Wallaby in garden

The other morning we caught this fellow having a browse around our garden. We knew he was visiting as a number of plants were getting browsed at about knee height. He has completely chomped down on some Lilies growing near our boundary that fronts onto the forest. Taking this photo was hard as I didn't have a telephoto lens on my camera and he became aware of me as I opened the door and walked onto the verandah. Amazingly he jumped as the shutter sound was made considering he was a good 20 metres away.

Fine and sunny day max 23.4 C min 10.8 C. Grading and counting wholesale orders. Claire and Merryn came in and tidied up the potted bulbs and dug all the hand digs for bulbs that were ordered and not in this years lift. Greg delivered some yellows. Mowed some of the lawns after work.

Grading daffodil bulbs

Here are some pictures of our grading set up.

The rubbing machine removes the husks and the dirt falls through to collected.

The grading machine sorts the bulbs into sizes. It has a jumping motion which moves the bulbs along the riddles that are sized progressively larger. Once they move across a riddle that is larger than the diameter of the bulb it falls through to be collected in a bucket below. Unfortunately daffodil bulbs often have offsets which get caught, so you have to be manually moving the odd bulbs along.


Fine day but overcast and milder than yesterday light overnight rain, max 26.6 C, min 17.1 C rainfall 4.6mm . Grading and counting wholesale orders, found time to repair the ride-on-mower and the hand hold in the Tasar (sailing boat). Staying tonight down at the campsite at Balnarring Beach.

Bulb storage

We have an opened sided shed that we store the bulbs in. This allows for good ventilation and if needed we can use portable industrial fans. The downside is that we are much at the mercy of the weather and can't control the temperatures of the bulbs as much as is preferable. We figure this is much the way the bulbs will have it when they are sent to customers homes. We wouldn't want to send pampered bulbs that then struggle to survive fluctuations in temperatures.

This how the bulbs stacks are arranged pre-grading, on mini-pallets in labelled an arranged as per daffodil division.

After they are graded they stay in daffodil division and are then arranged in alphabetical order. They are arranged on shelves as close together as possible. The label also states the graded size of the bulbs. This is all done to facilitate the speedy selection of bulbs when orders are being picked.

Fine and sunny with a strong Northerly wind, max 32.5 C min 19.8 C. Today was spent continuing to grade bulbs and count wholesale orders. Three and a half bays completed finished of div 1& 2's then finished div 3's. Received registered letter from one of our wholesale customers today cancelling their order and that the new owner would contact us in due course. I was going to deliver part of their order today. Delivered part of another wholesale order and checked outt the lie of the land. Going down to Balnarring Beach tonight to set up our campsite and take the lasers to the yacht club.

The Unconscious Civilisation

After my tirade about corporatism on the 12^th of Jan it brought to mind the book The Unconscious Civilisation by philosopher John Ralston Saul. I was introduced to it via a radio series played on ABC Radio National. Saul began his Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio Massey Lecture series;

“The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.

The point of these received wisdoms of the second half of the 20th century is that the very heart and soul of our 2,500 year old civilization is, apparently, economics, and from that heart flowed, and continues to flow, everything else. We must therefore fling down and fling up the structures of our society as the marketplace orders. If we don't, the marketplace will do it anyway.”

Saul is an outstanding speaker and his engaging Massey Lectures can be listened to at the following http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey-archives/1995/11/06/massey-lectures-1995-the-unconscious-civilization/

Fine and sunny day max 31.1 C min 13.1 C. Continued with cleaning and counting daffodil bulbs. Completed another 4 bays and are up to Z in the div 1 & 2 bulbs. Worked out what had disabled the ride-on mower, a woodruff key that holds the drive gear to the drive shaft had sheared off.

Oriental Lilies

Some pictures of the seedling Oriental Lilies flowering in our garden. The perfume is truly superb and in the warm evenings engulfs you when you are outside.

Fine sunny day, high 23.1 c min. 9.3 C. Morning finished odd jobs around house, cabling now completed. Afternoon shifted bulk bins around and tidied up around shed. Nirin, Sharon, Ronan and Sabina came for tea

Trumpet Lilies

The lilies in our garden are giving me great pleasure at the moment. They are ones that I grew from seed many years ago.  They have been in situ for many years and are getting larger and larger and becoming more and more impressive. I prefer the trumpet lilies, they have good strong colours that aren’t too murky, stand up tall and have a delightful fragrance. The Oriental Lilies grow well in our garden to and so I have a few of them doing well too.

The bulbs are all labelled but they are a bit hard to get to check when the lilies are flowering. The labels have the original crosses on them. Some of the trumpets I know are grexes from the Oregon Bulb farms breeding and there are some with Lilium sulpureum as a parent.

I always intend propagating the better ones so that we can have a nice clump of the same ones, but alas each year they are finished before I get around to marking them.

Overcast with a shower in the morning and then a sunny afternoon max. 18.5 C, min. 9.6 C, rainfall 1.5 mm. Grading bulbs again today as well as counting wholesale orders. 4 more bays completed up to end of P’s in the division 1 & 2’s.

Test Cricket at Perth

Well, the cricket was so engaging it has changed what I will write about this evening. I sat down after working watching the cricket on the TV with one eye whilst doing other things but gradually it became totally engrossing. As Dave Warner got going it wasn't possible to move away. A century in 69 balls and in less than a session! It brings to mind other fast centuries scored on the WACA; Wayne Gilchrist and Chris Gayle in recent times.

The summary of the Cricinfo (www.espncricinfo.com) ball by ball commentary pretty much sums up India's woes

"That's the end of an utterly humiliatingly day for India. If their fans were wondering how things could get worse after the England whitewash last year, there was the mauling in Sydney. If they thought that was the nadir, Friday the 13th brought on even more embarrassment. Shot out for 161, before Warner bludgeoned a magical century in less than a session. And to think, six months ago India were No. 1. As one reader posted, it was hard to decide whether the Indian bowling was worse or their batting."

Cricket is very much a confidence game and Australia has it all over India at present.  The series promised to be so much closer and exciting. The anticipation I remember feeling at the MCG on Boxing Day was fulfilled through the whole test with the balance swaying from one side to another right to the end.  I feel a bit sad for the Indian team, many of them have played some great cricket on previous tours.  The standing ovation from 50,000 fans that Sachin Tendulker received on day 2 at the MCG when going out to bat was the loudest and most sustained I have ever heard at the MCG.

Another cool day overcast with showers max 18 C min 10C rainfall 1.4 mm. Day spent grading and counting wholesale orders. Good day with another 4 bays done, up I's in division 1&2's.