A man in the suburbs of Melbourne was arrested today for taking a vacuum cleaner from a pile of hard rubbish someone had left out for the council to pick up and get rid of. One of the things our council rates and taxes pay for is an annual collection service of all the big junk we can’t fit in the back of our city hatches to take to the tip. Or for that matter, can’t afford to take to the tip – it costs upwards of $200 at our local tip to ditch a television. People keep these things in the shed or under the house until collection day and then dump it all on the side of the road for the council to take away.
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Curb Burgling: Or Don’t The Cops Have Real Crimes To Solve?
The Kingswood’s Future
Crazy Car Man’s 1977 Holden Kingswood is his pride and joy. He sees beyond the fact that it takes 15 minutes to get it running on a good day – it gives him time to tune in the CB radio; he is stoic in the face of ankle deep water when it rains – he merely takes off his shoes and puts on a hat to keep the raindrops off his face; and he sees beauty when others see a filigree of rust on wheels. He beams proudly upon his classic car like a father gazing adoringly at his first born child.
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Graves, Snakes and a Mild Case of Hysterics
A hundred years ago the British sent people suffering from tuberculosis out to a sanitarium just up the road from Crazy Farm. I’m guessing they thought the clean, fresh coastal air would help heal them (and make the perilous journey worthwhile), and while I’m sure some of the patients survived, during the 30 odd year existence of the hospital, over 2000 people died, and were buried in the cemetery attached to the site.
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2010 Round Up
2010 was an absolute corker of a year. This garden malarkey sunk it’s teeth in with a vengeance and quite suddenly I was looking at the world with new eyes. I fell off a motorbike and got married in a Lahu hilltribe ceremony, I fell off a step and discovered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I got a new job and found a new career. And I grew loads of plants, battled snails and weeds, contended with Mother Nature’s temper tantrums, experimented madly, got things badly wrong and occasionally got them right.
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Aida
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far away (or so it seems these days) I wasn’t the Crazy Garden Lady, I was in fact the Dancing Queen. I can canned my way through a life where feather boas and rhinestones and false eyelashes were the norm, and offices and permanent residences and 9 to 5 were things I read about in books.
I lived my dream for five years and then reality bit me on the fishnetted butt when the ankle and the knee and the hip flexor and the hamstring all went at the same time. And having no talent for choreography and no patience for teaching, I did what all good retired showgirls do and segued into hospitality.
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Summer and the Cicada Army
I’ve always loved the song of the cicada. It’s the herald of summer and subsequently all the good things that come with the rise in the mercury. When I was a kid it was 6 weeks holiday from school, Christmas and the accompanying bag of books that Santa so thoughtfully gave me, the thought of being able to secret myself away in one of the many hidey-holes I had to eat homemade iceblocks and read one of the books from the bag, of nights so humid and hot I couldn’t sleep and so my 6 weeks holiday seemed twice as long.
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Dams and Bridges and Ladders for Fishes
My garden is a bit boring at the moment. It’s raining a lot, so there’s no stories of me injuring myself hefting heavy watering cans or tripping over hoses and impaling myself on tomato stakes. All the seeds have sprouted and are doing what they’re meant to be doing, and since the first corn disaster, even the new batch of corn seed has avoided being drowned and or eaten by birds, mice or possums. I could post photos of the plants doing their growing thing, but it’s not very exciting or funny or traumatic, and so doesn’t make for an entertaining read.
I know this website is called Crazy Garden Lady, and I may be upsetting some people by writing about stuff that isn’t strictly garden related. I was considering changing the name to Crazy Garden And Sometimes Random Man Made Stuff And More Often Weird Nature Stuff Lady.com but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Not so snappy, harder to remember, so I’ll just have to stick with the original name and hope the strictly garden people don’t run away when I write about things like bridges, and dams and fish ladders.
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The Bridge To Nowhere
It was hot on Sunday. I mean really hot, not just a little bit warm, but so hot my ears were sweating. And I’ll pause while you truly get to grips with that image….
….. you’re getting the hot? Good!
And naturally, being so hot, instead of doing normal things like going to the beach, or swinging in a hammock under a tree drinking a gin and tonic (where the only thing sweating is the cool cool glass), Crazy Car Man decided a walk across a scorching field was the activity du jour.
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When The Wind Blows
I woke up this morning in the most horrible temper. I’d been kept awake most of the night by the howling of the wind, which put me firmly on the wrong side when I swung myself out of bed.
I hate the wind. A frisky breeze can be a most pleasant thing, but when it goes from fluttering the tendrils of my hair to blinding me with said hair and bombarding my blind self with the howling of a thousand ghouls, it’s no longer a pleasant experience and is more akin to fingernails being dragged down a chalkboard.
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Rainbow Fields and Weird Creatures
Long weekends are things of great joy, and when you combine a long weekend with a new 4WD ute, it says one thing and one thing only.
Road trip!
Friends of ours, the Bedouins, have just moved to a tiny town in the Upper Lachlan Shire, so visiting them became the focal point of the trip. A loose plan was devised (we’ll head here on Friday night and then get to their place at some point the next day using as many dirt roads as we can), a camera and toothbrush were packed, a quick look at Google Maps to get a general ‘use the Force’ sense of direction and we were off.
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