OCTOBER 12
I think our most fun task happened on this day. Using what looked like a small pitchfork, Caroline and I had to uproot galangal plants (spicy ginger roots that sprout huge leafy stalks) from a sumptuously muddy patch in order to replant them in another location. Here was the procedure we followed once we had yanked the large plants from the soil:
1) Cut away the leafy stalks so that only the galangal bulbs remain.
2) Rinse the mud from the roots of the bulbs.
3) Because the bulbs grow in large clumps, break them apart into sections into order to…
4) Replant the smaller pieces in another area.
The idea was that the smaller replanted bulbs will grow and multiply, yielding a considerably larger number of galangal plants for Ned and Dee to eventually harvest.
After the first round of this, Caroline and I decided to split up to maximize our efficiency (the reason being that “efficiency” is not on either of our lists of Cardinal Traits, and we were looking to be as productive as possible): I uprooted, hosed, cut and carted the sectioned galangal bulbs over to Caroline in a grimy plastic wheelbarrow, and she dutifully replanted the pieces in a new patch of ground. I was having an absolute blast carrying out my part of the job thanks to how ridiculously wet and filthy I was getting. “Muddy” is not an adjective I often get to use to describe my condition, so I decided to throw cleanliness out the window and dirty myself with reckless abandon—just for fun. Go big or go home, right?
At one point, I was about to dig up a particularly large plant when my eyes suddenly focused in on a terrifying spider mere inches from my face. The brown and white creature was sprawled out behind an “x” pattern woven into its web, which was spread across several galangal stalks. I knew that if I even so much as bumped one of the tall stalks, the spider could come crashing down on me. The prospect was far from inviting. I backed away, trying to remain calm, and called Caroline over to check it out.
Caroline took one look at the spider and took off running to find Ned. “We’ve gotta find out if that thing is poisonous!” She yelled out to me as she barreled towards the house. A minute or two later, her and Ned were moving speedily in my direction. When they reached the galangal patch, the three of us slowly crept up to the web-clad plant. “Oh, that’s just a St. Andrew’s Cross spider,” Ned said matter-of-factly, the look of concern on his face melting away. “They’re named for that ‘x’ they spin into their web.”
“So…it’s not dangerous?” Caroline asked skeptically. “Naw, she’s all right.” Ned, ever the nature aficionado, told us about how the St. Andrew’s Cross disguises itself by clumping its legs together and hiding behind the “x” pattern in the web. “It helps her fool her prey,” he explained. Upon learning that it was harmless (to humans, at least), I became interested in getting up close and personal with the frightening arachnid. I went into the house, grabbed Caroline’s point-and-shoot from the dusty kitchen table, and came back to snap photos.
Caroline decidedly stayed as far away from the spider as possible.
Incidentally, it seemed to have been Emergence of Terrifying Creatures Day in Queensland—not long afterwards, the black snake we had seen while raking a few days before made a second appearance. Caroline, Ned, Dee and I were spread out in the new galangal patch busily replanting bulbs, and Ned called out, “Watch out for the snake.” His tone of voice was so unexcited that he could have been commenting on the digestion process of the dung beetle, so we thought he was pulling our leg. Until we looked up to see a snake slithering rapidly towards Caroline. Shrieking, Caroline bounded away in the opposite direction, and Ned ran to bludgeon the reptile to death with the back of a shovel.
Afterwards, Ned told us that he felt badly about killing the snake because he wasn’t sure if it had been poisonous or not. “Also, it’s illegal to kill snakes in Queensland. But I had to do it. If it’d been poisonous, it could’a killed one of the dogs.” “Or one of us!” Caroline motioned frantically around at the four of us, seemingly flabbergasted that the first lives Ned considered were those of his two pets. (She happened to be very pleased about the snake’s death.)
Later that afternoon, Dee and Ned showed Caroline and I how to make soap. They didn’t actually need more bars of soap; they did it just for us. “We thought you would like to see how it’s made,” Dee said with a rare smile.
I’ve completely forgotten which ingredients they used (I had them all typed up on my stolen computer…mehhh…), so I’ll just summarize: they poured a bunch of liquids together into a large tub and told Caroline and I to stir the thick concoction with a wooden spoon for ten minutes. When the ten minutes were up, there were two results: 1) My arm was sore. 2) It was time to add fragrance. Ned selected a little canister of “Essence of Sandalwood” from a cupboard in the shed—where its neighbors were about fifty bottles of homemade fruit wine—and measured out a tiny bit to add to the mix.
After we stirred the oil in well, Ned produced three long plastic tubes. “We’ll let the soap set in these for a couple of days,” he explained. He requested Caroline’s help with pouring the liquid into the cylinders, and as Dee and Caroline lifted and slowly tilted the heavy plastic bin over the tubes, Ned held the tubes steady underneath so that the cream-colored mixture would glide into them smoothly.
However, a drop or two made it onto his hands, and he began to curse under his breath while shaking his arm violently. “What happened?!” I asked, bewildered, as he ran to the sink. “The soap mixture is highly caustic,” Dee explained as we watched Ned furiously scrub his hands under the faucet. “It can burn your skin. The bars are only safe to use after setting for at least five weeks.”
So, Caroline and I weren’t going to get to try out the soap that we had helped make (…well, VAGUELY helped. Besides stirring the mixture and then cutting up the hardened cylinders of soap into bars two days later, we didn’t really do much in the way of contributing…). But as a consolation prize, Ned gave us other scented soaps that had been “setting” in the shower shed for months: frankincense, tea tree and cinnamon—oh my!
