The property falls away to the west resulting in views of incredible sunsets on hot summer nights (and nights in winter, for that matter, when the sun has wheeled right around 45 degrees north).
The plunging garden is terraced; twelve years ago I planted a plumbago hedge of four plants along 18 feet of ornamental lattice guarding a drop of ten feet to a garden bed below. The hedge was to prevent two small boys climbing on the lattice and risk falling, should the ornamental lattice give way.
No longer required. The boys are teenagers now. The plumbago had done its job. Over the dozen years, it had grown to twelve feet in height and had moved out about 18 feet from the fenceline. That's what? 12' x 18' x 18' in volume? Whatever.
The point is I had to clear it. Plumbago produces a magnificent green façade with stunning lilac foliage in late spring and is totally gorgeous all year round.
But beauty is skin deep. That eighteen square foot of volume behind the green and lilac was a jungle of stiff, dead, sharp sticks. Unlike soft foliage, you can't neatly press this material into a waste bin. Once you could burn it in an incinerator. No longer.
Over at city hall, the bureaucrats – who once used to be wardens of the ratepayer's interests – have become green zealots drunk on the ballooning rates they exact; and are now on a national inter-council race to outdo each other in virtue-signalling and social engineering. Between flying flags of various embattled third world countries, sectional interests, and aggrieved minorities, they decided small landowners may not 'burn off'. It is not 'good for the environment'.
The peninsula is a narrow strip of ti-tree and, during Christmas holidays, half the population of Victoria. A slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. I could walk across Mornington Peninsula from Point Leo to Arthur's Seat in under two hours. Jamming a huge population into a small isthmus of combustible land will one day be fatal when fire inevitably visits its hell on the place. There are two main roads out. Both were impassable at any speed with the Christmas exodus back to Melbourne on Sunday. I sat tolerantly in the traffic with Solomon Burke in the CD player, sounding like a cross between Barry White and Errol Brown but no-one's ever heard of him. If traffic is that bad in normal conditions, imagine what would happen should fire break out. You might as well try to swim across the rip to Queenscliff and end up being dragged into Bass Strait and certain death by drowning, sharks or being run over by a container ship from China.
The plumbago was just one of many clearing jobs on the property this year. I probably emptied 30 large green waste bins full of soft foliage. Now multiply my property's clearance rate by the tens of thousands of properties whose owners may no longer responsibly burn, and have not quite gotten around to clearing – often because the cost and effort of chopping, compacting and carting large volumes of material are just too much. Imagine the inevitable build-up of combustible material. Many property holders are often not even permanently resident. Further, ti-tree lines the streets and grows over the roadways peninsula-wide. It's a perfect storm waiting to happen.
So I got rid of my plumbago the intelligent, common sense way.
I burned it.
It took five separate burnings on clear days with a light breeze to disperse any smoke. But the sticks were so dry there was none. Each load went up in a whoompf of flame that shot ten feet in the air, burned instantly, and died down in minutes leaving hardly any ash. That's as clean a disposal technique as you can get. I watched each load burn and knew how big the flames would have been had the whole intact hedge gone up at once.
Fools and cheats and swindlers are abroad. And I mean abroad in the classic sense of widespread; not overseas. They're in your local town hall. Oh, and of course they are overseas as well half the time. Climate conferences paid for by you.
*
That was three months ago, when spring weather was mild and I could safely clear the place for summer. Now it was 38 degrees in the shade, where I sat with a drink and a book: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, by Eric Burdon.
Quiz question: which instrument defined the 1960s? The Who's smashed guitar? Hendrix's burned one? Keith Moon's drum? Leon Russell's piano? Dylan's harmonica?
The plunging garden is terraced; twelve years ago I planted a plumbago hedge of four plants along 18 feet of ornamental lattice guarding a drop of ten feet to a garden bed below. The hedge was to prevent two small boys climbing on the lattice and risk falling, should the ornamental lattice give way.
No longer required. The boys are teenagers now. The plumbago had done its job. Over the dozen years, it had grown to twelve feet in height and had moved out about 18 feet from the fenceline. That's what? 12' x 18' x 18' in volume? Whatever.
The point is I had to clear it. Plumbago produces a magnificent green façade with stunning lilac foliage in late spring and is totally gorgeous all year round.
But beauty is skin deep. That eighteen square foot of volume behind the green and lilac was a jungle of stiff, dead, sharp sticks. Unlike soft foliage, you can't neatly press this material into a waste bin. Once you could burn it in an incinerator. No longer.
Over at city hall, the bureaucrats – who once used to be wardens of the ratepayer's interests – have become green zealots drunk on the ballooning rates they exact; and are now on a national inter-council race to outdo each other in virtue-signalling and social engineering. Between flying flags of various embattled third world countries, sectional interests, and aggrieved minorities, they decided small landowners may not 'burn off'. It is not 'good for the environment'.
The peninsula is a narrow strip of ti-tree and, during Christmas holidays, half the population of Victoria. A slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. I could walk across Mornington Peninsula from Point Leo to Arthur's Seat in under two hours. Jamming a huge population into a small isthmus of combustible land will one day be fatal when fire inevitably visits its hell on the place. There are two main roads out. Both were impassable at any speed with the Christmas exodus back to Melbourne on Sunday. I sat tolerantly in the traffic with Solomon Burke in the CD player, sounding like a cross between Barry White and Errol Brown but no-one's ever heard of him. If traffic is that bad in normal conditions, imagine what would happen should fire break out. You might as well try to swim across the rip to Queenscliff and end up being dragged into Bass Strait and certain death by drowning, sharks or being run over by a container ship from China.
The plumbago was just one of many clearing jobs on the property this year. I probably emptied 30 large green waste bins full of soft foliage. Now multiply my property's clearance rate by the tens of thousands of properties whose owners may no longer responsibly burn, and have not quite gotten around to clearing – often because the cost and effort of chopping, compacting and carting large volumes of material are just too much. Imagine the inevitable build-up of combustible material. Many property holders are often not even permanently resident. Further, ti-tree lines the streets and grows over the roadways peninsula-wide. It's a perfect storm waiting to happen.
So I got rid of my plumbago the intelligent, common sense way.
I burned it.
It took five separate burnings on clear days with a light breeze to disperse any smoke. But the sticks were so dry there was none. Each load went up in a whoompf of flame that shot ten feet in the air, burned instantly, and died down in minutes leaving hardly any ash. That's as clean a disposal technique as you can get. I watched each load burn and knew how big the flames would have been had the whole intact hedge gone up at once.
Fools and cheats and swindlers are abroad. And I mean abroad in the classic sense of widespread; not overseas. They're in your local town hall. Oh, and of course they are overseas as well half the time. Climate conferences paid for by you.
*
That was three months ago, when spring weather was mild and I could safely clear the place for summer. Now it was 38 degrees in the shade, where I sat with a drink and a book: Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, by Eric Burdon.
Quiz question: which instrument defined the 1960s? The Who's smashed guitar? Hendrix's burned one? Keith Moon's drum? Leon Russell's piano? Dylan's harmonica?
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