people who have recently moved house and now have gardens that are blank canvases to work upon. Their situation is similar to my own when I moved to my current home almost three years ago. I had all kinds of plans and prior to the move and I enjoyed sketching them out – trying to picture what I could do.

The basic parts of my planned garden started with the desire for roses, native plants (in particular grevilleas) and a veggie patch. I knew more or less which parts of the garden I would dedicate to each and to a great extent I was able to stick to that plan. Unfortunately the reality has not lived up to the dream.

What went wrong?
I’ll ignore the fact that I had no gardening experience – even though my ignorance was most likely the cause of every one of my problems. I now always say that my gardening efforts have been a process of trial and error, with an emphasis on the latter.

The first hindrance to fulfilling my gardening dream has been the block of land. Its width exceeds its length, and on a smaller block I don’t see this as ideal. This makes it more difficult to create the individual areas I wanted. I tend to think a longer block makes it easier to divide a garden into separate “rooms”.
Every part of the backyard can be seen from the windows of our back room so with any attempt to create “separate garden rooms” the joins are clearly visible so the intended illusion of individual secluded spaces is lost.

We also had a large, fixed clothesline right in the middle of the back garden that gave a very “picturesque” view from the back windows of the house. That problem was recently fixed. We removed the old clothesline and put in a new removable one at the side of the house.
Other problems are not so easily fixed such as the soil. It is very heavy clay. When dry it tends to bake like concrete, and I have found that it forms a hard crust about six inches deep, beneath which it is soft and powdery. However, that powder soon becomes thick and sticky when it gets wet.
The soil has caused most of my problems, the most noticeable being an area of natives I planted near the fence-line of the front garden. I attempted to create raised areas of free draining soil for each native plant but the results weren’t good enough. After a promising start several of the plants died and others were uprooted by the wind, having insufficient depth to give them an anchor. The growth of those that remain is very stunted, creating a collection of bonsai grevilleas.

The clay soil also slowed down the success of my veggie garden. I was foolish enough to think I could deal with the clay by digging in a bit of gypsum and composted cow manure. While this did have a slight effect, it was no where near enough to turn the designated area into a veggie friendly garden.

I took similar short cuts with the area I set aside for David Austin Roses. Instead of building up a significant area with decent soil, I decided to restrict my work to improving the soil in and around the planting holes. This did not have the desired effect. While I’ve had reasonable results from the roses, they have not grown as well as they should have done. I spread thick layers of newspaper around the plants to suppress the weeds and I covered this with sugarcane mulch. While this MAY have had an effect on the weeds for a while, our resident blackbirds soon put an end to that effectiveness by turning the paper into confetti as they dug through it in search of worms.

The last of the physical aspects I want to highlight is the aspect of the block. The front slopes towards the south which doesn’t help with frost. Firstly it is sloping away from the low winter sun and secondly it performs the perfect conditions to funnel early morning cold air towards the back of the house, aiding the forming of frost on my veggies and other plants. Last year we lost several plants to frost burn including a couple of grevilleas. I am now tentatively awaiting this years -6 temperatures and hoping they don’t damage my prized Bulli Princess which has grown to more than two metres tall since I planted it last year. It is now too big to protect with a tree guard.

In addition to the physical aspects of the land, my impatience to make a start on the garden has left me with some less than perfect plantings. I made use of the plants we had already purchased in Sydney prior to our move. This included a selection of red salvias and lavenders. I planted these in the first section of garden to be built from imported topsoil. It was along the side fence and I didn’t make provision for any taller screening plants because the salvias and lavenders grew far wider than I’d made allowance for.


I added a few other plants that were available at the time, but apart from a standard rose, nothing in the garden grows higher than about a metre. I am now trying to rectify this by adding a few taller growing shrubs. The first of these is a pencil-like conifer that should grow to 2-3 metres tall but no more than 50cm wide. The second, planted a few days ago, is an Acacia Decora (Western Golden Wattle) which can grow to 3 metres high with a width of 2 metres. Unfortunately the only suitable position for this was beside the standard rose, which will now have to be transplanted when winter arrives.

TOP TEN BOOKS

Over the years I have compiled a list of my top ten books. So far I have only found three that made the grade.

To qualify, a book needs to appeal to certain unspecified criteria. Unspecified because I, myself, am not sure what they are. All I know is that a book has "IT" - or at least had "IT" at the time when it was read.

The thing about this top ten (three), is that a book doesn't necessarily have to appeal to me now. My tastes have probably changed and what once appealed may no longer interest me in the slightest.

Well, after that preamble - the books.

1)Dune by Frank Herbert.
I read this some time around 1976 and immediately after I'd finished it, I started reading it again. I was thrilled to find there were sequels and looked forward to continuing the story through the subsequent volumes. However, despite several attempts I never was able to get all the way through the second, Dune Messiah - despite it being the smallest of the series.

2) That Eye The Sky by Tim Winton.
I read this some time in the 80s. I enjoyed its Australianness and the use of Australianesque narrative voice. I've tried to read this again, but have never managed to stick with it. Maybe it's like that first cup of coffee. It's always better than the second.

3) Dracula by Bram Stoker.
A relatively late entry, read some time in the early 90s. I'm not sure whether I saw the Coppola film first and that led me to stick with the book after several failed attempts in earlier years. However, I finally succeeded and felt the book was worthy of addition to this list.

What do these three different novels have in common? The only thing I can see is a type of spiritual content. Each deals with spirituality in a different way, yet it's a dominant feature of all three. They don't necessarily contain spiritual ideals worthy of aspiration - but they spoke to a hunger for that "something more" that we all experience at some times in our lives. Even if they were fictionalised explorations - they at least gave that vicarious satisfaction that great fiction can give us during the time we immerse ourselves in it.

Maybe others don't see them as great fiction - that's fine. You can all compile your own top ten books, and maybe you'll be able to include more than the three that made my list.

THE OBSERVATIONS OF A LAZY BIRDWATCHER

I'm now a little over halfway through Sean Dooley's book, "The Big Twitch"; his account of the year in which he set a new birdwatching record in Australia, by observing over 700 different bird species in a calendar year.

Inspired by his effort, yet feeling little of the obsession that saw him travel extensively around the nation, spending his inheritance in the process, I made an effort to note as many bird species as possible during my drive to work.

Firstly I was hindered by the weather. Wet.
Then the road was quite busy, and travelling along a narrow three lane, busy main highway doesn't leave much attention left over for bird watching. This is the quite disappointing tally:

1) Two adult and one juvenile Currawongs on the front lawn of Concord Hospital
2) Two Kookaburras sitting on electric wires (resist temptation to include childish rhyme about their pants being on fire)
3) Two more adult Currawongs in someone's front yard


Others not included in official tally due to poor viewing conditions.
1) A small group of flying parrots seen only in silhouette, but probably rainbow lorikeets
2) possible pigeon under the Victoria Road bridge.
3) Suspected Indian Mynah also under Victoria Rd bridge.
4) Several unidentified doves (or maybe one taking a short cut to keep ahead of me on the road - also sitting on power lines).

Maybe the drive home will be more productive.