Grace's House and Lake Monger Revisited.

We visited Grace's house a few years back when I came to Perth on tour. She lived with her grandaunt in a cosy cottage in West Leederville. The land that surrounded the house was well used. It still is. There were herbs, fruit trees, vegetables and spices growing in the garden. I figured other than meat, this household could never need to buy any vegetables from external sources.

Consider this: They have onions, various type of green vegetables, tomatoes, bananas, papayas, pandan, garlic, rosemary, mint, aloe vera, marjoram, oregano and even a raspberry tree among other multiple plants I could not identify.

I'll tell you a secret I told nobody: This is a secret dream of mine, to be as self sufficient as I could one day. Now you know.

Time to wake up.

Across the road just a few house away, Grace's uncle owned another plot of land but did not build a house on it for some reasons. She brought us there and I saw, for the first time in my life, an orange tree right in front of me - with fruits. Needless to say, I took one orange when Grace was not looking, peeled it, claimed it dropped from the tree and we shared it.

It was juicy and tasted especially sweet by the Singapore Rule : because it's free.

Just 10 steps away from the orange tree was a bee keep, using simple styrofoam boxes. I took a few gazes and went within 2 arm length to the man-made hives. Bees were buzzing all around me but too busy to be bothered with me. I considered a while and decided I would not have free honey that day.

Lake Monger was just a visible 200 metres away. We didn't meet any goose that day. I remembered one of them took a peck at Jen when she posed for pictures with them few years back. It was funny.