HONG KONG 4

It seems that I have struck a chord on Facebook with my tales of a week spent in Hong Kong. Although many of you have signed up to be able to leave comments on this site, other people are reading it when I share each posting on Facebook, and leaving their comments on that page.

Instead of using public transport – subway, bus and ferry to reach our destinations, my son Paul who is resident in Hong Kong, arranged to hire a car and for the next two days of the weekend became our chauffeur.

Paul drove us to Aberdeen to take us to lunch on the largest floating restaurant in the world.

The Aberdeen marina.

I took this photo of the marina from the high rise parking facility of the Aberdeen Yacht Club. 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 »

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 »

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 »

A GREEN DROUGHT

The Severn River which forms one boundary of our farm flows south-west to join the largest river system in Australia, known as the Murray-Darling Rivers system. Like the Mississippi River in the USA it drains inland waters south to the sea. Early Australian explorers thought there must be an inland sea in the middle of Australia, as all the rivers they discovered on the far side of the Great Dividing Range drained westward. By following these rivers they found that they later joined with the Darling River to flow south and into the sea in what became the State of South Australia. Thus water from southern Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria flows south over several months before reaching its destination in South Australia. It is a slow flowing river and subject to periods of drought when it becomes nothing more than a series of water holes. A hundred years ago paddle steamers worked the river, carrying out wool bales and other produce from the interior. During times of drought they remained stranded waiting for “The river to come down.” During the past decade drought has once more dried this mighty river to a series of water holes.

Here on the Granite Belt at the northern end of this river system, we rely on summer storms to start the water flowing. Most years we get sufficient rain to bring our river down in a flood and on average, once in a decade we will get a mighty flood as happened in January 2008.

Flooded Severn River January 2008

Since this January flood we have received little rainfall and experienced a dry winter.  During these spring months, storms have only brought small falls. This has created a green drought. The countryside appears green, but there is little grass growth. The abundance of water in our frontage to the Severn River has provided me with the ability to irrigate my garden and Remembrance Field of Flanders poppies during this drought. Read the rest of this entry »

AN IMPORTANT DAY 11NOVEMBER.

As experienced by Fay’s Granddaughter.

I was only 22months of age when I helped my Gran with her duties last year on 11th November and my mother took these photographs to record the event.

Gran was serving breakfast to her guests at Das Helwig Haus B&B when I burst into the room with my usual shout of glee, throwing myself into her arms and giving her a kiss. This caused much laughter amongst Gran’s guests, one of whom said, “She’s a little pink blossom!”

Gran had work to do in preparation for the crowd about to arrive and at all times I tried to assist. I’m getting good at going on to the buses with Gran to welcome the visitors. Then the two of us stand at the entrance to hand out sprigs of peppermint for the guests to use as fly swats.

Welcome

After I had given the last sprigs away to the visitors, I has to fight my way through their legs to keep up with Gran who was telling them all about her garden. Read the rest of this entry »

DRAMATIC SEASONAL CHANGE

One of the joys of living at Glen Aplin on the Granite Belt is that due to the cool mountain climate this district experiences the four seasons of winter, spring, summer and autumn. Much of Queensland only knows the hot, humid wet season of summer and the warm dry season of winter.

In 1990 when I visited Europe in the early spring as the snow was melting I witnessed the dramatic change as tulips and pansies flowered in April just as the fruiting cherry and apple trees burst into blossom. in May they were followed by the lilac, phingst rosen and climbing red roses.

When we moved to live here at Glen Aplin in 1992 I realised I could grow these same flowers. I was agreeably surprised at how rapidly, just like I had seen in Europe, spring arrived and dramatically changed the appearance of my garden.

These photos taken in August, when the decision was made to remove large eucalyptus trees, and photos taken of the same scenes now reveal the changes.

Last month of winter at Das Helwig Haus B&B 2008

The Remembrance Field had been cultivated at the end of June. The Flanders poppies had germinated but were merely a green tinge across the soil due to the dry and frosty conditions throughout July and August.

We had made the decision to bring in heavy equipment – a large excavator on tracks, with a bucket in which a man could be raised to tie chains to the branches of these eucalyptus trees. With a chainsaw the branches and tree trunks were cut to then be swung out and dropped onto the field.

The excavator claws then gripped these heavy lengths of timber and the machine clanked away to drop them in heaps off the field, where once more a chain saw could be used to cut wood into rounds, later to be split for firewood.

Now for the “WOW” factor. Read the rest of this entry »

FIVE POPPIES

There are several different varieties of poppies from the Northern Hemisphere growing in our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&. This morning after a shower of rain last night I found I had five varieties in bloom. I have photographed all five types of poppies for inclusion in this post today.

I’ll begin with the Flanders Poppy, commonly called the Field Poppy in Europe until it became associated with the battles in Flanders during World War One.

