Mothers Day. 1929.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. It is a bit hard to miss isn’t it? We are bombarded with advertising. What should we get our mum? A new TV? Whitegoods, diamonds? If we believed everything we saw on telly we would feel like total failures unless our mum gets the sort of gift we need to bump up our credit limit to afford.

Examiner 6 May 1929 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article51542446

This kind of thing is getting out of hand. When Mother’s Day first started it was simply a day to show your love and appreciation for your mother. People wore a white flower as a tribute and were encouraged to visit, or contact their mother in some way. That was it. No gift guilt, no massive marketing of unnecessary trinkets.

Mum, if you are reading this I wasn’t being cheap, I was just returning to tradition.

Just kidding

As a mum myself it is up to me to give subtle hints to the family as to the small gifts I might like on the day. When the rain meant I was having trouble drying the clothes last week I demanded a tumble dryer. When I was annoyed at the build-up of unwashed dishes I demanded a dishwasher.

Well, demanded might be a little strong…. I… ummm… strongly suggested, yeah, that’s better. Actually, the dryer and dishwasher are a standard joke around here, when I mention that life would be easier with one or the other the Man of the House feigns surprise, ‘What do you mean we need a _____? he says, I’ve already got one! She’s just not doing a very good job at the moment that’s all.’ Then he runs away before I kill him.

Actually I was very pleased with my Mother’s Day gift. In the morning I was given breakfast in bed and a new pitcher plant (regular readers will remember that I have a love for plants that kill). I was excitedly informed that if I look after this new friend properly the pitchers will grow big enough to eat a rat.

Well, no matter how properly I look after it I doubt it will grow as large as that in this cold climate. Nevertheless, I will be hoping that global warming and an accidental application of radioactive goo will cause it to become a gigantic man-eater. Just what the Steps of Death needs!

Tropical tale of the jungle. 1924.

Western Mail 24 Apr 1924 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article37634197

Here is another long article to keep you squinting for the weekend. This fantastic story of a man-eating plant could well have been lifted from a B-grade horror movie.

In 1924 botanists Joseph Villareux and George Gastron were collecting specimens in a swamp 40 miles from New Orleans when they discovered what they described as the ‘missing link between human and animal’.

Joseph and George had been lost in the swamp for over a week when, after landing on a small island, they came across an unusual plant on the water’s edge.

Joseph made the mistake of trying to pick one of its strange flowers, but was grabbed by the fronds of the plant and dragged towards the stem.

Seeing his friend in danger George rushed to help and was himself grabbed by the tentacle-like creepers. Fortunately, they were both armed with axes and spent the next few hours hacking their way to freedom. There would have been quite a bit of motivation to get away from the beast, the entire time they were hacking away at the tentacles unsuspecting critters were wandering by and being grabbed, squeezed and devoured.

If you are one of my regular readers you know I can’t ever read these stories without picking apart the details the story tellers didn’t think through before they opened their mouths. Don’t ever watch a movie with me

Apparently this fight for life took some hours which makes me think that the speediness of the original attack was a little exaggerated. Not only that, when I go flower picking I am not normally armed with an axe. What kind of flowers did they expect to encounter?!

The furry critters on that small but surprisingly well-populated island who were unfortunate enough to be consumed while the fight was going on must have been a little different from any of the critters I know. If I was hacking away at a plant with an axe for a few hours, I can guarantee that nothing furtive and furry would be strolling up to see what I was doing.

I really wish there was a plant like this in the swamps of New Orleans but…. well, I don’t really need to finish this sentence, do I?

Man eating plant. 1892.

I was sitting in my thinking spot yesterday, otherwise known as the Steps of Death to regular readers, and watching the Venus Fly Trap. You might remember that I moved some of my carnivorous plants out to the front verandah to feast on the wasps. Well, Flytrap has been having a high old time and many stripy stingers have fallen victim to its enticing jaws.

Watching it got me thinking, surely there must be articles about man-eating plants.

