Autumn is icumen in

It is indubitably autumn. Not only do the autumn bulbs tell us this, but the night time temperatures have dropped considerably. It is the time of the year when we have our annual debate about whether it is time to start lighting fires yet.

We live in relatively large house. Not, I hasten to add, large by modern McMansion standards. We may have five double bedrooms (some almost palatial) but we lack the requisite six bathrooms of such modern, aspirational mansions. Lacking a maid or housekeeper, I am not perturbed by their absence and am happy to make do with just two. But we also lack the heat ducting systems that go into modern houses. We heat the entire house with wood collected from around the property. This is by choice. I don’t want a heat pump because I don’t want the humming and whirring that usually accompanies them and we haven’t spent a lifetime of trying to keep our power bills low to give in and splash out now. Not as long as we can manage the firewood.

The 1950s with wetback. Elderly Spike to the left and Dudley to the right

We light two fires. The open fireplace in the dining room is not an efficient heat source by modern standards but it has a wetback and we must be one of the few households whose power bills actually drop in winter because of that hot water.

The dogs prefer the Big Grunter which never throws sparks at them

What we call the Big Grunter in the hallway is a far more efficient heat generator, being of Canadian design where they are used to much colder winters. It heats the cold side of the house and the entire upper story to the point where we can be too hot as a result. The dogs don’t mind. They have their winter daybeds beside the Big Grunter and are happy to snooze away cold winter days. On particularly bleak days, I have seen Mark light that fire in the early morning for the benefit of the dogs.

It is the pine cone and faggot time of the fire season. This does not count as burning our way through the winter firewood supplies. It is midway territory. We may be one of the few households with a designated pine cone shed. What we lack in bathrooms, we make up for in sheds here. The volume of pine cones depends on whether one of our massive pine trees has fallen in the year. None have in the past fifteen months so it is just the cones I have picked up from the gardens and lawn but it should be enough to get us through the shoulder season.

I could do with a faggot binder in my life but I have never seen one in NZ

The enormous eucalyptus at our entrance provides a near endless supply of faggot material all year round

I have decided to reclaim the word faggot from its ugly, homophobic abusive connotations. Besides, what other word can be applied to the gatherings of gum twigs and bark that fall in abundance? Lacking the historic faggot bundler that I spotted at a stately home in Yorkshire, I pack these for kindling into sacks and store them for this time of the year.

It is not cold enough for this daily ritual yet

When winter comes, Mark will take over firewood duties and cut kindling and bring in four baskets of wood each day. Until that time, we will burn our faggots and pine cones and pretend that we haven’t really started to seriously light the fire yet. What do we burn? Anything and everything that falls or is expendable and generates good heat – pine, prunus, schima, camellia and more.

I set out to gather some of the autumn bulb flowers for the top photo but heavy rain and a grey morning meant pickings were limited mostly to Nerine sarniensis hybrids and Cyclamen hederafolium with just a couple of oxalis flowers and one lilac Moraea polystachya open.  I shall return to the oxalis collection another day.

The Foetus Tree

The abandoned deep freeze – a harbinger of worse to come

It was the abandoned deep freeze that first alerted us to the potential scale of problems at our rental house across the road when we arrived back from Melbourne. Why, we wondered, was it left there?

The tenant, gone AWOL overseas, had sent a friend (now a former friend for reasons that will become very clear) to move her mountain of belongings. The friend had done a sterling job getting out a fair amount – nowhere near all of it, but a surprisingly large amount. It appears that it may have been the deep freeze that tipped her over the edge. She had looked inside.

The power had been disconnected a few weeks earlier and warm, late summer temperatures had also contributed to the truly, mind-blowingly foul stench once the lid was lifted. But there was worse to come.

The deep freeze contained a dead dog. Now I hasten to add that the dog was small, had been euthanized humanely by the vet and placed in a cardboard box with a plastic flower on top. But it wasn’t in good shape. It fell to poor Mark to deal with the contents which contained not only the dead dog, but also decomposing pork trotters (even more bizarre when you know that the tenant had allegedly converted to Islam and is currently domiciled far, far away with her Islamic husband whom she appears to have met over the internet), fish bait and various other unmentionables. All had to be removed from their plastic wrappings and buried. Mark carried out this task without complaint while Lloyd and I exited the property on account of the all-pervasive stench.

