[img]http://www.transitionthegrove.org.au/media/kunena/attachments/legacy/images/Roberta_Anne_breaking_clay_2.jpg[/img]
Terrific morning at Neville & Enid’s starting with a tour of their beautiful garden on 2281 square metres.
There are many very large old trees mostly ones which bear fruit and nuts:
candlenut avocado 2 pecans mangoes white sapote macadamia nuts mulberry passionfruit valencia orange pawpaws cherry mango. red cedar silky oak frangipani camelias jacarandas sozgeni jambos(?) lillypilly family tyrilliana (?)gum tree.
Underneath the huge old spreading jacarandas is a singles grass tennis court. The whole place felt right for garden parties luncheon parties outdoors social tennis children playing for hours in all the spaces and nooks. It is a feeling you don’t get on a normal suburban block. More like being in a private botanic garden or as someone said a vicarage garden!
We adjourned upstairs in the historic homestead to a morning tea of cheese and bacon muffins and pecan slice (home grown) and tried out cracking macadamia nuts on their super duper nut cracker.
Then we went downstairs to work on our ‘mud’ which Neville and Enid had kindly collected bucketsful of clay. Some of us smashed it up into small chunks while others sieved it through varying grades of sieves into buckets then others packed it into all the icecream containers we had bought. It was great fun. [img]http://www.transitionthegrove.org.au/media/kunena/attachments/legacy/images/Janette_Frank_Anne_sifting_clay.jpg[/img]
The next step is to arrange with Bob Mud to teach us how to make a Chinese cooker out of our new clay.
We car-pooled both ways and had great conversations about the elections and about the need for ‘community houses’ in our suburbs. [img]http://www.transitionthegrove.org.au/media/kunena/attachments/legacy/images/Brenda_Frank_Janette_sifting_clay.jpg[/img]