22nd August 2009 Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, Hobart

Plants have been flowering for months now. It always seems that the plants themselves are trying to make Spring happen - they start to flower in miserable weather.

I think the above photo shows this; Winter and Spring coexisting.

Popularity: 20% [?]

4th November 2004, my garden in Sale, Victoria.

Joh has met this guy, Durwood, and has known him for three weeks. I’m talking on the phone to her right now. she’s doing a lot of swearing.

At me.

Already, she has changed all her plans for Durwood. But, she is really happy. And Tom and all his friends like Durwood too, which is pretty impressive.

Joh’s family and Joh’s best friends like him.

Everybody likes him, and they all think Joh has never been happier.

Joh and Durwood have been spending all their spare time together - they live one or two minutes apart.  They can’t get enough of each other’s company.

I’m laughing. I was kind of making fun of her while we were on the phone, but I am really happy for her

Popularity: 25% [?]

13th February 2009, my garden

What I see is the flower hiding and guarding it’s heart. A quick look and you won’t see it. You need to take your relaxed time.

Other flowers are out there, exposed and joyous.

That’s too girly, isn’t it?

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23rd November 2008, and 29th January 2009.

I wanted to post something for St. Valentine’s Day on the day. Work, exercise, sleep, and a couple of emails took precedence.

The flower at the top was at Kingston Beach. The bottom one is from somewhere around Collin’s Bonnet.

Gee, I’d like to say something about relationships; go read a fortune cookie:)  

And good luck:)

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25th December 2008, my garden.

Another flower…

The other day, for lunch, I had toasted raisin bread painted with olive oil; I use olive oil instead of butter. I was pondering on what started me doing this?

When I was 17, I worked on a lemon orchard, with friends, not far from where I used to live. Lou, the man who grew and farmed the orchard, was Greek, about 50. He was dark brown, covered in dark curly hair. The hair on his head was shiny black and curly. He mostly wore shorts and gumboots.

Lou used to feed us lunch, in his house. He lived roughly; the archetypical single man. The food was simple, and always with fresh vegetables. When making the salad, he would pick up a four litre tin of olive oil, and tip a generous amount over the salad.

I asked him about the olive oil once, he answered: “Andreus” (I assumed this was the Greek form of Andrew), “I was born under the olive tree”. He then told me, how when he first came to Australia, there wasn’t anything like olive oil or rice to be bought in food stores. He used to buy little bottles of Faulding’s olive oil from the chemist, for a shilling a bottle (an expensive way to buy the stuff, I think it was sold as a laxative).

He would use one bottle for each meal.

As time moved on Lou made money and friends. He used to own and run an underground - below street level - “speakeasy” in Collins St. Melbourne. He called it a speakeasy (an american term, probably used by the American sailors who used to frequent his bar) because you could drink there all night. This was illegal at the time, pubs and bars were generally only allowed to sell booze between 10am and 6pm.

He was particularly popular with American sailors. As an added service, he could also find you a prostitute; he was great friends with a “Madam” operating close by. When I knew him, he was still great friends with the same woman; I had met her often.

Anyway, through his connections, Lou started importing four litre tins of Dante Olive Oil, and selling them to the local Greek and Italian communities. He said this with a big smile, meaning life had greatly improved from that point on.

(c) Andrew Calder

Popularity: 16% [?]

(c) Andrew Calder

This photo was taken at Dargo, Victoria on 22nd September when Andy and I spent a week there during the Spring school holidays. The place we stayed had a magnolia tree that had the most perfect blossoms I have seen.

Andy got plenty of photos. I couldn’t wait to get them printed to hang a collection on my bedroom wall. I never did though, cause I couldn’t choose my favourites, there were too many.

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“This was taken 5th Oct 2003, about 30km from Sale in East Gippsland. I lived in Sale at the time. Ella (my whippet) and I would go exploring around the area: through Summer, we’d often go after work. This picture is from one of those trips.”

(c) Andrew Calder

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“This was taken not far out of Longford on the way to Seaspray. I took it on the way to work on the morning of 28th October 2004. The camera I had then was a 5 megapixel Olympus c550z; a compact digital with lots of manual control.”

(c) Andrew Calder

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(c) Andrew Calder

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