The foetus tree

But a further problem awaited us. Not as gross. More grotesque. The foetus tree. I had emailed photographs to the tenant of the bewildering chaos of her remaining belongings and she replied: “I did not see the tree in any of the pics either that is in the black tub , this was planted by my mother when I was seven and it has my own babies I lost buried in it.” Unfortunately, the tree was still on the property.

What on earth is one meant to do with a tree which contains the decomposed foetuses from well over a decade ago?

The tree we identified as Cedrus deodara, maybe aurea.  We used to grow a few of these commercially and I am sure that the specimen before my eyes is not the 45 years of age the tenant claimed (planted when she was just seven). Given it has had a hard life and been kept in a comparatively small pot, I would guess about 20 years. But apparently containing foetus remains. What sort of a person carts around foetuses? It is not as though she had no live births. There appear to be seven extant offspring.

We didn’t want the responsibility of this tree. Neither, apparently, did the adult children living not that far away. But knowing that it contained human remains, meant not treating it with the contempt we hold for all the other remaining detritus left for us to deal with. I consulted my locked social media account. There was unanimous agreement that we needed to recognise the tapu* nature of the tree. One friend came up with what I thought was a brilliant solution. Relocate it, she suggested, to an unmonitored burial site or cemetery and advise the tenant where it is so that she can arrange its collection. We have such a site just down the road and it is unlikely that anybody will notice the arrival of the foetus tree in its pot, for a while at least.

Removing the foetus tree from the property

As Lloyd and Mark loaded the heavy tree into the back of Lloyd’s ute, my heart lightened. It was a genuine relief to see it disappearing down the driveway. I went down to the cemetery later with my camera, in order to send photographs of its new location to the erstwhile tenant, that she may make arrangements for its collection.

Was she grateful? No. Of course not. She ignored my email but I heard from a third party that she was deeply offended, enraged even. I have no idea what she expected us to do with the tree. I thought we had found an elegant solution. But then the decision to cart the remains of one’s miscarried foetuses around long after their demise is also a huge mystery to us.

Just inside the cemetery gate, for easy collection

 

*tapu – sacred in Maori. Or, to be more precise: “an ancient Māori spiritual and social code that was central to traditional society, is about sanctity and respect for people, natural resources and the environment.” It is only when I am writing for overseas readers that I realise how much we have now incorporated concepts and language from NZ’s indigenous people into common parlance, with a reasonable expectation that other New Zealanders will understand.

Postscript: As Lloyd quipped that he was worried about being caught on CCTV (which is only funny if you understand the nature of very small, rural cemeteries that date back to the nineteenth century and have remained very small to this day), the irony of the sign beside the current resting place of the foetus tree brought a wry smile from Mark.

 

Postcards of Melbourne

Cordyline Burgundy Spire

How handsome is Cordyline ‘Burgundy Spire’, seen here in the trial grounds of Anthony Tesselaar Plants in Sylvan, near Melbourne? It isn’t one of ours, though we would be happy if it was. The breeder is fellow New Zealander, Geoff Jewel. It is just a shame they never look like this in New Zealand, on account of our native moth, Epiphryne verriculata. We always have chewed and holey foliage which is the nature of the plant in its homeland; still handsome and eye-catching but as a garden plant, it would be nice to have cleaner foliage.

Mark Jury and Cordyline Red Fountain

However, I can add to the occasional series of Mark Posing Beside Jury Plants Around the World – this time Cordyline Red Fountain at Melbourne Botanic Gardens. This plant was a joint effort between Mark and his father Felix, and was the first highly successful commercial plant that generated an actual income back to the breeders. Phormium ‘Yellow Wave’ still continues to be grown widely around the world but Felix never received a single cent for that one. Ditto Mark’s Camellia ‘Fairy Blush’. While it is awfully nice to be told by Australian, French and Belgian growers what a wonderful plant that camellia is and how many they sell each year, it would have been nicer had they been paying a royalty.

Muehlenbeckia complexa

While at the aforementioned Botanic Gardens, we were somewhat charmed by these free-form animal figures created in Muehlenbeckia complexa, another New Zealand native. As the plant is generally a scrambling groundcover, I am guessing they must have trained it up over wire frames. I have forgotten the name of the fern that is used as groundcover. We have it in our garden and usually refer to it as the asparagus fern but I think the common asparagus fern that can be distinctly weedy is something entirely different. This one is rather too slow growing to threaten weed status.

