The Mangle

My ma warned us about the mangle, to stay away from it, not to mess with it. The rolls were hard but only rubber. I scratched a mark on the bottom one with the breadknife. I loved it in the kitchen – the steam and the heat – when my ma was putting the sheets through the mangle, and my da’s shirts. The sheets were shiny with huge wet bubbles and my ma put a corner up to the mangle and turned the handle and the sheet rose out of the water like a whale being caught. The water ran down the sheet and the bubbles were crushed as the sheet was pulled through the rolls and came out flat, looking like material again, the shininess all gone. Another sheet, the rubber creaked and groaned, then the rest slid through easily. She wouldn’t let me help. She only let me stand behind the washing machine and guide the sheet into the red basin. The sheet was warm and kind of solid and hard. My fingers were safe on that side. The smaller clothes came through and I caught them and put them on top of the sheets. The basin was full. She had to empty the machine now and fill it again for the nappies. The steam in the kitchen was what I really liked, and the wet on the walls.

Quotation from: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Noxious Daisy

This pretty little daisy growing oh so prettily on this wall, and it may be said, all over the place, in gardens, bits of waste ground, is on the NZ List of noxious weeds.

The Mexican daisy, Erigeron karvinskianus, has very similar flowers to the common lawn daisy Bellis perennis. It is a perennial which grows on thin, quite brittle stems, which form a thick mat. Therein lies its pestilential problem. It forms larged matted clumps which in non-urban environments smother native vegetation. As the daisy dies off it leaves large areas vulnerable to other invasive species.

It is an incredibly prolific seeder (like most Compositae). Whilst its quite easy to 'weed' it in the garden, one is on a losing wicket as unless you dig up all the roots you only encourage its spread. Naturally weeding has to be done before it seeds, which is in itself difficult as it flowers (and seeds) pretty much all year round.

And of course neighbours tend to like it because it is a pretty wee thing, and they may not realise how noxious it is. I have even seen it for sale on plant stalls at school fairs!

Ursula's Red

"A real head-turner for shady sites" says one plant guide, another calls this the finest of the Japanese Painted Ferns. I'm not going to argue. This clump grows just by the foot of some steps leading to our front door, and takes over from a clump of hellebores which have just finished flowering.

A North American website said "Though deer do like it, it can quickly produce more fronds and may show no lasting ill effects", well of course in town we don't need to worry about deer. Though, by the way, New Zealand has seven species of feral deer, including red, sika, fallow, and himalayan tahr. What were those early settlers thinking about? Well, hunting obviously - its just a shame that most introduced mammals have turend out to be such enormous pests. There was at one time moose in fiordland, but despite numerous attempts and umpteen infra-red cameras to catch them, none have been seen since the last was shot in the 1920s. The browse lines in fiordland undergrowth have convinced some that moose could still flourish. A few years ago Ken & Marg Tustin had some hairs DNA tested in Canada (click here) and apparently there really are moose lurking in the thick undergrowth.

To do it the courtesy of a full title this is, Japanese Painted Fern Ursula's Red, Athyrium nipponicum var pictum.

How to Write History

'I let it be a dull book, recording merely such uncontroversial facts as, for example, that so-and-so married so-and-so, the daughter of such-and-such who had this or that number of public honours to his credit, but not mentioning the political reasons for the marriage nor the behind-the-scene bargaining between the families. Or I would write that so-and-so died suddenly, after eating a dish of African figs, but say nothing of poison, or to whose advantage the death proved to be, unless they were supported by a verdict of the Criminal Courts.
I told no lies, but neither did I tell the truth in the sense that I mean to tell it here. ... it is myself writing as I feel, and as the history proceeds the reader will be more ready to believe that I am hiding nothing – so much being to my discredit.
This is a confidential history. But who, it may be asked, are my confidants? My answer is: it is addressed to posterity. I do not mean my great-grandchildren, or my great-great-grandchildren: I mean an extremely remote posterity. Yet my hope is that you, my eventual readers of a hundred generations ahead, or more, will feel yourselves directly spoken to, as if by a contemporary: as often Herodotus and Thucydides, long dead, seem to speak to me.'
Quotation from: I Claudius by Robert Graves

Algal Bubbles

There's been some more yukky algal muck washing up on the beach recently. But it must have been the angle of the sun, that gave the bubbles a pretty irridiscent shiny colour. Just goes to show there's beauty even in yukky things. The close-up photo does not do it justice!

Ruby Sea Lion

A bit further along the beach than previously noted, Ruby the sealion has clearly been having fun sliding down a sand shelf.

On top of the sand dunes are some playing fields, and there's a notice there to say that the young female sea-lion is called Ruby, and please keep your dogs under control, as she likes to haul out to rest during the day.

She is so well camouflaged that it's not until you are right on her that you see her. However, rest assured it was not us that caused her to lift her head, but someone walking between us and her.