“You can get it if you Really want”.

“You can get it if you really want, if you try try, try.” This advice, which was sung by the father of Reggae, Desmond Decker (& the Aces) still holds true today, as much as it did nearly 4 decades ago when it was a big international hit for him on the Hit Parades of the world.

While it is true that it is only a generalization and there are some things in life that you can never achieve no matter how hard you try, there are many things that are available if we are prepared to try hard enough for them. But like “Karl Linnaeus” in an earlier blog, one has to decide how badly you want it, to begin with and then try, try, try, until success comes your way or you die. Sometimes to achieve what you set out to do, you have to be so committed that everything else is irrelevant and huge sacrifices, either financially or personally has to be made. The question then arises, How committed are you really? Perhaps you will need to set more realistic goals and targets and be happy with that. Like me with my desire to have my garden, kids & pets, all at the same time. (See blog, ”Garden; Kids; Pets?”)

Which are you more like? Linnaeus or me? Or more beneficially still, are you just You! Unique & successful in your own right? Over to you: Walter

Garden; Kids; or Pets?

It has often been said that, “You can’t have a good garden and Kids and/or pets too!”

Well I guess that it is true that you can’t have a great garden with kids and pets, but you can still have a good one if you are garden minded to start with and plan your garden around those so-called inhibiting problems.

I have done it many times with different gardens and pets; but always with the same three kids, plus their many friends.

It just takes a little bit of planning and sometimes some extra fencing and even sometimes some different plants to your original choices. But even there, different climates and locations will often modify this last situation anyway. With or without kids and Pets!

The thing is that, if you are committed to all the desired requirements (In my case garden, kids & pets) and are prepared to plan (the layout of the garden and yard) and go to the extra expenses (fences/ screens/ Borders) and the extra trouble (choosing appropriate plants and materials) you can still have a good garden. A garden that will still be the envy of most token gardeners, even if it never reaches the echelons of greatness like the gardens of the fanatics.

Half the secret is in knowing what you want before hand and then working towards it.

It will perhaps be difficult to achieve the heights of say “Karl Linnaeus”, but even there it has to be acknowledged that he had five kids himself.

I guess all I am trying to say here is that you may never have perfection but you can still have a lot if you are prepared to make the extra effort. Are you prepared to put that little bit of extra effort into your life or just fall back on the word of others that it is impossible? Over to You: Walter

Karl Linnaeus.

Karl Linnaeus was born on 13 May 1707 in the south of Sweden, thus this is the 3^rd centenary anniversary of his birth. Carl Linnaeus is the most well known Swedish scientist in the world.

He has left traces in many ways: there are places that bear his name, there are locations on the Moon that have been named after him, he is depicted on Swedish banknotes, and "Linnea" is a popular first name for girls in Sweden. Carl Linnaeus placed his stamp on a complete era of scientific history - the Linnaean era. The Linnaean era is characterised by an ambition to catalogue, organise and give names to the whole natural world. Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae with his famous sexual classification system that codified and simplified the naming of plants, thus making their study accessible to all people, being his crowning achievement. The first edition (1735) consisted of just 12 folio pages. By 1766 the epoch-making book had grown to 2 300 pages with more than 15 000 species of the three natural kingdoms: minerals, plants and animals. Linnaeus also was the first to grow and patent the artificial production of pearls.

He had the satisfaction of seeing scientists adopting his dual names system of divisions and naming and above all, putting the whole of creation into a system.

I vaguely remember hearing of Linnaeus from my Primary School Days and also became aware of him through my knowledge of garden plants, however this blog was inspired by a radio interview I heard while on Holidays in Wagga Wagga. While up there I was station hopping and came across an interview about Linnaeus.

According to the Linnaeus expert, Linnaeus was obsessed with birds and animals and in his study had branches and plants all over the room with birds flying free in the room and living among the plants and branches. All this while he wrote, often with the birds themselves adding a little to his manuscripts! A messy arrangement one would think but obviously one that helped with his research.

How his wife put up with this I don’t know but it does show his commitment to his task doesn’t it? I wonder how many of us have this type of commitment to our own chosen fields?

The answer too I think also explains why very few of us will ever be as knowledgeable or influential as Karl Linnaeus. However that may be, that should never stop us from giving our best as far as personal obligations and other commitments will allow us, should it. What say you? Walter.