Farming...

the surge of interest in locally grown food,  urban gardens, and growing your own food is great, but the fact is that farming is
continuous damn hard work.  There is no rest in the growing season:  Tim and Anna hand-pick zucchini for two hours EVERY day -- and that's just the start of the work.  A bit of tea and then time to snip the parsley, cut eggplant and rhubarb and complete whatever daily maintenance and cleanup is required.  Today I spent an hour in the steaming greenhouse picking up all the rotting eggplant that had been trimmed off the stalks over the past weeks, and learned why Anna was so pleased that i was available (and willing) to do it:


rotting eggplant smells just like rotting meat.

Not quite as instant gag-producing as, for example, rotting chicken (just imagining that while writing those words turns my stomach), but foul enough.  the skins are strong enough to hold the partially-rotten fruit together -- until you pick it up -- but the underside has often decayed thru, leaving behind a smear of brown...

I know that from now on, when i eat, I'll be thanking whoever grew and picked the food.

And speaking of picking food, another revelatory experience: went with Tim to deliver a load of vegetables to his local buyer, and everyone working there was Anglo.  It was a genuine surprise for me to enter a labor-intensive operation and not see a single Hispanic laborer doing difficult dirty jobs.  this again reminded me and reinforced the sad truth that more than most Americans want to realize, Hispanics -- often illegal and so, reviled by the right -- actually make America run, and we should thank them profusely instead of hounding and deporting them.

Just as most previous waves of laboring immigrants, once distrusted and resented by the previous arrivals -- Africans, Italians, Irish, Chinese, Germans, Japanese -- now see themselves as a vital and legitimate part of the American experience, i trust that the ridiculous onus of being "illegal" will someday be a badge of courage and contribution.

 LOCAL HEADLINES OF THE DAY:

                        BUT WHO TELLS THE PENGUINS?

                                                                                                                    AGAIN: DO THE GRASSHOPPERS KNOW?

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Platypuses, Wallabies and Crop Circles

after days of refreshing rain, two solid days of sunshine.

weather: clear, dry, sunny, 75 degrees.  Perfect.

Two bicycle rides and i'm approaching verticality again.

I did cross the Mersey River here, but on my bicycle rather than by ferry........

Some lovely local bits:

This is a beautiful green country, with stands of straight tall Eucalyptus trees dominating the landscape among the cultivated fields...

Latrobe, the nearest town (2 km) bills itself as the "Platypus capital of Tasmania," and i can well believe it:
 
Platypuses are ALL over the place, their flat tails beating against the pavement in a threatening manner if you ignore their requests to bum a cigarette or stand them a beer,  just DARING drivers to run them over as they saunter (any better word comes to mind i'll change my verb), and in general making nuisances of themselves.  Good thing they don't fly, because being bombed by platypus crap would be really annoying..

Children gleefully pose by the largest Platypus ever killed in this region                                                           

It also has the Australian Axeman's Museum (no, not a history of a famous ax murderer,tho Americans are forgiven for instantly drawing that conclusion). A current axeman is moving up in the world: 

click on pix to enlarge

***
While bicycling the other day, I kept noting large signs warning of death if the crop on the expansive fields beyond were consumed...  turns out Tasmania provides almost 50% of the worlds's medical opium and those were fields of opium poppies.  they've been harvested already, but there are those locals who have insisted on getting into trouble.  From the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8118257.stm):

'Stoned wallabies make crop circles' 

Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around "as high as a kite", a government official has said.

And these flagrant abuses of the law have inspired readers' ire:


READERS' RESPONSES:


I have seen a stoned wallaby but I don't know about them making crop circles. The one I saw was slurring his words and asking me for a dollar as he was trying to get the boat to see his brother in New Zealand - he looked in no mood to be formulating a series of complex agricultural design patterns. I could be wrong - they might have masterminded the twin tower attacks, who really knows?                                                                                                                                 
Dijon, Hobart, Tasmania

I resent this report that we are high as a kite and making crop circles! I haven't been stoned since 1971. A few young hoppers eat the wrong plant and you trash our species in the news. What's this world coming to!
Wally Baby, Australia Bush

I saw a whole bunch of them going mad in my corn field only last night. I'm not sure if they were high or not but I'm pretty sure they were. One of them had a ghettoblaster and they were listening to some kind of fast electronic music. Lock 'em up and throw away the key, that's what I say!
Roger, Melbourne

