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 »

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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 »

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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 »

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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 »

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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 »

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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 »

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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 »

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SUCCESS BREEDS SUCCESS

It can be said that nothing succeeds like success. Once a successful outcome has been achieved more successes will automatically follow. Das Helwig Haus B&B on the Granite Belt near Stanthorpe in southern Queensland was named by the journalists of The Courier-Mail newspaper in 1998 as the Best B&B in the Sunshine State. As our fame spread every journalist who visited the Granite Belt chose to write about our Bed and Breakfast home or my garden.

Back in the 1980s when I had lived at Dalby, I had begun a course called Writing for the Media from the TAFE College in Adelaide. The knowledge I gained was to assist me enormously. I could write advertisements and by 1998 had I designed our website layout for http://www.webstation.com.au/accom/helwig

When contacted by SBS TV The Food Lovers Guide to Australia asking for details of our  German style Christmas in July dinners I wrote a TV script of how we spent our days. The presenter arrived carrying my script in her hand and proceeded to follow it during their two day stay.

Eberhard is filmed preparing a goose.

Eberhard joked with the crew, “What is the difference between a cook and a chef? A cook does his own washing up. I do my washing up!” Read the rest of this entry »

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A NEW START

A successful business has three essential components.

• A good product
• Good financial management
• Good marketing

A good financial manager and a good marketer are never found in the same person. My husband, Eberhard, is a work motivated Introverted, Sensing, Thinking and Judgmental personality/temperament type – an ISTJ. This type are the salt of the earth and make great middle managers, school inspectors or hospital matrons.

I am an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Perceptive type – an INFP – a spirit motivated person. Although rare in number this type are to be found in nurturing positions as teachers, nurses and missionaries, but they also have a capacity for creativity and drama as actors or writers.

There are values that Eberhard and I have in common like we are scrupulously honest, but apart from the Introversion of preferring small groups of people over large crowds, we are opposites in many ways. My reading of psychology helped me greatly to understand the motivation of my husband, especially his work related values and how to partner him in a joint business. We developed a clear demarcation of duties, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses that each possessed.

Eberhard managed our finances and the nitt gritty matters of keeping everything functioning smoothly.  I am the holistic thinker looking to the future and planning our marketing – a visionary. I chose to call our Bed and Breakfast home Das Helwig Haus B&B - The Helwig House; to provide a German decor, German music and German food. Thus I differentiated it from every Honeysuckle Cottage, Apple Blossom Inn or Camellia Cabin in the district.

Das Helwig Haus B&B

After moving to the Granite Belt my personality began to bloom. Here no one knew my father, my former husband or my children. For the first time I was not seen as a daughter, wife or mother, but as an intelligent, hard working woman to be valued as a person. Already in his sixties, Eberhard had achieved most of his goals in life and was willing to support me while I followed my dreams. In 1995 I was asked to contribute to the tourism community by standing for election as a Director of the Southern Downs Tourism Board. Read the rest of this entry »

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AN ABUNDANT SUMMER BEGINS.

Is it possible that our Queensland climate could be reverting to the type of summer weather this state hasn’t experienced for two decades? It is shaping up that way with excellent rain on the Granite Belt and a devastating storm hitting Brisbane a few days after my last Red November garden tour. Now my garden is growing like a jungle and the neigbour’s cattle are happily grazing our grass land. The Severn River is flowing and our dams are full.

I set out to take a walk with my camera on Saturday afternoon and met our flock of geese marching home to be penned for the night safe from foxes and other predators. They are always rewarded with a handful of cracked corn to encourage their return, although as a grazing bird their diet consists mainly of grasses and herbage.

Geese coming home.

I was heading down to photograph one of the dams when I began to see the occasional speckle of a white field mushrooms amongst the grass, so promptly returned for a basket and knife. Read the rest of this entry »

Technorati Tags: Brisbane, currants, field mushrooms, flanders poppy, flock of geese, Glen Aplin, jam, jelly, Korean, lettuce, organic garden, poppies, potatoes, Queensland, Red November, remembrance field, severn river, strawberries, the granite belt, vegetable, wwoofers