Flander Poppy

Flanders Poppy and honey bee.

Often there is considerable difference between individual Flanders poppies – Papaver rhoeas in both flower and leaf structure. The Reverend Shirley, an English cleric, noticed several different colours amongst a clump of wild poppies in his garden and with selective breeding produced the Shirley poppy which now bears his name. These poppies have the texture of crepe paper ranging through colours from rose pink to mauve and purple. In our Remembrance Field at Glen Aplin I often notice poppies with unusual colouring. Sometimes I will receive an telephone call from a excited gardener who obtained seed from me the previous year to say his seed has produced a new colour.

Papaver rhoeas with white centre and petal edging

First Oriental poppy of 2008

The poppies bred from the Papaver rhoeas stock have similar leaves and will last no more than one day as a cut flower. They are annuals and must be planted from seed each year. The Oriental poppies I grow are Papaver atlanticum, a hairy perennial with orange flowers. The first flowers appear deep within the foliage but later blooms may grow as tall as 60cm. As they are perennials they will carry over from one year to another.

Oriental poppies in 2007

Iceland poppies

One of the most beautiful poppies is the Papaver nudicaule commonly known as the Iceland Poppy. It is actually a perennial grown as a winter/spring flowering annual. This is an excellent cut flower, requiring no water if the stems are firstly seared with heat. I use a candle flame to scorch the stems.

Honey bees love these poppies

Like the Flanders poppies the Californian poppies – Eschscholsia Californica seed prolifically and have become one of the weeds of my garden. I have one garden bed where I allow them to grow each year as a ground cover under shrubs, but I have to thin them severely. I have also found that seed spread from my rubbish heaps to surrounding grassy areas where these colourful flowers have created perennial clumps. They don’t transplant easily as they have a single tap root, so should be sown from seed. However it is that strong tap root that allows them to survive as a perennial. They grow wild across the hills of southern California.

When bought in a seed packet there are a variety of colours including shades of cream, lemon, yellow, orange, red and mauve.

After a few years of self-seeding most of my poppies are the traditional yellow colour associated with the wild poppies of California.

Californian Poppy

In years gone by the Flanders poppy spread with mankind right around the Mediterranean Sea and across Europe from Russia to Great Britain. Man, with bags of wheat seed, probably carried it across the English Channel, as the poppy was a weed of wheat fields. Another alternative is that the seed was carried in soil attached to a garden implement.

There is much mythology associated with these poppies because they have grown for centuries around the Mediterranean. They appear on ancient Greek friezes and seed has been found in the tombs of the Pharaohs. One story is that they originated in China. It was then a white flower from which a potent drug was distilled, called the Flower of Forgetfulness. After a battle when much blood was shed upon a field, the poppies grew red the next year, with a black cross in the middle. These poppies are still a wild flower and each year I see variations of colour in the overall expanse of red from shades of orange to almost purple.
Throughout my childhood as I discovered the joys of embroidery I particularly liked the designs that featured what were commonly called the Field flowers. These were the red Flanders poppy, blue cornflower, golden wheat heads and sometimes the white Marguerite daisy. When holidaying in Europe with my husband in 1990 I realised a life long ambition, to see these flowers blooming amongst the wheat crops.
Two years later when we moved to live on the Granite Belt I realised that I could grow the red Flanders poppy to begin flowering in October and continue to the end of November. The poppy flower has a small cup-like seed head that perhaps contains a thousand seeds. These seeds are as small as ground black pepper and just as hard. As the seed ripens they fall as from a pepper pot on to the ground and remain there in the soil until conditions are ready for germination.
The field poppies, or Flanders poppies as they are now known, were weeds of the wheat fields of France and Belgium. Due to the devastation of World War One no wheat was planted in the fields over which the armies of Europe fought. The soil of these fields was disturbed by the shelling, trench digging and grave digging. We have all heard of the heavy rains that turned this arena into a quagmire during the winter months, but in the spring the poppies appeared with a blaze or red wherever the soil had been disturbed. The soldiers from Commonwealth countries had never seen the like and they named them the Flanders Poppy.
Each year we cultivate our Remembrance Field towards the end of June. This throws the fine seed on to the surface of the soil. Firstly we turn the soil over with a disc plough. Then harrows are dragged over the field to level the soil.

It is then necessary that the seed be kept moist for the next two weeks. It is possible that we will have a down pour of winter rain to soak the soil, but if rain doesn’t fall we apply water via overhead irrigation sprinklers.
This winter of 2008 has been cold and dry. The photo below shows the frost on the field one July morning. The poppies have germinated but are only small plants at the time this photo was taken.

The frosts have continued into August but I have great faith that once the warm weather arrives in September the poppies in the Remembrance Field will grow rapidly.