Bumped into a couple o' stoned wallabies coming out the co-op up Lochgelly high street the other night. This seems to be a problem on both sides of the globe.
John Smith, Lochgelly, Fife, Scotland

I've lived in Tasmania for many years. Not only do wallabies congregate in poppy fields, but also on the local golf courses. They do this mainly at night and I can only assume they're playing several rounds of golf while avoiding greens fees. You only need to be really worried when one of the stoned wallabies gets into a golf buggy.
John Larson, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia

I want to know who sold out the wallabies? Who's the narc? My guess is the platypus.
Chet Guest, St. Paul, Minnesota USA

Don't know about crop circles but I saw one today trying to jack a car, presumably trying to get enough together for his next fix.
Greg Corcoran, Durham, UK

The question should be whether or not those law breaking wallabies should be brought to justice for indulging in illegal substances. The law makes no exceptions for no-one no matter what their excuse is or even what species they may be. They are not setting an example for their joeys nor for any other marsupials and I fear this could become an epidemic of outback size proportions.
Phil, Edinburgh

****

According to Tim here, Tasmania is the roadkill capital of the world; can't dispute that since that was the the first thing i noticed on  the night drive from the airport: mashed beasts everywhere.  I can also report that i've seen two dead Wallabies along the road. There is something particuarly sad and pathetic about a dead wallaby:  they're a smaller version of a kangaroo, only about 2 1/2 feet tall, and seeing one along the road,  lying on his side with his lttle paws drawn up and his thick long tail extended behind him is as touching as seeing a familiar dog or cat dead in the road.  For me, the wallaby's harmless appearance makes a dead one all the sadder.

****

and a few images from here:

(click pix to enlarge)

 

Pepper on the job

      a view of tim and anna's house from the paddock, looking north across Max licking his butt........

          Pepper, ginger and Max on the beach last evening..........

                                                    Anna and Tim w/ Ginger -- Max on a leash

                                                         another crowded evening on the beach

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Antipodean ease

Auckland airport (nahh, i'm not still there):  one of my strongest memories of my times in NZ  has been the ease and generosity of Kiwis.   while experiencing it in a small town is a sweet surprise, to have a similar experience in the International terminal of a major airport is even more pleasing:

the Air New Zealand employee who offered to make a call for me to inquire about carrying bottles of duty free gin (presents for Anna) onto the domestic flight from Melbourne to Launceton.  In the states, once thru Customs and Immigration, duty free liquids have to be packed into checked luggage.  Can you say "gin-soaked clothing?"

inquiring about the above at the Duty Free shop, both the manager and the woman employee offered to put their names on the receipt so that if i weren't able to carry the two bottles thru onto my domestic flight in Australia, they would refund my money. Imagine that at an airport in the states....  not likely.

the woman security officer standing at the metal detector who offered to hold my silver-buckled belt when i forgot to remove it before approaching the detector.  the simple fact of NOT having to remove shoes when going thru security.

I feel i can breathe again, that small daily requirements (especially at an international airport) do not carry the sense of imminent danger should i inadvertently do something "wrong."  LIfe here -- to generalize about NZ and Australia, but these are both places where i've spent a lot of time since 1965 -- does not seem to be lived on the defensive. I more and more understand my brother saying that when he returned home to Sydney he felt he had just "been let out of prison." 

Here, the common response to any spoken thanks on my part is "not a problem..." The only place i have this same experience is home in Boulder...

Taking off for Melbourne, looking down at a pleasant green and gently rolling landscape, with an inviting delicate and human scale, i smile.... it just makes me smile in familiar comfort, seeing the land where i experienced -- again -- such easy generosity.

***

Flight:

and we took off for Melbourne.  the seatback video monitor:

the seatback screen  offers not only movies, music and all the other distractions (including seat to seat texting -- now where was that attractive woman sitting?) that have replaced books as reliable travel companions, but travel info from Lonely Planet guides for all Qantas destinations.  For Hobart, the Tasmanian capital there are sections on Eating, Accomodations, Sights, and my personal favorite: "Dangers and Annoyances."  Such an Anglicism, "annoyances;" I half expect it to list "aggressive squirrels" and "ill-behaved children" instead of the usual cautions about not wandering around drunk if you are a single woman.  It's mentioned so lightly...


The oddities of International travel

Sitting next to two engaging older women from the UK, bound for Hong Kong and home after 4 months in NZ, they ask about my travel plans and point out an ad for Banff and Jasper BC in the airline mag.  Well,  i JUST HAPPEN to have photos from the 2006 motorcycle trip i made up there with my German motorcycling partner Thomas from Hamburg (with who, oddly enough, I've done more miles and kilometers than anyone who lives in the States).

