My brother and his wife Annie lived in Torea Road Joybel. Their lovely daughter was killed when her car collided with one of those trains.
Annie found the proximity of the trains were too much of a reminder of the accident, so they moved to Hector.
I must get back to the West Coast sometime, I love mooching around over there.

How sad for your your family to lose their daughter that way. My niece lost her husband in an accident on that road. Her was on his motor bike going into Westport to work. It was still dark.

A motorist who for 15 years had driven, made a U turn. parked and was picked up to go up to the mine made his turn without seeing the motorbike and they collided.

Nieces husband was killed on impact. It is a busy road but at 6 A.M. it should never have happened.

Never thought of scattering breadcrumbs on the lawn to encourage the wax-eyes, brilliant. My roses were almost annialated last year by the aphids, My fore finger and thumb were perpetually green from squishing the little blighters. We live almost on top of a hill so our rear garden is terraced down to a creek that runs through the gully at the back of the section, lots of native bush and we have Tuis, little green finches, wax eyes, fantails plus sparrows etc in abundance. We also have a cheeky blackbird that when the garage doors are open and my hubby is working inside will come right into the garage and perch on the nearest thing and whistle away while watching hubby work, delightful. There is nothing quite like having a garden to potter about in whether big or small. Gardening and quilting are my two great passions. Loved your poem Joybel.

Hip Nana
Try planting Marigolds . We plant them everywhere in the garden and always have at least four in the Glasshouse .Seemingly they send off a vapour or something that get's rid of Aphids etc.
You just let them seed every year and then plant out.

Read your post yesterday Benny and as we were planning to go to Bunnings to get some strawberry plants we bought some punnets of Marigolds as well, these are now potted up and have taken up residence in our brand new glasshouse that Hubby has just finished building. I am very reluctant to use any commercial sprays on any part of my garden so your suggestion came just at the right time.

Benny....I didn't know that either. Try to garden as chemical free as I can, but still get thick fat aphids on the roses. Will try the marygolds. Thanks.