Happy New Year My Friends

(source for graphic: http://datacommunication2011.blogspot.com/2011/12/merry-christmas-happy-new-year-2012.html)

For those of you who are going out partying tonight, I wish you a safe and fabulous new year's eve, and those of you who are having a more sedate nye, enjoy your night as well.

I really hope that 2012 is an excellent year for you and that at least some of your dreams come true!

And I hope that you will continue to read and enjoy Mutterings from Maryville!!

See you next year!

Kev

New Year's eve-eve

Steve and I picked up my brother, Brett, from Coolangatta airport yesterday afternoon for his first ever stay at Maryville@Larnook. Our friend, Keith, from Sydney also came over for the night (Keith is up visiting for the Tropical Fruits Dance Party, which we are all attending). Anyway, we had a lovely dinner of slow roasted pork belly (the first time I had attempted cooking it - was delicious) and a Thai beef salad washed down by lots of chardonnay, and followed of course, by Steve's desserts.
Yep, a cardie on 31 December - who could have thought. The last day of the year dawned cool and quite wet, although it seems to be clearing up now, as I sit and type this at 5.30pm. We all headed down to Kyogle for our weekly shopping and rounded it off with brunch at the Box and Dice Cafe.
And these are out 'party herbs' that Steve and I bought from the very fun guy at the Happy High Herbs shop in Uki that we will be using to enhance our partying at tonight's Tropical Fruits NYE danceparty 'Tribal'. All legal, all based on bits of plant. And all beginning with the letter 'e'...how coincidental. So we have empathy to feel all lovey-dovey, everything is beautiful kinda feeling; energy to well, give us energy; eclipse to give us a bit of an edge; and entropy to help us come down the following day. I can't be sceptical, I have to believe they will work, otherwise, they won't.

Rainfall stats 2011

January 309

February 172

March 129.5

April 252.5

May 79

June 103.5

July 43.5

August 160.5

September 13.5 (very dry month)

October 217

November 155.5

December 141

Total 2011 1776.5

Total 2010 1697

Total 2009 1500

The vexed question of nature

I'm reading Rambunctious Garden, Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World by Emma Marris at the moment, and as I was reading it on the day bed, I was compelled to think of the inconsistent ways I think about exotic/introduced/feral species. I'd love to remove most of the slash pines that have been planted as wind breaks on our property because I see them as an unwelcome European element in an otherwise 'Australian' landscape.

But, immediately I am vulnerable to an attack led by 'well just what is an 'Australian' landscape, anyway? And here I am overlooking gardens (gardens that we have planted) with frangipani and heliconia and exotic gingers, and I look at the vege gardens (oh how Aussie) and I see plants from South America and southern Europe.

And then I think back to how wonderful it is to see the yellow tailed black cockatoos chewing their way through the pine cones on those slash pines I'd like to banish...

Marris' argument is that the notion of pristine nature doesn't exist and probably never did, but that it is very much a product of a Western imagination. For Marris, contemporary nature is a hybrid of the wild with the managed and that a preoccupation with 'pristine wilderness' might be good for the spirit but not so good for the global ecology.

And then my mind turns to the cane toad and how we have no black snakes because of it. And the various weeds that I do battle with...and I put my book down and have a sleep.

Boxing Night at Larnook

Steve and I had a wonderful couple of days in Newcastle between Xmas Eve and home again on Boxing Day. It was lovely to spend time with family and friends and it was the first Xmas we had in Newcastle since moving up here, so it was high time we had a very Newcastle Xmas. Then, our friends, Glen, John and Julie and Lou arrived towards the end of yesterday for a very laid back but enjoyable dinner. Although desserts are always an important feature at our dinners, we didn't actually commence with dessert as this post might suggest but anyway here they are: Steve's famous ice cream slice and sherry log and a locally made Xmas pudding.
I marinated some green banana prawns in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, orange juice and garlic and ginger and bbq'd them... very tasty
a fabulous salad that Julie created
and here we are at the table: Glen, John, Steve, Julie and Lou
and me substituting for Glen in this pic.

poached chicken salad with grilled haloumi

A simple but rather delicious and healthy lunch that I put together last Friday: poached chicken breast in water and 1 cup of chardonnay; then cooled and sliced; made a salad using lettuce, avocado, tomatoes from our garden, spring onion, mango. Grilled some haloumi cheese and arranged strips over the top and added some almost hard boiled eggs (boiled for 3.5 minutes, just nice and soft, almost gooey). Very tasty.

2 dead snakes on the Cawongla Road this morning

With the appalling weather we've been having it's no surprise that snakes are being drawn to the warmth that bitumen roads provide them. And of course, that means that they are easily run over, either accidentally or on purpose. I suspect there's a fair bit of the latter that happens up here. So the death toll this morning as we drove down the valley to work was 2 snakes: a gravid eastern small-eyed snake, with the most beautiful pink belly, and a large eastern brown snake. This was surprising as it must have been killed this morning prior to 7.25am which is the time we drove past it. The poor thing must have been run over virtually as soon as it had begun basking on the road.

It's interesting that I've seen two dead browns in the space of a few days - usually I see dead browns in early spring when they are moving around looking for mates. By December, it's usually hot every day and so they don't need to hang around the roads trying to soak up as much warmth as they can.

I argue, with my colleague, Nancy Cushing, in Snake Bitten, that there was a general angst about snakes operating in Australia up until the 70s. I think that angst still exists in the country. I think I've written before about the 'snake netting' that used to be attached to the bottom of our house in the ridiculous belief you could keep snakes out from under the house; then there were the bottles of 'snake repellant' that the local pet shop used to sell (I haven't seen these lately); and most recently, there were ads in one of the free farmer magazines that get poked in our letterbox, featuring a snake repelling device that you plug in to the power and it emits some kind of anti-snake sound waves or something. Lordie.