Kyogle's Annual Giant Pumpkin (and watermelon) Competition

 While it may not have been on our bucket list, attending the Giant Pumpkin Competition Weigh-In at Kygole, yesterday morning, was at least on our List of Must-Do Things This Week. So after we'd done our shopping at the farmers' markets, we toddled off down to the showground, where we met up with Julia, who happens to have an unhealthy interest in over-sized pumpkins, melons, squashes and gramma. With the day threatening to reach 37 (which it did) we headed off early to Kyogle.

 It was one of those days with a strange sense of foreboding (well it seemed that way for me). Like when you have some kind of feeling that something strange was going to happen later in the day. It took me back to when I was a kid and often felt like that. But, you will be pleased to know that the rest of the day was completely uneventful. But an uneventful event, this one, wasn't.  Here is Steve at the entry to the Giant Pumpkin Competition entry.

 Well there were about a dozen over-sized veges all displayed on wooden palettes. (I'm sure that's the incorrect spelling, but I'm just too hot to care). This one reminded me of Jabba the Hutt for some reason, though not necessarily from this angle.

 Another big fella. The colours and textures were intriguing and interesting. Apparently it takes 70 days to get something from a seedling a few cms high to one of these things.

And of course, what would a Giant Pumpkin Competition be without a 'Guess the weight of the giant pumpkin' competition. Here is Julia with her entry which she is just about to slip into the locked box underneath the sign of the giant pumpkin. Unfortunately for Julia, she didn't win. However, I am pleased to say that the winner of this year's Kyogle Giant Pumpkin Competition Guessing Competition was none other than Stevie!  His winning guess was 242 kgs. That's a lot of soup!
There was some discussion about  us entering next year but we were put off by how we would actually lift and cart the giant pumpkin down to Kyogle.

Farewell Eldo, our Balinese Princess

We met Eldo when we were in Bali back in 2007 or maybe it was 2006. We were relaxing at a beautiful villa in Pemuteran, on the blissfully quiet and scenically stunning north-west coast of the island. Eldo was also a guest there and we soon struck up a great friendship with him. Before we met him we had cheekily given him the nickname, 'Balinese Princess', because of his model looks and what we thought was a certain aloofness, which, not surprisingly was just shyness. But the name stuck, even if he was Javan and not Balinese. And in no way aloof.

This photo was taken on a snorkelling trip we coaxed him into going on with us. He wasn't a confident swimmer so we gave him some lessons in the pool the day before we went out. We had a great time and he was delighted to see a turtle. We invited Eldo to came along with us on the next leg of our trip, when we stayed in Villa Isabella, the most amazing Spanish inspired (huge) villa, near Ubud. I think we were there for about a week and had the most wonderful time together with our friends Ross and Andri.

You can keep in touch with friends so easily with Facebook and so our friendship remained over the eight years or so since we first met. We would catch up a few times a year online, an occasional Skype, or a message, or I'd see a sneaky 'like' from him to one of my posts, and I'd do the same to a post of his. He was always hoping to come and visit us. He'd moved back and forth between Bali and Java over the years.

This morning Facebook told me it was Eldo's birthday today so I sent him a couple of lines wishing him a wonderful day, before I organised myself for the day ahead. I thought nothing more of Eldo until this afternoon when a friend of his, who had seen my birthday message on his Facebook wall, kindly left a message to let me know that Eldo had died in July last year. Steve and I are very sad at this news. I am also sad for not even noticing that we hadn't had any contact for so long.

Farewell, Eldo, our Balinese Princess. You didn't make it to Larnook but the memory of your friendship stays with us always.  Selamat jalan, my friend.

A little vimeo made by Maxence

If you click on this link, it will take you to a vimeo that was shot and edited by Maxence, who was a HelpXer here a couple of weeks ago, with his friend, Clem.  It's really very good and gives you some nice (moving) images of Maryville@Larnook.

Thanks, Max, for letting me post it.

https://vimeo.com/84371789

Messing around with mesh

Steve looking less than happy as we try and work out how to attach each of the five lengths of chicken wire to each other which will then be attached to the roof of the Lizard Palace. I have to make it rat proof and this is turning into more of a challenge than we thought.  Stay tuned.

Malte's Garden mulched and planted out now

 So this is the garden at the entry to our house, which, up until a few weeks ago was dominated by some very large Lomandra plants, which had grown too large and were crowding out everything else. So, as you saw, Malte and Steve dug out quite a few and then Max and Clem dug the rest of them out while they were with us.

 I had a load of mulch delivered yesterday and set about mulching over the garden.

And now it is looking much more attractive. Steve and I headed down to the Lismore Car Boot Markets early this morning and bought 20 smaller natives which I planted out. I've learned my lesson. Sometimes less (and smaller) is more (and better). I'll post some pics of the plants later on.

What's February without some frangipani pics...

 I'll take some more over the coming week and post them....we have such a variety growing now...and they are such stunning flowers