Tuesday's leafy and tree-lined column sang the praises of the Wollemi pines (Wollemia nobilis) that now have their very own forest, forest 32, at the National Arboretum.
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An expert we interviewed shared our impression that the thousands of the propagated pines that now exist (until 1994 the world thought they had been extinct, for aeons) can be a bit bewildered at where in the world they find themselves planted.
Intrepid David Noble found them in a remote and inaccessible, temperate sandstone valley in NSW. But now, world famous because of their Jurassic strangeness, as well as forming a perplexed forest at the Arboretum, individual trees are in peculiar places. Our interviewee mentioned one, a very long way from home, at the Jardin de Plantes in Paris since 2006.
Now Anna Howe of the Friends of the Arboretum alerts us to another of the pines (actually they're nor true pines at all but we don't want to confuse readers with too much scholarly botany) planted far from home. This one was planted at Kew Gardens by a household name, Sir David Attenborough. This is a rare instance, surely, of one household name (for the Wollemi pine is world famous) being planted by another. More recent pictures show that tree really flourishing now, just as so many accomplished Australians (including our Nick Kyrgios) have always flourished in London.
Wollemi pines, this being the 21st anniversary of their discovery, are the focus of events and tours at the Arboretum in coming days. Read all about it at arboretumcanberra.org.au
The same wintry breeze that these days is whistling among the bewildered young Wollemi pines at forest 32 (we have been there in recent days, wishing every tree had a beanie, a scarf and gloves) is whistling through Canberrans' beards.
And it comes to pass that this Thursday evening's proceedings at King O'Malley's Pub (named, ironically, after the most famous teetotaller in Australian history) will bristle with the official launch of the Grow A Winter Beard 2015 campaign.
To all the many good reasons for growing a beard are added, in this case, the fact that this campaign will assist the Leukaemia Foundation to establish a place at the John James Village in Garran.
Peter Barclay of O'Malley's says that bearded men are encouraged to register at growawinterbeardcom and then to get sponsored to grow a longer or new beard for winter.
Thursday's judging will begin at 7pm and the very distinguished judge is Melbourne photographer and author Stan Barnett, whose recently-published Men With Beards is an acknowledged classic of this hirsute oeuvre.
We asked him what qualities he will be looking for in the beards he's judging but he says, that one thing he learned in travelling 40,000 kilometres to 15 countries in search of prime beards to photograph is never to judge beards simplistically according to, say, which is the longest or shaggiest.
Instead, he insists "it's always a matter of putting faces and beards together" so as to judge the beard's appropriateness to the human habitat where it growing. Some beards, he laughs, are shockers that are contrary to the jaws and faces they decorate.
Proceeds from Stan Barnett's book, like the Grow A Winter Beard campaign, are going to raise funds for the Leukaemia Foundation.
Our polarising but smooth-cheeked Nick Kyrgios is probably too young to grow a beard but we had a glut of responses to our request for Nick Kyrgios limericks. Alex Wallensky muses:
It was our Nick Kyrgios
who said 'You cannot be serious'
when told to pull in his head
and play tennis instead
of acting precious and hysterious.
Our Nick, sensibly avoiding midwinter Canberra, has sallied northwards to play Davis Cup in balmy Darwin. Meanwhile lots of his fellow Canberrans, winter-bound, must still be marvelling at Saturday night's rare and exciting visit to our city of what some meteorologists call a storm of thundersnow.
Dramatic electric storms are associated with warm and muggy weather but here was one banging about (my own suburb of Garran was shaken until its teeth rattled) in bitter midwinter.
It was was so unusual that one feels reluctant to just let the experience ebb away. What if (as more superstitious, magic-conscious peoples would assume) we dare to think of it as a sign, as a portent of something, just as Canberrans used to believe that snow in the city promised a change of federal government?
Let us see if, in coming days and weeks, something unanticipated and otherwise inexplicable happens, something we can imagine the thundersnow heralded.
What if say, the Abbott government suddenly does a kindly, Christian thing for the wretches in its refugee detention centres? What if the Barr government, is toppled by a sudden scandal? What if, more improbably, the Raiders actually win this season's NRL premiership for the first time in living memory?
On a smaller, but still supernatural scale, what if on Sunday Tuggeranong FC actually wins or even draws a match in the Canberra Premier League football competition, its first match since the thundersnow? This season and in spite of my loyal support they are bottom of the table without a single point.
But should they win on Sunday we will have the makings for the folkloric legend "They do say that whenever there's a thundersnow Tuggeranong FC wins a football match."
Readers, please be alert for strange and otherwise inexplicable goings-on in Canberra as you know it, for surely the thundersnow was a A Sign of something.
