Cherries
I love cherries.
They are the fruit of love.
Each and every year I work on a cherry festival, the Manjimup Cherry Harmony Festival, a town in the south west of Western Australia.
This year, because of much needed torrential rain, rain that has filled many a country dam, a number of growers will struggle to fill a bucket in time for the festival hordes. However, as is always the case in this wondrous world in which we live, other growers will have more than usual. It’s the weather. It doesn’t hit us all the same.
Here is the cherry according to Wikipedia:
The word cherry refers to a fleshy fruit (drupe) that contains a single stony seed. The cherry belongs to the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus, along with almonds, peaches, plums, apricots and bird cherries. The word “cherry” comes from the French word “cerise”, which comes in turn from the Latin words cerasum and Cerasus.
Interesting. And there’s more:
The cherry is generally understood to have been brought to Rome from northeastern Anatolia, historically known as the Pontus region, in 72 BC.
That’s probably enough. If you want to know more about what happens in Manjimup on the weekend of the 13th of December, 2008, take a look at these sites.
This is a new start
All right. Not quite new. A second crack. The first first time this blogger attempted to work WordPress his head caved in. He hopes he can work it this time and keep his head.
Wish him good luck.
That’s him, Doust, on the left, standing by Ricky Heng, a genius of a man who fixed his car.
Photo by Chris Pash
Here’s what happened.
My partner and I are finally moving, from the city, Perth, a big smelly place, on the tip of Australia, the western bit, to Albany, a delightfully sweet location, on the southern tip, just before Antarctica.
On the way down, I pass through Manjimup, a small, once thriving timber town, now a thriving mixed farming district, with excellent cherry orchards, meander through the forests, past the last farm, when, without warning, an edgy kangaroo of a larger variety, jumps.
Of course, it being late at night, the roo has been out for some time, eating and drinking, no idea where it is, bang, dead, both, the roo and the car. I am left standing, on the side of the road, pitch black, no cars, no farms, nothing, but pristine forest, wonderful smells and the faint hint of rain.
The first car I flag down slows, looks closely at me, realises I am mad, a lunatic escaped from who knows where, plants his foot, leaves me in a hail of roadside stones, and, probably, not far on, bangs into another anxious roo.
I wonder about this. I look at myself. I see a man wearing ripped jeans, a torn t-shirt, and I remember my hair is long and uncombed and that I have not slept for three days and that I left the stinking city after loading a truck in a state of almost hysteria. Arr, no wonder.
The next car I flag I do so from the middle of the road and I yell into the closed window: “Gidday, Jon Doust here. My car is dead. I hit a roo. Can you give me a lift to a farm? Please.”
The luck: “Oh, Dousty. sure. Get in.”
I am saved. The driver takes me to a farm. The farmer drags my car into his yard. A brother from the nearby town drives out with a spare car. I sleep over night. Not much, but enough to drive on the next morning.
My car rots in the wrecking yard for two months while the insurance company decides which planet we all live on, according to it, and eventually Ricky Heng, the man pictured, gathers the bits together, adds some old bits from other cars, plus a couple of new bits, presto, working car.
The moral of this tale? There is none. Life is like that.