A SEASON ENDS

Each year as the month of November comes to an end I am always amazed to discover some significant aspect has been added to our peaceful observance of the costs of war borne not only by those who leave their homeland, but their dependants who remain and wait.  As you saw in my previous post we were visited by Amanda McLeay of TVTen and that night our floral tribute to the fallen was shown wide and far across Queensland and northern New South Wales. The immediate result was that holiday makers travelling north, who had overnighted in towns like Uralla in NSW called in to photograph our Remembrance Field and to ask for a packet of Flanders poppy seed. Then I received a request from a soldier’s wife, who had seen the TV presentation, asking if her husband could be photgraphed with her and their children in the Remembrance Field prior to his departure for Afghanistan.  I was told that when our men and women of the Australian Defence Forces are about to be deployed overseas the Department arranges for them to receive a selection of family photographs taken in the venue of their choice. This young soldier has already served in East Timor and Iraq. Of course I agreed to this request.

A soldier's family

These photographs were taken on the 19th November by which time time we had experienced three weeks of hot weather and the poppies were running to seed. Read the rest of this entry »

AN IMPORTANT WEEK

My readers may well ask, “Why is this week so important?”

My reply, “This is the week the Remembrance Field must be cultivated to enable the Flanders poppy seed to germinate thus ensuring the field will be ablaze with red poppies in full bloom for eleventh November.”

Following on from the slashing of the wheat and poppies at the end of 2010 we have this year cultivated the field three times with our little rotary tiller. I rely on wwoofers - Willing Workers on Organic Farms – to undertake this work every year.

The first turning over of the soil is the hardest work and this year that was done by Charlie from Austria.

Charlie had the muscles needed to turn the soil and incorporate the straw. I then allowed the field to grow a crop as green manure. Read the rest of this entry »

STANTHORPE MUSEUM REMEMBERS

The sun shone brightly, although thunder rumbled occasionally to the west, as the Granite Belt community gathered to remember the fallen at the Stanthorpe Historical Museum on Thursday 11th November.

Back in August I had been asked for Flanders poppy seeds by one of the volunteers who work at the museum. I replied that it was too late to then grow poppies from seed, but that I would bring in some plants from the Remembrance Field and transplant them into the prepared garden bed.

Poppies at the Stanthorpe Museum

Flanders poppies are best grown from seed and do not establish easily when transplanted, so it was with delight that I observed some of the transplanted poppies were flowering beneath the railway siding place names that once marked the destinations throughout the Soldier Settlement established in 1920 when 500 returned service men took up blocks of land to grow apples. Read the rest of this entry »

COREOPSIS – WEED OR WILDFLOWER?

Golden Coreopsis

It was largely due to the spread of this perennial plant, a native of the prairie grasslands of the USA, that farmers feared the introduction of the Flanders poppy into the Granite Belt district and opposed my proposal for a Memorial Drive linking Amiens, Messines, Bapaume, Passchendaele, Bullecourt, Pozieres and Fleurbaix where people along this route could grow the poppies to bloom for 11th November.

The farmers said, “We have enough flowering weeds in this district!” They pressured the Stanthorpe Shire Council  to veto my proposal. I took the heat out of the issue by establishing a field of Flanders poppies on our land as a Remembrance Field to prove that the poppies were unlikely to spread in the same manner as the Coreopsis.

I knew that the Eastern Rosella parrots ate the seed of these flowers and then via their droppings, spread that seed across the district. I knew that the Coreopsis was a perennial plant of the prairie grasslands of the USA and was therefore adapted to grow in grass country.

Farmers can easily cultivate out Coreopsis seedlings from any agricultural field, but the Coreopsis is a perennial plant that has adapted to grassland. Therefore the roots will remain alive after the leaves have been eaten by livestock or burned during annual burning of grassland. Read the rest of this entry »

DISASTROUS FROST

The sun rises now about 5.30am and I didn’t stir from my bed until 6.30am so I never witnessed the white sheet of frost that others say they saw this morning. Frost is always one of the big problems faced by gardeners who live in areas where sub-zero temperatures are experienced. Here in the cool mountain climate of the Granite Belt we can usually expect our winter frosts to begin by the end of April and finish by mid-September, but great variability is shown when comparing the seasons of different years. In 2008 we had our first frost on 30th March and our last frost in mid-August.

My photos will tell the story.

Hang down your head frosted poppy and cry.

