Eastern Rosella

I missed posting yesterday because we went to a tennis tournament. Wonderful tennis, but seeing 10 or 12 year old girls dragging tennis bags half their size even if they never use more than a racket and a bottle of water in an entire day, is quite disturbing. The bags extend from the neck to mid calf and cover the entire back; I sometimes expect their weight to flip the girls backwards. I'm guessing this is their parents’ choice, and if nothing else measures up the parents' commitment to push the girls into a long tennis career, the torturing sophistication of the bags does. Anyway, yesterday was a gorgeous spring day, warm and sunny, but no wind. When we came home from the tournament (they call it "tournie" here), I sat on the sofa in the living room to reflect about the day. Suddenly, an Eastern rosella flew into the garden and sat on a branch looking for the birdseed I normally hang in the tree. Unfortunately, there was no food, but at least I got the chance to see this bird that looks as if it bathed itself on a painter's color palette first! These birds are shy, so at the first attempted movement they sense coming from inside the house, they fly away. I was lucky yesterday to get a picture, although you can tell it’s not so great, as it was taken through the window. I am a bit like this bird, definitely not with respect to color, but in shyness and lack of aggression. If rainbow lorikeets or galahs are eating the seeds, the Eastern rosella flies away immediately. They are also very intelligent and if kept as pet, they can learn songs and even words. However, they prefer to fly in large spaces and do not like being “petted.”

Aussie Footy and Sydney Swans

This is a short blog. I confess I do not know much about the Aussie rules football (footy) and just seeing these men tackle each other on TV, just like the American football players do, except without any body protection, I just cover my eyes and run away. It seems to me that it is a hybrid of soccer and rugby, and if it wasn't for Footy Day today in schools, I doubt I would have written much... The last day of the third term in Aussie Schools is frequently Footy Day, and kids are allowed to wear the colors of the team they support, they have a BBQ, and you get the idea, it's not much schooling going on. During the following two weeks of school holidays, the most significant events are the footy semifinals and Grand Final. My daughter roots for the Sydney Swans team, like my friend Debra. The team used to be in Melbourne, but many years ago financial problems led to its relocation. Club colors? Red and white, as you see in my picture. I will let you know if they win the AFL final!

Magic at the Corroboree Rock

For all those who think there can be no life outside the Earth I say they are wrong. If this plant in my picture can grow from a rock in the middle of the Outback, life can sprout in the harshest conditions. I sometimes link the places and names I am referring to with Wikipedia and other popular information sites, but I do it for two reasons. First, I don’t want to overlap with sites out there that provide this kind of information and don’t want to overload you with things within reach on these other websites. Second, all these other websites focus on the BIG things, the most popular stuff. I like to focus on the magic of the “other” things, the details that touch us in a more personal manner. For example, just walking through the East MacDonnell Ranges, the desert and ancient mountainous formations stand out. I thought that the red rocks and ridges fragmented by old age and extreme heat and changes in temperature are what Martian landscape looks like. But a slow walk around the Corroboree Rock in late spring led me to this magic discovery of beautiful pink flowers on the side of it. I saw it as a small symbol of life’s victory over nothingness. I was not sure if some water accumulated during the generous spring rains in a hard to see slit in the rocks, but with the heat of the days when we visited, it’s hard to believe that water was sufficient to sustain the plant’s life. Or maybe at night, the cold air condenses on the rock and turns into precious water that then drips into the slit to still feed the flower… I am not sure, but the simple beauty of this plant and its strength in clinging on to life and the rock come back to my mind first when I think of the Corroboree Rock. The Australian Outback has plenty of such sites to discover!

