Mayor4Unley

On Sunday 25 January I participated in the Crush Festival in the Adelaide Hills – a multitude of venues with local food and wines. I selected Uraidla and was enticed by the food on offer and the associated wines. The late breakfast was green eggs and ham at the Owl & Elephant Café . Sounded good. Sounded fantastic. I was thinking of Dr Seuss and green eggs and ham. It was described as an uber cool café. The food was crap. Very disappointing. It was an overcooked egg with a green/grey mix (and supposedly ham) in a bread base, curled at the edges. It was cold and served with a cold fried tomato half. I’d rate it at 1/10 . The waitress was surprised that I didn’t enjoy. (She did ask how I found it.) There was no offer to redress my concern. I should have selected the rhubarb and quince on rye toast. That did look appealing. The coffee, a latte, scored slightly better (at 4/10 ). The milk was good, but the coffee had no depth or finish. There was no lingering after...

Last night I went to pizza night at the Community Garden, Fern Avenue, Fullarton. A fantastic garden with heaps of fruit and veggies ripe for picking. The pizzas were home made using produce from the garden and cooked in a wood oven. I took a jar of home grown dried Cajun chilli. The pizzas got hotter as the night progressed. Wine was from a small backyard winery nearby. Absolutely superb. Good company made the night perfect. Now I'm not normally one to scrounge through pre-loved rubbish left on the verge (although I always have a good look), but it was rick pickings in front of a house on Fern Avenue. Good stuff was left abandoned on the verge, probably ready for a booked hard rubbish collection by Council. It was left overs from a recent garage sale. There was something for everyone. The top item I spotted and took was a good looking metal rooster. Despite the one wobbly and rusted leg, it will look nice in the garden amongst the chillies. All up, it was a good night.

I visited Forestville Reserve last night. There were a few families out walking and visiting the newly developed area on the East side. Someone jogged past. A lot of bikes zoomed through. It's looking good. The culvert entrance to the creek has been improved with the top layer of stones removed - my suggestion - it was too high, over engineered and served no purpose. Skaters were using the newly surfaced concrete. Some kids were shooting hoops at the basketball/netball court. The new lawn is coming on nicely. The weather is perfect to get it started. There is a mass of new plants and trees. I would have planted more medium sized trees on the boundary. Perhaps they will go in later, but I suspect not. All of this is in stark contrast to the ongoing vandalism of the long mural on the support wall for the tram overpass. Back in November I sat on the wall of the skate park and watched the spray can artists at work creating a fantastic mural. Their work was repeatedly vandalise...

There is a rally tonight to show solidarity with the je suis Charlie gathering and march in France. Victoria Square (northern end) Adelaide at 8pm. Take a candle. For more information ...  https://grumpyinunley.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/jesuischarlie/

I have a family of spotted doves living in and near my back yard. Actually it's a rather extended family. The number of visitors seems to be increasing. I would prefer to have the Australian native top knot pigeon visit, but it's spotted doves. They get fed with mixed seeds each morning and if they're lucky again at dusk. A couple are quite tame and walk up to me, totally unafraid. They sometimes come near me to escape when others are aggressively chasing them. Two years ago I climbed a ladder to peer inside a nest. There were two feathered chicks peering at me and I'm convinced that my face formed a bonding image; just like a duckling adores the chicken hen that hatched it. Since then, these two birds see me as a friend and are totally unafraid. It's nice to be loved.

It’s on again. There’s talk of an amalgamation of local Councils. An unlikely coalition of 10 SA industry groups and the Labor Right-aligned Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association will meet to advocate a policy for amalgamation to be submitted to the State Government. The industry groups say that there are inconsistent regulations between councils and this was a handbrake on new investment. In plain speak, the industry wants bigger Councils and reduced red tape and less control by Council. They don’t want a level playing field, they want it tilted in their favour. This would not be good governance and would disadvantage the local communities. Let’s not forget that Councils exist to serve their communities. And why is the Labor Right-aligned Shop Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (Union) involved? They've been conned into believing that amalgamations will reduce rates and put more money in the pockets of working families. If this coalition of Left-Rig...

I was devastated. The weather had been alternating between hot and raining. I probably had not been giving the fruit trees enough water. A large branch (half the tree) of my peacharine tree snapped and fell to the ground. It was loaded with good sized fruit that would have ripened in 1-2 weeks. It was looking like a good season for stone fruit. Last year was a poor crop across Adelaide. I left the branch where it had fallen. After 2 days I decided to pick the best of the fallen fruit and make a batch of spicey chutney. I used the same recipe as for my green tomato chutney, just much less brown sugar. Despite the fruit being green inside the chutney brewed into a golden peachy colour. That's how I spent last Sunday afternoon; helped along by a beer beside the cutting board and the cricket on the TV in the background. If it weren't for that fallen branch I probably wouldn't have made peacharine chutney this year. It was an opportunity that had to be exp...