So, T: I'm sitting on an Aussie plane flying across the Tasman sea from NZ to Oz, showing two British women photos of a Canadian motorcycle trip on  German motorcycles taken by a German and an America  on a Japanese computer while feeling great affection for you and missing your company. Can't always complain about the 21st century, can we?

two of the photos i showed them, the Grand Tetons....

Auckland airport pleasures

looking at the flight schedule board always tells me i'm in a new country:

Considering that both Kiwis and Americans come from the same culinarily dreadful background, why is it that while the food at LAX consists of the usual terrible chain "restaurant" offerings -- Chili's and MacDonald's -- while the Auckland airport offers real food?

While waiting the six hours at LAX for my international flight, i opted to get food at a place called something like "le croissant doree" because i saw baguettes with ham or turkey and brie and slices of fresh apples , as well as what appeared to be real baked cookies...

very pleased with myself, i took a few bites of my turkey and brie and quickly discovered that once again, appearances can be deceiving...  it truly was a baguette; more baguette than meat or cheese.........

However, in Auckland airport's transit lounge, i found a large, open bright space with a real cafe,  comfortable individual modern chairs actually designed for humans to sit in -- that is,  not secured to each other -- and gloriously real food.  The selection was beyond anything i've seen in any American airport, and certainly fresher:  sausage rolls, meat pies, salads, pasta salads, pastries that looked as good as anything in Whole Foods, and a Thai staff that was sweet and funny.

My first real meal off the plane:


Arugula salad with red onion, cherry tomatoes and flaked
parmesan... even the vinagrette pack was delicious; smoked fish pie, vegetarian samosa, and a fine cappucino

then another fine cappucino, and great dense carrot cake.  try finding that in an American airport.........

and of course there HAD to be one crapburger; people

were lined up to pay for this industrial junk exactly what i

paid for the lunch above.



i like the direct approach to cigarette warnings, especially the"Smoking Causes Foul and Offensive Breath" one on Port Royal cigarettes

Watched my road bike being loaded on the plane:

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

LAX to Auckland

Our 777 stood parallel to the active runway and I could look across the 100-meter space to the preceding plane, waiting to take off, when suddenly i was hit by what felt like a wall of sound and power that shook our fuselage.  The enormous, ungainly white planebegan to roll past my window, and as we rotated onto the runway, i could see that earlier plane already  disappearing west through the last bit of dusk and out over the blueblack Pacific night.

As we began our rollout and our lumpish mass of metal, electronics and humans moved faster and faster, lights on the buildings along the runaway seemingly began to move past us, transforming them from pragmatically squat airport service facilities into  into beautiful streaking patterns of abstract light.  The tires released the runway and we were out over the deep black Pacific night. Only the dull unchanging roar of the engines and the flickering wingtip lights indicated something out there beyond my darkened window.

In those moments between releasing the brakes and at last lifting off, are the pilots at all conscious of their enormous burden of
responsibility -- the lives and webs of relationships of hundreds on the plane, not to mention of those on the ground -- just behind the cockpit door?

Very early in the morning there's brief time when the rising sun, following us west from yesterday, illuminates the engine cowling and lights up the small red Qantas kangroo logo........

                                        

 

                                                     Pacific dawn two hours east of Auckland  NZ

The sheer immensity and mystery of the Pacific........hours and hours of enormous emptiness, with only the transient clouds to mark passage across that deep blue edge of the world.  As many times as i've made this long flight, i love the sense of being seemingly timelessly suspended above this great void.  Floating on the edge of space, I think can see the curvature of the earth:

These Pacific clouds look like they've been pulled up from the surface of the water, stretching away to the horizon...

                                                               A tasty and welcome brekkie courtesy of Qantas

And we're approaching my beloved New Zealand.........feet dry and soft rolling hills pass under us.  I feel home even though I still have 12 hours to go.....

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

CATCHING UP

Taken me longer to verticalize than i anticipated -- went for first road bicycle ride and managed to fall over trying to go uphill since i was in too high a gear, bruising my hip and tearing the thumbnail on my right hand, so the space bar is painful to tap  -- but posts
are brewing.



If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton

Local flavor

For me, local newspapers say it all:

                                                                                                           Sounds like they were accidentally electrocuted................
                                                                                                               


If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time - Edith Wharton