Fun and games in the Eaglemont Station ramp garden.

Hello Friends, before I tell you about the strange goings on in the ramp garden, l have a few matters I wish to bring you up to date with.  FoEV held its first fundraiser at Jane Crafter's beautiful Arts and Crafts house last Sunday.  Jane's beautiful garden, house, Ballroom, and her hospitality helped us raise over $800 and provided a wonderful relaxing and informative afternoon for our members. Thanks also to Pippa for her peerless organising and to members who brought food and helped clean up.

The fundraiser was timely as it around this time of the year I have to pay Landcare Victoria about $600 to insure FoEV village against any problems we may ecounter in damaging cables or pipes or any rail or council infrastructure as well as medical insurance should any of us injure ourselves.  This year however I haven't been able to  fill in the usual online form and pay up; phone calls, emails to the Landcare website have all gone unanswered.  So I decided to head into the city on Friday to the Landcare Victoria office.  

Unfortunately with no contact I have been unable to renew our insurance and as of the new financial year we will be uninsured until I can rectify the situation.  I checked with other offices on that floor and they reported very few sightings of anyone in the Landacare office of recent times. It makes me wonder if we were ever to need to use the insurance, would there be anyone around to action the claim?

I would like to thank all the artists turned concreters and construction workers who helped install the John Walkley memorial seat and roof.  A special mention to Carol who turned water carrier and and architechtural adviser. I can report that on Friday, John's brother, his wife and Bronwyn sat on the seat with Bella and myself on the stump seat, with the sun streaming in under the roof having a very convivial morning tea, reminiscing of days gardening with John.

Through suberb design the FoEV have managed to get the seat to have winter sun streaming in after about 10.00 am and when there is a heavy dew in the morning it forms on the laser light roof and not on the seat timber.

Early indications are that the Eaglemont Traders Association are happy for us to run a version of our wildflower/nature walks on Heritage day Sunday August the 11th. We have funding from Australia Post to make permanent identification signs for twenty of the significant trees and shrubs, a tube stock plant for each child and a brouchure/colouring/worksheet for each child.

I promised you some news about the ramp garden, I would firstly like to thank Mike, Dave and Collin for the great work they did weeding and planting the northen end and Liz D and her daughter also planting and weeding at our last Saturday working bee.

The photo at the top of this story should be compared with one as it is now, much safer with all the catoneaster removed and no carpet of red berries on the ramp ashpalt!  

About six months after the Acorn house was installed some hungry animal, probably a possum, decided the acorns were ripe to eat and it ate all of them!

Strangely the fix was to use flowering gum nuts which have been installed for over two years without any interference from native animals until a couple of weeks ago the red one became unglued. No apparent teeth marks!

Does anyone know what kind of bug has decided our green pencil would be a safe place to rest?

I am hoping that the black staining afflicting some of the pencil tips will soon be bleached away by sunlight, both the red and orange pencils had some black earlier in the year that has now faded away.

The outstanding plant in the ramp garden at the moment is one I believe is called Cockie's Tonge, a hardy Western Australian native plant which is tolerant of coastal locations, windy sites, drought and poor soils. Flowers in winter and early spring. I apologise for this photo of the plant, just passed its best display as someone sent a much better one, but I am unable to find it.

Finally, it has to be said what a difference there is to the overall look of the ramp garden since FoEV replaced the weed infested mess that was there.

p.s. I would also like to thank Derek and Jane who helped me on Wednesday's working bee to clear most of the oxalis weed from some of the Alandale garden beds.