THINKING ALLOWED

I was sitting thinking the other day about how fortunate Phil and I are at having been given so many years to enjoy this wonderful earth of ours.  We may not have done a lot with our lives but they have been our lives and we are content.

Then I got to thinking about the things that have occurred in recent years.  Have they come to try our patience I wonder?  Maybe I just don't hold my mouth right!!  Minor things compared with the woes of many but they were our woes and we had to deal with them.

Firstly, I flooded part of the house because of the faulty valve on the solar HWS (I guess it was great to have new cupboards and floor coverings but oh! the upheaval) and then our ducted airconditoner decided to call it a day.   Insurance company paid for the fusion but to fit a better aircon meant we were out of pocket by quite an amount of money.  We got the HWS going well again, at fortunately much less cost than the aircon, which is very cheering and we are enjoying great hot showers once more.

Why our lotto numbers never come up is something else that tries my patience but then when you look at the odds in the millions there's really no surprise there, even though I've been using one row of six numbers for over 32 years!!  Law of averages?  No such thing in reality.

Now to top it all off a eucalyptus tree that has been quietly growing in our front garden since I planted it back in about 1975 has decided to uproot itself and fall; it's rather large too.  No storm or high wind so have no idea what caused it to fall.  It wasn't looking all that happy for a while so perhaps it had just had it's day.   You can just see the trunk of the tree on the extreme left of this photo which I took a couple of years ago.  It would have been about 20+ feet tall.

I've been considering have someone come in and do some tree pruning and I guess this has made up my mind to do so.  I think I will get two quotes from two reliable firms (one is offering a 10% discount if I quote I found them in a little directory that is delivered to us a few times a year) and then consider how much we can afford to get done.  There is a very tall self-sown weeping peppermint which I think needs the top taken right out before perhaps it too decides to join the eucalypt.

I love ponytails (palms) and my very first one had been growing quite close to the tree that fell and Phil tells me it has been broken off at the base.  I can't get close enough to see but what upsets me is this particular ponytail had new growths right up its trunk.  We can't get to it at present but hopefully may be able to start new plants from those shoots.  I am not sure what else has suffered under this big tree but time of course will show all.  I have two other quite large ponytails in the front garden and three still in pots one of which is due to go in the garden.

This is not one of my ponytails (which by the way are not a palm at all) but it would have been about this size only with new shoots up the stem and was actually more handsome than this one.  (Wish my garden looked this neat).