Bearded Dragon

This is the story of Fiona, our most beloved bearded dragon pet we had in California. This species is native of the deserts of Australia, but it’s also easy to breed in captivity and to look after as pet. Thus, bearded dragons of amazing patterns and colors are very popular as pets in the US. We named our girl Fiona because she had that oxymoronic quality of having a unique monstrous look that reptile lovers fall in love with, something reminding us of Shrek’s Princess Fiona. So, our Fiona was big, beautiful (how many times did I say this?), and friendly. She ate worms and crickets hand-fed by Tiziano and Chloe. She had a wonderful personality, showing excitement when Tiziano shook the Ziploc bag with vitamin-powdered crickets in front of her, and demonstrating irritation (a bit of a black beard, even though males do that better in this species) at some unknown factor. Sadly, we sold Fiona when we moved to Australia, despite the fact that she should have been given full rights to repatriation. The problem was that if we wanted to bring her along, she had to stay in extended and costly quarantine. We missed Fiona for a very long time, until we met her relatives in the wild in the desert surrounding Alice Springs. They basked on the side of the road (look at the picture) or recklessly in the middle of the road, even bobbing their heads when a car approached. I guess beauty does not associate with awareness of enemy’s size in this species… We were so thrilled to see the bearded dragons in the wild, almost kidnapped one to bring home! Almost. We never thought serious about this because it is wrong to do it and to keep such a pet, we’d need to get a license in this country. If you guessed that we can’t wait to go back to the desert just to see more “Fiona”s, you are right!

Greek Quarters (YUM!)

Oakleigh is a small suburb of Melbourne, where my friend Debra and I go for the most amazing Greek treats you can imagine. It’s a mini-version of Astoria (Queens, NY). Debra (Greek) introduced me to the area about two years ago and I am now addicted. The best place to be in Oakleigh is Eaton Street, a pedestrian mall just off of Atherton Road, buzzing with locals and LOTS of cafes and restaurants, plus some and retail shops, all with Greek names. Best things to eat there? The list could fill pages, but what we always get is the café frappé (metrios, or medium sweeet), loukoumades and spanakopita. Café frappe is a foam-covered iced coffee drink made from instant coffee that was originally invented by the French people (thus the name). Frappé coffee is very popular in Greece but in Romania, too, especially during the summer. The loukoumades are deep fried balls sprinkled with cinnamon and soaked in a honey syrup. Heaven! In the ancient Greece, these deep fried dough balls were served to the winners of the Greek Olympics as "honey tokens", which says it all. Spanakopita for me is the equivalent of the best Greek bread, filo dough with spinach and feta, also with some amazing spices. In the picture I posted are the stuffed capsicum (red peppers) from Café Nikos, the place where Debra and I go religiously. The bakery/patisserie department is normally off-limit because I could buy and eat half of it. It’s just scrumptious stuff!

Figs

I am blushing... No post yesterday. I am sorry, it was just a busy day in which it was hard to sit down in front of the computer even for the 20-30 minutes I need to write and post a blog. I promised to write about figs the other day. The fig tree is one of my favorites because I LOVE figs (raw, on pizza or in burnt fig jam), we have one fig tree in the garden here and my parents have one in their garden in Romania, and finally, although the fruit is easily visible, but the flower is hidden. I love the mystery associated with this tree. The fig is an angiosperm or flowering plant, but the fruit is the actual flower, i.e., flowers line the inside of the fruit, which is called an enclosed inflorescence. Even more interesting is the pollination, which is performed by a small wasp that burrows into the flower. I have never seen any wasps buzzing around our fig tree and I don't know how the wasp followed this type of tree around the world, as it was brought from continent to continent due to its high productivity and delicious fruit taste. The secret to this elusive wasp is that the life cycle of the fig wasp is closely entangled with that of the fig tree it inhabits. In the beginning of the life cycle, a mature female pollinator wasp enters the "fruit" through a small (visible) opening, which is covered in “male flowers”, and deposits her eggs inside the cavity, which is covered in “female flowers.” The wasp often loses her wings and most of her antennae while squeezing in, but she deposits her egg and the pollen she picked up from her original host fig. This pollinates some of the female flowers on the inside surface of the fig and allows them to mature. Then the female wasp lays her eggs and dies, her body decomposing inside the fig. The fig matures and the wasp eggs hatch and grow into adults, which mate inside the fig. After this, a male wasp digs a tunnel out of the fig, for the females to escape through. The males then die, but the females, covered in pollen, find their way out and fly to another tree of the same species where they deposit their eggs and allow the cycle to start over again.