The Horsham Times 6 May 1892 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article72853601

A search threw up this article about Devils Snare, a terrifying plant described by the naturalist Mr Dunstan as a kind of vegetable octopus. You might also know Devil’s Snare as a plant from the Harry Potter novels, I think both plants came from the same place….

What a great story. There was Mr Dunstan, out for a walk with his dog when he was attacked by a man-eating plant. He was walking in the jungles of Central America though, and in 1892 there would be no better setting in the world for a story like this. I wonder if the plant preferred human or dog?

This story is just wonderful. The details of the plant make it sound so menacing; bare interlacing stems of a dark nearly black hue, oozing with a thick viscid gum. Ick.

The twigs were like grabby tentacles, lined with little mouths or suckers that left skin red and blistered on contact. Ouch.

Even better, the last part of the article. Imagine a plant that has the presence of mind to grasp a piece of bloody meat and, once it sated its thirst, toss the drained flesh aside like yesterday’s sushi.

I just wish I had one of them on the steps of death. None of those annoying door-knockers would make it past ever again!

The Fairy Tree, Fitzroy Gardens. 1932.

After I did yesterdays post, and talked about the mortally wounded Gnome who has spent the last decade dying on my front steps, I remembered the Fairy Tree in Melbourne and thought I would search for an article about it.

This wonderful bit of Melbourne’s history remains in the Fitzroy Gardens today and is still adorned with the colorful carvings done by Ola Cohn in 1932. We visited there a few years ago but I can’t find any of my photos! Darn it…

If you look closely at the photo in this article you can see some of the creatures Miss Cohn was carving. My favourite is the dingo face looking out near the bottom.

It is in a good little historical corner of the Fitzroy gardens, as Captain Cook’s Cottage is just nearby. (In case your Aussie history is a little vague, Captain James Cook, in 1770, was the first white person to set foot in Australia)

This cottage was reported to have been the home of James Cook in his youth and was bought over from England and rebuilt in the gardens here in Melbourne in 1934.

The caption reads;

THE FAIRY TREE.

Birds, beasts, and sprites have been carved on the trunk of a giant redgum tree in the Fitzroy Gardens by Miss Ola Cohn, who is seen at work. She began her task last year. On several occasions the carvings have been damaged, and it has been suggested that measures should be taken to protect them.

The Argus 3 Nov 1932 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4506787

My thinking spot has bad feng shui.

On Sunday I had three options, I could either do the housework, the washing or work on my blog posts for the coming week. Both the washing and housework were sorely in need of attention and I could do with catching up on some blog drafts. Decisions, decisions…

I did one load of washing and hung it on the line, so it looked as though I had actually done something, then went out to my thinking spot on the front steps so no-one in the house would notice that I was really doing nothing at all.

While I was sitting there I thought I would take some pictures to share with you. Then I could convince myself I was working on a new post for Monday. Two things off my list and barely lifting a finger. Nice.

My thinking spot has a nice view of the mountains and is where I can look at the garden and the critters that live there, so first I took a photo of my little bird bath in the lavender hedge, it is very cute and always has a bird on it so it seems like quite a popular place to be.

The Steps of Death...

Next was the Gnome. He is not the ‘happy gardener’ type of gnome. Our Gnome has spent years on the verge of death, slumped in a corner of the steps with a rusty screwdriver plunged deep into his chest, blood trickling from the wound. This is how garden gnomes should be.

Also on the steps are some members of my carnivorous plant collection, pitcher plants and venus flytraps I have moved out there in order to fatten up, while thinning the wasp population. When I thought about this (killer plants and a nearly dead Gnome) I realized that ‘the steps of death’ is probably something that a feng shui expert would change immediately.

Hmmm… should I get some happy flowers in brightly coloured pots to correct this? Nah… I prefer the steps of death.