Plant supports from metal

I photographed these permanent metal plant supports to add to my ideas file. In this case, ideas to keep Our Lloyd busy, should he ever run out of work to do here. This scenario seems unlikely, but there are times when some durable, attractive plant supports would be very helpful. I like gently rusting metal because it melds harmoniously with plants. I have always wanted to live in a house with Gothic arched windows. This seems an entirely unlikely event on account of Gothic arched windows never really catching on in New Zealand wooden villas and bungalows of yore and the fact that we have no plans to move house if we can possibly avoid it. But my ambition now is to have some Gothic arched plant supports, at least. As I have become more interested in managing summer perennials, the need for plant supports is becoming more pressing.

Golden bougainvillea

I would be tempted to buy a golden bougainvillea if I ever came across one for sale, though they are such monster plants, with fierce thorns, that they are very difficult to place in the garden. I first saw this colour on the Greek island of Kalymnos many years ago and I can’t recall seeing one since. Purple a-plenty, magenta, pure red, even white but the yellow and orange shades are nowhere near as ubiquitous. I was charmed to find one just down the road from where we were staying in Carlton North.

I interpreted these two scenes as what happens when city dwellers plant their Christmas trees on the road verge, although the right hand photo is not a conifer but more likely an Australian native. They amused me, though they have that look of potential vegetable time bombs.

Ziziphus jujuba

Chinese red dates! Botanically Ziziphus jujuba. I have only ever tried these dried and packaged before, and that was many years ago, but our daughter found these at the Sunday markets. They are about the size of a large crabapple and taste like a date-y apple but without the crispness of the latter fruit. I have never seen them sold fresh in New Zealand.

Bicycle friendly

Melbourne is not a city I know, having only been there twice before on brief visits. But we were very taken with the focus on infrastructure and design to make it bicycle friendly. Our son lives there and does not have a car so we were relieved to see that he is living in a city which prioritises safe cycling, even when it may inconvenience car drivers. Our apartment looked out over a protected cycleway and we were amazed at how many people moved along quickly on two wheels. Imagine the alternative of each of those cyclists sitting in a car – often just the one per car. In NZ, cyclists are fighting hard for some rights and accommodation in cities but too often car drivers see them as moving targets and act aggressively towards them on a point of principle. And god forbid that we should put in urban cycleways at the expense of a few carparks. Let alone give cyclists priority at intersections to make it safer for them.  In  our country with sprawling cities, low population density and poor to non-existent public transport, the private car rules supreme and even there, New Zealanders favour big sports utility vehicles (urban tractors, as they are sometimes called) and people movers with four wheel drive, even when they will never leave the sealed roads. We have much to learn and there are better ways of doing things than forever listening to the howling demands of incensed vehicle owners.

From the start, Melbourne was built with reasonably high density housing and sufficient money to add ornamentation in abundance to its domestic housing. It is very charming that so much of this has been retained. But – and it is a big but – what is with the graffiti, Melbourne? Graffiti everywhere. The only place we have ever seen graffiti to rival it is alongside the rail lines as we left Paris. Our son suggested it is part of the edgy urban feel Melbourne cultivates but we were not convinced.

A visit to Cloudehill Gardens

A touch of whimsy to welcome at the entrance – yes or no? 

We first visited Cloudehill Gardens about 20 years ago when it was still very much one man’s garden. Jeremy Francis took over the property in 1992 so it would still have been very new when we saw it. While there were plants and established trees from its earlier time as a nursery, there was no garden when he started. In the time since, it has matured to one of the flagship gardens of the Dandenong area, about an hour out of Melbourne. It is a large garden, created in the Arts and Crafts style with, the publicity tells me, twenty different garden rooms.

Very arts and craftsy in style 

The design may be very Hidcote/Sissinghurst, but the perennial plantings reflect the fashions of the new millenium 

While it appears that the originator, Jeremy Francis, is still on the scene, day to day management has transferred to The Diggers’ Club, which is a membership organisation unique to Australia. The upshot of this is that there is a now a retail outlet and a good café/restaurant (though the wasp infestation drove us indoors to eat), a focus on events and attractions and ‘adding interest’ to the garden. This means it has facilities and infrastructure but the trade-off is that the deeply personal touch of a single owner is no longer as evident. I found some of the novelty sculptures and touches were a little jarring in a garden where the underpinning hard landscaping is of exceptional quality. But a garden being run as a commercial entity has to strive to be all things to all people. It is now branded with the ubiquitous but rarely accurate strap-line of “a garden for all seasons’.

