How is your Granny?

I have to thank my wife for part of this short piece. She sang at a harvest festival in one of the local Anglican Churches around here. She received a copy of a pamphlet, courtesy of AGLOW, a Network of Caring Women. It tells the story of the beginning of the Granny Smith apple. Apparently, a battling Australian pioneer woman, Maria Anne Smith, was the midwife for the town of Eastwood in the early days. As she was present at many of the births of the new young Australians, she became affectionately known as “Granny Smith”. She also had to look after a sick husband, raise her own family and run a small farm and orchard. On one occasion, after delivering produce to market she bought a box of crab apples to make apple tarts. She could only use half of them and the bad apples she emptied on the garbage pile down at the creek at the end of the property. A few months later, she came back to find out that a small tree was pushing its way through the rubbish. She transplanted and nurtured the tree, and later harvested the world’s first crop of green eating apples. These became popular around the Eastwood area and were affectionately known as Granny Smith’s apples, and that Australian apple has become well known and accepted around the world. At the present time I am reorganising my sprinkler system. A few years ago we put in an automatic reticulation system in a great hurry when we were going away on a summer trip. At last we have got around to bringing it up-to-date. It will cost us another few dollars, but I believe it will be worth the effort. Many of the azaleas do not get enough water and we have decided to increase the size of the diameter of the pipes carrying the water to the nozzle, and to also change the types of nozzles that spread the water over the plants. We did have drippers, but have found over the past few years they do not get enough water to the roots of the plants. Therefore, we have installed a system that uses an American design called ‘rotor stream’. This is supposed to deliver water at a better rate than the small drippers. Consequently one can water for less time, and hopefully use less water. I suppose the proof of the pudding we will find out at the end of the year.

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