A room with a view ...

Do you remember the luscious 1985 Merchant Ivory movie adaption of E.M. Forster’s “A Room with a View”? The movie featured incredible shots of Florence, a very young Helena Bonham-Carter and Maggie Smith, marvellous as always. The one thing about the movie that had everyone talking was the soundtrack, specifically the haunting performance by Kiri Te Kanawa of the aria O mio babbino caro from Puccini’s  opera Gianni Schicchi. It certainly elevated Dame Kiri to the status of an "international treasure". Back then I immediately acquired the boxed set of Puccini’s three one-act comic operas of which Gianni Schicchi is one. Of course now I can't even find a record player to play these! Instead you can just stream the aria on Spotify or better still, the film soundtrack version is on YouTube together with all the accompanying nostalgia.

 

So what brought on this bout of reminiscing? The view south down the Huon from our property is breathtaking, but it was somewhat impeded by a large clump of Australian Blackwood trees on an adjoining property. Fortunately the trees are also adjacent to the fence line of a second neighbour and throw a lot of shade particularly during the winter. Our neighbour approached the owner of the trees and reached an agreement for them to be thinned. So late this week, an arborist and his gang arrived, complete with chainsaws, a massive mulcher and a small excavator with a specially designed claw for grabbing hold of trees. They then proceeded to weed out the diseased and ill-formed trees and as luck would have it, this operation resulted in the middle of the clump being completely removed. This surgical intervention opened a vista for us that has revolutionised our southerly aspect. In fact it was so fantastic, I had to stop myself from streaming O mio babbino caro through the speakers at top volume. I am not sure that the arborists would have made the connection between the removal of Blackwoods and a young girl wanting to throw herself off the Ponte Vecchio because of unrequited love. Anyway, we are unbelievably happy with the result. 

Before and After

As an added bonus, the massive mulcher employed by the arborist produced about 10 cubic metres of beautiful fresh mulch for our garden.  So today we employed the tractor to good effect to move the mulch around and cover much of the pony manure that we have been collecting in proposed garden beds.  The result is rather good, although the dry and windy conditions meant that I took a lot of mulch dust in the face and have been sneezing non-stop for much of the day. The covering of the manure came just in time as next week we are having some neighbours around for Christmas drinks.

A new garden bed covered with tasteful mulch

There are only two other items worthy of mention. Earlier in the week we boxed up and laid a concrete slap as a precursor to laying some bricks as our front step. The boxing up was pretty fiddly as not only did we have to get the levels correct but we also had to deal with arbitrary bits of concrete and stormwater drainpipes. Once boxed up, we got into a really good rhythm of me mixing the concrete and manhandling it into the box, while Cath demonstrated some awesome finesse in smoothing the concrete to the desired level. We now have to learn how to mix mortar and lay bricks! 

The artist at work

The second newsworthy item is that the rock wall on our western boundary which I started many months ago is now complete – well at least stage 1 is complete. I am having a few days off to gather strength for phase 2. While I am waiting for that to begin there is always more gravel to fetch …

The wall