Who wants to go to the Regional Show when you can stay home and spend four hours in the garden carting dead palm fronds from the back yard to your father’s ute? Hey? Who? I’m not hearing too much excitement out there in blogland!

When I bought this house three years ago, it was quite evident that someone with a passion for palms of all shapes, sizes and spikiness had planted the original garden some years ago. I have spent many dollars having them removed by men with chainsaws and stump grinders. One remains – a golden cane – and let me tell you those men with chainsaws are returning very very soon to end its palmy life. Why? I hear you ask (or maybe not, because you’re bored and have stopped reading by now. Whatever.) Because it never stops with the dropping of the dead fronds all over the paving, in the garden, on the grass or just generally where it chooses. Last year in January my wonderful gardening parents came round for the day and helped me clear out about 15 years worth of dead fronds.

Here’s what had built up since then.

What fun we had this morning at our little gardening working bee pulling the dead fronds out the garden, keeping an eagle eye out for snakes, spiders and other creepy crawlies and trekking them to the ute (the fronds, not the snakes, spiders etc)

The ute is another whole post in itself. It’s my father’s pride and joy. It’s also gradually falling to pieces, doesn’t go above 50kph, is filled with all manner of junk, has wind down window air conditioning, split vinyl seat covers, and, I noticed this morning as we drove to the waste management facility (aka dump), a pair of rusty secateurs on the dash. When questioning the need for these to be permanently in the car, my father told me it was in case of a tree emergency. Frankly, they didn’t look like they could cut through paper let alone any kind of twig.

Anyway, back to the fronds. For the privilege or ridding ourselves of these scourges of the garden we paid $4 to the friendly council worker at the gate and drove to area 1. This was the final resting place for our palm fronds in a great big mountain of green waste, prominent in which I noted were palms.

And on the way out, we saw two more utes packed with palms, driven by slightly dejected looking gardeners, no doubt wondering why on earth they ever planted the evil palm.