That started me thinking. Maybe I should start writing an anti-feng shui book. It could be laid out as a walk through my house, with the chapters entitled;

• The Steps of Death (subtitled ‘The only good gnome is a dead Gnome’)
• The Lounge of Gaming (artistic photos of gaming accessories scattered around)
• The Cluttered Kitchen (obviously I need more cupboards!)
• The Bedroom of Mutual Accumulation (the two boys share a room, ’nuff said)
• The Calamitous Fridge (deserving of its own chapter)
• The Mysterious Void (Laundry. Where socks go, half of which never return)
• The Miniscule Bathroom (self-explanatory)
• The Toilet of Contention (you know how it is, whenever you are in there someone is knocking on the door asking you to hurry up!)

and finally;

• The Pagoda of Wisdom (the man-cave, where he worships his tools and the one place we let him think he knows everything)

Bloody hell, I came out here to slack off and do nothing and I ended up writing a whole post. I am ’doing something’ and failing in my original lazy intention of ‘doing nothing’. Curse you thinking spot! Next time maybe I should just go back to bed.

Trapped Trapper. 1907.

The North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times 5 Dec 1907 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65209624

As soon as I read this article I just had a vision of the bunnies holding onto the ears of William Thomas and laughing manically while he struggled. It sounds just the kind of end the bunnies might hope for a trapper to meet really.

Sadly for the bunnies I am on the side of the trapper at the moment, you would be too if you saw the state of my remaining tomatoes.

Yes, some of them survived the onslaught of huge hailstones I posted about the other day only to be munched on days later by a rabbit. I don’t mind sharing the veggie garden with the birds, they at least have the manners to wait until the veg show signs of ripening before they move in for the kill. That just means it is a matter of timing and me paying enough attention in order to beat them. I’m ok with that, it means nothing gets wasted.

The stupid rabbits though, well they just munch bits off anything within reach no matter how unripe it is and wreck it for both the birds and I. They haven’t noticed the lovely zucchini growing at the moment so I am off to the hardware tomorrow for some star pickets and chicken wire to fence them off before they fall victim to the evil chompers too.

Deep hail. 1924. Or, Why my salad has no capsicum.

The Sydney Morning Herald 29 Oct 1924 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16164011

If you have read one of my earliest posts about my failed attempts to grow capsicum you will understand the thrill I had this season when the very first capsicum seedling I put in the ground was soon weighed down by a real live fruit. Ok, the plant was scrawny, and, in reality quite pathetic, but the fruit was real and I had high hopes that one day soon I would have the chance to pick a home-grown capsicum. YAY! You can tell by the way I am writing in the past tense it that all did not go entirely well, can’t you?

Here in Victoria we have had quite an interesting summer weather-wise. Normally at Xmas time we are crippled with heat induced lethargy, but this year we have barely had time to put on the fan and the weather changes, torrential rain, thunder, wind, then as quickly as it rains it is hot and steamy again. Yuck. The vegies have been loving it though, and so has the lawn. My hopes were getting higher and higher the bigger the capsicum got.

Then it was all over. It hailed. I don’t mean frozen raindrops falling in the garden, I mean chunks of ice plummeting from the heavens. The massing black clouds had driven me outside to get my washing off the line when something smacked into the grass at my feet. I picked it up and saw it was a large and misshapen piece of ice. Never a good sign. I ripped the rest of the washing down in record time and two minutes later all hell broke loose. That was the end of my capsicum, and a good portion of my tomatoes too. Bugger.

vegie killing hail 31.12.2011.

We were quite lucky actually, closer to Melbourne the ice was larger and far more destructive and I know that people just a few streets away had their cars dented by the hail. Fortunately it appears that nothing here seems to have been damaged. I was still annoyed though. My vegies were beyond damaged…grrr…… It appears to be my destiny to always eat shop-bought capsicum never home-grown *sniffle*.

The Yarra Valley is full of vineyards and orchards so me losing much of my pitiful excuse for a veg patch to hail is nothing compared to what hail does to real crops. (Here is where I should insert a complaint about the local council restricting the use of hail netting on farms because tourists looking out of their cars as they drive past want to see rolling green hills, not actual farming.)

The five feet of hail that fell on the Tweed District in New South Wales in this article from 1924 is one hell of a drop. Any crops that fell on wouldn’t have only been beaten to death, they would have been completely frozen. I can’t believe the hail was five feet deep in the gullies!

