2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Friday, May 15, 2015

My Year with Bluestone: Friday House Blogging (10) and a Dirty Story

No pictures today: for some reason my phone isn't working, but a sad tale of mud.

They are replacing the gas pipes in our street and I came out today to find most of the strip of garden between pavement and gutter all dug up and piled on the pavement and front driveway. I'd call it a "nature strip" but it's a bit narrow and isn't planted with grass, but little shrubs we have put in and mulched around, including a mini lillypilly and a lovely white hardenbergia.

There was a woman wearing rather a lot of make-up and an orange fluro vest guarding the path (there is lots of pedestrian traffic, as we are on a main road near two schools) and a man waist deep in black mud,  with a pile of ragged pieces of bluestone that had already been dug up.

I was dashing to the dentist but had to seize the bluestone moment, and asked him what it was like digging into the sticky black mud/clay around the bluestones. He looked a bit nonplussed and then started slowly shaking his heads, without words. Very eloquent!

I said I was interested in them and he offered to leave them for us, rather than carting them away. Win-win!

So when I came home, all the plants had been put back in, though in a different order along the strip, so they look weird; all the mud had been carefully scraped off the pavement; and there is a neat little pile of uneven bluestones with heavy scrapes along the side of each piece, that we can use for landscaping around the garden.

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