Category: Creativity

Lego: Bosley’s Builders 13

13. Plans & Plants

Trish harvested lavender cabbages from her vegetable patch beside where Tim built a mysterious something. “I’d like to get on with planting the garage and bunkhouse walls,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure Nin Wizard would like to get going with his garden.”

“So what’s stopping you?” Tim said. He hammered a couple of steely runners on the underside of the thing he was working on. Whatever it was.

“I have no plants other than these and I’m not sacrificing them,” she said, gesturing over the vegetable garden on pallets that they’d planned to serve as their roof.

“And you shouldn’t have to,” Tim said. “We all enjoy the vegetables you grow.” 

“How long till we can move into our real place?” Trish grumbled. “And what is that thing?”

“It’s tricky. Canteen needs to be on the ground floor. Our cabin on that. I’m waiting for Bosley’s say-so to get going on the first.”

“Something I can do?” Trish said.

“Yeah. Take this sled for a run.”

“Sled? What for?”

“Hear Dan mention his cousin is coming back over today with a load of plants despite Ms Sander telling him they’re nowhere near ready for plants.”

“Oh, yeeesss!” Trish jumped for joy. She laughed nastily and made like she was Ms Sander. “Oh no, what’ll we do with these plants? We’re not ready. Take them away.”

She hugged Tim round his head and smacked a kiss on his face. “I’m gone.” She picked up the sled handles and danced away, pulling the empty sled behind.

She could smell the heavenly scent of flowers when she wasn’t even halfway over the ‘brudge’1— what they had christened the dam and sluice structure across the gap between their swamp and the deep channel. The word was a mix between bridge and trudge they all agreed on.

She parked the sled beside Gaz’s boat, hampering anyone else from approaching the cargo by design, and joined the altercation on the Hardware Store’s fore-deck.

As expected, Ms Sander was in full flight about Gaz’s stupidity thinking that she—Ms Sander—would take the plants when she had nowhere to put them. “As you can see, young man,” she gestured at the place reserved for the plant shop. “My builders are slow and they are never short of an excuse.”

Even Ms Bee rolled her eyes.

“I’ll take them,” Trish said. “Though I can’t pay, of course.”

“She’ll be doing you a favor,” Dan said at Gaz’s open mouth.

“Hang on, Cuz!” Gaz said, spluttering. “I need to eat!”

“We’ll pay you in-kind,” Dan said. “The minute we get the canteen up and running, you’ll eat at ours for free to the value of a boat-load of plants.”

“Have a chat with Drew,” Trish said. “He’ll work you a good deal.”

“You’re not taking our first customer, are you?” Bee said, half-joking. “Tradies always stay for a cuppa and sausage roll?”

“Never mind, Bee,” Ms Sander said. “Our real customers will have class.”

Even Trish rolled her eyes that time.

Dan helped Trish get the sled up and over the sluice. They discussed getting the rest of plants now or later. Trish said now. Dan said, have we got anywhere to put them?

“Let’s just get Gaz’s boat and tie it next to the garage,” Trish said. “Have you got somewhere he can stay overnight?” she said innocently. It wasn’t anywhere near even lunchtime.

“He won’t,” Dan predicted. “We’ll get all the plants out before he goes.”

Trish grinned.

  1. The word “brudge” and maybe concept too, comes from “The Trokeville Way” by Russell Hoban (1996) A truly mysterious read that after 28 years has not yet give up all its secrets. Read the book and let me know what you think it says?

My Sky +

+ abseiling lines … the window washers are threaded over the building. They did a great job on my windows, which are clean for the first time in their lives. If you can talk about the lives of windows.

And my sky + a few Cumulus humilis according to my interpretation of a diagram in Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s The Cloudspotter’s Guide. Minimal vertical extent, he says. ‘They look flattened and appear wider than they are tall and do not cause rain.’

I’ve had that book for about fifteen years and this is the first time I’ve lived somewhere where I can see a decent bit of sky when I look out of the windows.

Isn’t it strange by the way, that we still say ‘look out the windows’ when actually, usually, we look through the windows? I often notice a paradoxical thing in relation with doors. We walk through the doors?

Have you tried that recently? I don’t recommend it.

Playing …

Playing with shadows and reflections …

It’s just so weird that the two lights in the center of the photo are green when the two flanking them are the same sort of lights.

What I can see when I look out the window at them, is that the two outer lights are a warm yellowish glow, while the two inner light–the green ones in the photo–are a cool tone. Wonder if the difference is that they are LEDs? A mystery. I might have to ask Super Gavin who does the maintenance.

And seeing how much local light is actually sent uselessly into the night sky …

No wonder animals living in cities are changing their night time flight paths.

Washed …

With water, vinegar and more water, the mystery stone is starting to give up its secrets.

When I washed it with vinegar the outer sandy-looking layer immediately began to melt. So that’s a limestone layer, I assume.

There appears to be a hole or cracked area in the center and a weird straight sliver in the upper left. That doesnt feel stony. Wonder if it could possibly be petrified wood?

Side view

This is a side shot. Another or same insertion … a sliver of something. Although, that area is also reminiscent of the bunch of leaf-thin layers.

And then that black circle … is it animal, vegetable or mineral? It looks like lichen. Too bad I don’t have a microscope. I wonder what mineral could make that yellow. Doesn’t look like sulfur. [I learnt ‘sulphur’ for that word.]

Getting more and more interesting.

The inside has to dry before I can get a good image.

Washed …

With water, vinegar and more water, the mystery stone is starting to give up its secrets.

When I washed it with vinegar the outer sandy-looking layer immediately began to melt. So that’s a limestone layer, I assume.

There appears to be a hole or cracked area in the center and a weird straight sliver in the upper left. That doesnt feel stony. Wonder if it could possibly be petrified wood?

Side view

This is a side shot. Another or same insertion … a sliver of something. Although, that area is also reminiscent of the bunch of leaf-thin layers.

And then that black circle … is it animal, vegetable or mineral? It looks like lichen. Too bad I don’t have a microscope. I wonder what mineral could make that yellow. Doesn’t look like sulfur. [I learnt ‘sulphur’ for that word.]

Getting more and more interesting.

The inside has to dry before I can get a good image.

Mystery Rock …

This rock, which is about the size of a large orange and weighs about a kilo, (2.2 pounds) was collected for me while the family were out looking for ‘thunder eggs’. A common activity in Northern NSW and southern Queensland.

While this one hasn’t got the simple perfection of the much covetted ‘real’ thunder eggs, I like it because it is so complex inside the nodule.

In places there look to be more than a dozen layers. Thicker and also leaf-thin. There are a couple of crystals according to the errant glitter, and areas that look like spongy bone marrow.

The outside appears to be covered with a layer of fossilised clay. There does look to be some soil encrusted in the inside but I could be wrong. I will wash it and see.