Not, I think, Cloudehill’s finest moment but it is hard for a garden to be all things to all people

Colour-toned belladonnas and Japanese anemones for an early autumn welcome

I have never seen a garden that can peak for twelve months of the year and at the end of a long, hot, dry Australian summer, it was not at its peak but there was still plenty of interest along the way. When I review my photographs, I see that I kept focusing on the high quality of most of the garden structures. Attention to detail, again and again. I really appreciate that. There is a timelessness to good structure that carries a garden well through the years, even though the plantings may change with the times.

I liked the cobbles set in the path, as an example of understated detail, though I am guessing the fill has washed away, leaving them as something of a trip hazard. It was the only maintenance flaw that I recall in a garden where the overall management was of a very high calibre.

Attention to detail – look at the staging of this feature pot 

The hand-crafted wrought iron fence that separated gardens took my fancy as a personalised, modern take on an old craft.

Detail again – look at the beautiful end to this balustrade. And unless I am mistaken, that is a Marlborough rock daisy from New Zealand, Pachystegia insignis, nestled into an Australian garden that is modelled on English design.

I blog. I do not instagram. This may be the reason why I forgot to photograph my lunch but as far as I recall, it was very pleasant. What I did photograph was an installation of figures created by sculptor, Graeme Foote. These I really did like, especially in their setting here. I could find a home for some of these figures. While the individual price seems very reasonable at a mere $400 each, the trouble is that we would need at least 10 to make a statement.  Plus packing and freight across the Tasman. Sometimes we have to be content with memories and photographs.

Haute couture on a cold and wet Saturday in Melbourne

After two hot days in Melbourne last week, the temperature plummeted from 27 degrees to about 10 (Celsius). Fortunately, I had looked at the weather forecast and packed extra layers but I did wonder if I was going to have to buy myself gloves as my poor arthritic fingers complained. It was a day for indoor activities so we went to Melbourne Art Gallery instead.

It was the final day for the Escher exhibition and the queues were enormous so we avoided that and went instead to the Krystyna Campbell-Pretty collection of haute couture and Parisian fashion from 1890 to the current day. Now, haute couture does not feature in my life, I admit that. But staging exhibitions has been on my radar from earlier in my life when I worked in an art gallery for close to five years. With over 150 outfits on display, the first rooms were simply staged to feature the gowns.

These are Christian Lacroix 

By Cristobal Balenciaga

I was pretty surprised to find that the fake fur coat dates back to 1955. I did not know that synthetic fabrics were being used that early but clearly Cristobal Balenciaga was right up with the new materials.

Over 150 gowns is a large number and I guess when I started photographing the models’ heads, my attention was already slipping. But then I noticed another aspect entirely. My guess is that the first gallery rooms were staged initially but then the exhibition designer and hanging assistants also found their attention straying and decided to step everything up several notches.

First it became somewhat theatrical in the staging.

Then we came across examples where the models and gowns were clearly matched to the paintings on the walls. They were witty but it does mean that one’s eyes naturally focus on the whole scene, rather than on the individual gowns. Which is fine, after 100 or so gowns.

The gallery of the little black dress was Something Else. In the centre of the room, the models were staged with a collection of 3 or 4 smaller, nude men in bronze which was pretty humorous.

But around the walls, the gowns were arrayed on a series of rising platforms on the wall, and as they rose, the models became not only elevated, but also headless.

As we exited, I saw this display which had me come home and Google when bras were invented. These three gowns came from around 1890 to 1905 and the first and third gown presumably indicated the use of binding that pre-dated bras. The middle one, it appears from the shape, was for the bra-less – a 1905 afternoon gown from Marie Callot Gerber. And in case you are dying to know when bras appeared, the first models were around this time but they did not come into widespread usage until the 1930s.

If haute couture is not your thing, may I offer you this shiny motor cycle exhibit instead? It is by Indian artist Subodh Gupta, from 2001 and predominantly cast in bronze with aluminium and stainless steel.