Money doesn’t grow on trees, just inside carrots. 1952 and 1945.

A woman in northern Sweden was lucky enough recently to have her lost wedding ring delivered to her via a carrot from her garden 16 years after it was lost in her kitchen. What were the chances that a carrot grew in the very spot the ring was lying?

Barrier Miner 10 Apr 1952 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article49240889

A florin arrived in the kitchen of a Glenorchy housewife in 1952 via a carrot and a Smithton housewife found a penny in a carrot in 1945. Again, what were the chances of a carrot growing exactly where these coins were lying? Is there a large amount of coinage just under the surface of Tasmania waiting for root vegetables to bring them to the surface?

These stories make me think I should get out there and put some carrots in my vegie garden!

Advocate 13 Jun 1945 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article68928158

Treasures in trees. 1892.

This article is a treasure in itself. Every single thing it refers to makes me want to hear the entire story, not just these interesting snippets!

I can only imagine what the ‘strangely shaped fossil trees’ might have been that were dug out of the quarry, and the ‘petrified-looking’ bodies along with them. A paleontologist would cry at the thought of the loss of this treasure. I wonder what happened to them? Are they in a deep drawer in a museum somewhere just waiting to be identified? Did they get taken home by the workers, only to be thrown out later accused of dust collecting?

Reports of toads or frogs in trees and rocks are not unusual, but still interesting. It would be interesting to know what type of beetle the reportedly enormous one found in the solid block of wood in the ships hold in Portsmouth was.

A stowaway snake being found in a ships load of wood is not strange. Depending on the finders attitude to slithering reptiles ‘terrifying’ might be a better word to describe its discovery.

The bat found inside the tree is very interesting. While bats can be red in color they aren’t usually described as ‘bright scarlet’ and if bright red bats were usual in the neighbourhood I doubt that the finder would have been quite so disturbed at its appearance. I know bats can fit into incredibly small spaces, (we have beautiful little mouse sized ones here and I have seen them fit into the tiniest of cracks) so I wonder if there was an opening that was missed?

The skeletal bird on the nest is a little weird. As they said, it is difficult to imagine how it became imprisoned. It came and went enough times to build a nest and then the door slammed behind it? I can only think that it died unexpectedly on the nest and the tree just grew around the opening.

The flat cat in the tree is the makings of a good kids story. (‘The cat on the mat is flat’ by Andy Griffiths is a favourite around here ) Judging by the bite, I am sure the cat didn’t find it very funny though. It sounds a bit like Old Man Willow, but without Tom Bombadil to come and save the cat before it was squeezed to death!

Aaah, the romance of the lock of hair and the unreadable note. Did the message say ‘keep your manky piece of hair, I am running off with your best friend’?

The child’s skull in the silver teapot is a sad story, if only they could have found out what the facts were. If the teapot was carefully hidden in a fork and the hiding place was then covered over by the growing tree, unless it was an exceptionally sturdy pot, you would think it would have been crushed. The condition of the pot is unspecified, though.

Finally, the hunters skeletal remains being found inside a tree. An amazing bit of preservation and, if their guess as to his end is accurate, a terribly undignified way to go. Sounds like Old Man Willow at it again……

The Mercury 15 Aug 1892 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article13274507

Stolen trees-1828.

The Hobart Town Courier 16th Aug 1828-http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4221595

What an unusual crime. Stealing the fruit trees out of a garden, not just the fruit off the trees. I thought that John Rawlins really deserved the punishment he got, one month to the tread wheel and three months on the chain gang. Although that is a pretty harsh sentence it was hardly a spur of the moment crime. I have to ask though, how long did it take him to steal the trees? They are hardly something that can be hidden under a jacket. How did the owner not notice what was going on?

Did Mr Cullicott walk out in the morning to get an apple for breakfast and find nothing but large holes? I would have loved to hear more of the story. How many trees? Did he dig them up or just chop them off at ground level? The effort involved in moving trees makes me think that he must have had at least one friend there helping with the shovel or the axe. What on earth did he do with the trees anyway?