It is a well known fact that many plants only become susceptible to frost damage as they begin to bloom and their hormones change from growth to flowering. Although all the Flanders poppies blooming in the field this morning were cut by the frost, and several leaves will show burnt tips, the field will quickly recover, as the poppies are a weed of the wheat fields of Europe and like all weeds are hardier than most garden flowering plants. They germinate in the freezing cold weather of winter and begin blooming by mid-spring. Read the rest of this entry »

THE DARLING DOWNS

When I was a child I was taught that the Darling Downs possessed one of the best areas of agricultural soil of the world – the black color indicating the wealth of humus. But what is the Darling Downs? It is a region of country west of the Great Dividing Range of eastern Australia in south-eastern Queensland. Toowoomba, at the crest of the Great Dividing Range, is the city gateway to the west. This city has become notable not only for it annual floral ‘Carnival of Flowers’, but as a city of boarding schools plus a University to serve students from the south western portion of the State.  It is also a haven where the elderly retire because of large hospitals, other medical facilities and a cool mountain climate. Warwick is a smaller city at the southern end of the Darling Downs. Dalby is at the northern extremity and by the time you have reached Roma in the west you have left the Darling Downs and entered the grazing country of the Maranoa.

In my youth I lived north of  Dalby near the Bunya Mountains and attended boarding school in Warwick - another city of private schools which provide high school education for children from more isolated regions. When I married Stewart McIver I lived on farms at Bell prior to moving into Dalby. When that marriage ended I moved to Toowoomba where I met and married Eberhard Helwig and we later moved to Stanthorpe in the border highlands south of Warwick.

Map of the Darling Downs

Last weekend we left home on the Friday morning and drove via Warwick and Toowoomba to reach Dalby 3 hours later where I spent the afternoon signing books at the Dalby BOOK CITY store. The next day we caught up with family and friends at Bell where my 94 year old father was the guest of honour at a Campdraft. Sunday we spent another 3 hours driving home on the western route through Millmerran to Inglewood before turning east to our home just south of Stanthorpe. I sketched this map so you could follow our travels. Read the rest of this entry »

BOOK LAUNCH 2

1. I wrote a manuscript
2. I found a mentor
3. He became my literary agent
4. He could not convince an Australian publishing firm to produce my book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine
5. He edited my book and place it online with http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary
6. It began to sell ‘Print on Demand’
7. 94% of readers gave it a positive review. Lulu gave it 5***** and placed it on the Amazon.com site
8. I arranged to have the book printed for distribution within Australia.
9. I launched the book
10. I must market the book

Border Post article

Read the rest of this entry »

HONG KONG 3

I had chosen to take this holiday to Hong Kong to have a rest and Carol told me it was only on the third day that I started to pick up pace. I wondered if perhaps she had started to slow down to match my steps. We were staying in central Kowloon near the Mong Kok subway which made travel for us convenient to many destinations. Our hotel had provided us with a booklet about the attractions of this region.

Hong Kong map and attractions.

We had remained at Mong Kok at Kowloon on Wednesday, visited the Stanley Market and Murray House on Hong Kong Island on Thursday. On Friday we decided to visit Lantau Island to view the Giant Buddha. Read the rest of this entry »

MY BOOK IS PUBLISHED

On the 26th February, 2009 I became a published author. My book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine was released on this site http://stores.lulu.com/strictlyliterary

My literary agent had presented my manuscript to a number of big name publishers in Australia only to be told they regretted that they were not publishing any books of this genre. Amazingly, it proved relatively easy to have the book published  in the USA. We are now in a global society and people are increasingly using the internet, so rather than have many books printed and on display in stores, we have taken the option of having my book printed on demand.

This is the photo used on the cover, where the dedication reads:To Eberhard, my dear husband and supportive partner in Das Helwig Haus B&B.

The cover of Wildflowers, wilderness and wine.

This photo was taken by freelance photographer David Martinelli when he was preparing a feature of the Sunday-Mail newspaper about our Remembrance Field and 11th November observance of the signing of the Armistice Treaty at Versailles in France at the end of World War One.

Eberhard and Fay

The publishers have called Wildflowers, wilderness and wine a Travel Memoir – a genre I would never have considered, yet I hope it will do much to attract travelers to visit the region. Read the rest of this entry »

AN ABUNDANCE OF POTATOES.

With a bit of luck I can manage to grow several crops of potatoes each year, planting the first seed potatoes in  October with a further planting after Christmas. Potatoes will handle quite rough soil so are a good crop to put into new ground. They are not a deep rooted plant like carrots, which will push down into the soil. Instead, the tubers grow out from the original seed potato. It is necessary to hill them as the plants grow to cover the young tubers. If you keep building up the soil around the stem of the plant they will continue to make fresh tubers in ever increasing layers. This may also be done by creating a support for the soil with rubber tires mounted on rubber tires.  This is a great way of cropping for people with limited gardening space. Using this method it is also possible to grow potatoes in the milder winter climates, providing the tops are covered each night against frost.

Potatoes are well suited to growing in furrows which can be flooded with a garden hose and is the way I prefer to grow mine. To get an early start this year I planted two rows of seed potatoes in October amongst the red Flanders poppies in my Remembrance Field at Das Helwig Haus B&B at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland.

Potato rows

Three young Koreans came in November to work for me as WWOOFers – Willing Workers on Organic Farms and as the poppies finished flowering they removed them and hilled the potatoes. Read the rest of this entry »