Saturday, March 24, 2012

Canary Crisis

Something has been bothering the canaries. A couple of times now we have found them quite badly knocked about. Last time two of them were on death's door.
Snowy and Pyro both seemed to have broken bones in their claws and possibly wings.They recovered at last though Pyro was still a bit wonky on his foot.
Then one night while Bill was up gaming, he heard a noise and went to investigate.
It was a fox.
Bill gave chase and  pursued it across a few blocks and was optimistic that it wouldn't return.
I didn't have the same optimism and last night my fears were proven well founded.

Again Bill was gaming. He heard a bang and went out. Pyro was in a very bad way. The injuries he suffered are beyond comprehension. We can only guess that he must have hit the wire and knocked himself out and then the fox was able to claw at him somehow.

There was no recovering for Pyro this time round so when I got up this morning there was a tissue box coffin waiting for me to bury.

So my day has been devoted to the birds. The cage had been partitioned when the two male canaries had begun a battle to death war. Now that we have only one cock-bird, I could remove the partition and all remaining birds can fly up away from the fox. The two bottom birds had always been much more hurt.

Then I set about turning 6 meters of calico into a cover. I pulled out my lovely husqvarna and set to:
6 meters of Calico previously used as a drop sheet for my painting.
 Each side of the cover can be lifted up and out of the way and the back and front panels wrap around the sides to help make it a bit more secure.
Somebody iron this please?
 I have 'tailored' it to perfectly fit over the peeked roof  and corners of the cage. One of the girls was quite impressed with my sewing skills 'compared to' hers. I pointed out that as it had been my career for a longish portion of my life, it would be a crying shame if our skills were on par!

Canaries scatter more then they eat!

I completely cleaned the veranda after the gruesome night's mess- but canaries are messy little buggers even when they are not being murdered! There is so much seed mess that we now have a colony of squeaky pigeons who live here. When we are in the family room looking, they will lurk over in the neighbouring block and pretend to eat the rocks there. As soon as you turn your back, you can hear the squeak of their wings as they fly over for real lunch!


And the mess they make after eating matches the canaries vefore efforts!

Autumn = Time to Garden

Autumn is definetly here and that means I have to get organised.
It means it is time to put in a lawn.
Time to finally decide on how to retain my two banks of clay.
Time to hire a bobcat
Time to buy in dirt
and plants
and bark chip
and figure how to edge the garden beds
and build steps

And only 11 days until Mark gets here- hope he can help!

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Harmony Day

Tomorrow is Harmony Day which is a celebration of multicultural Australia. A couple of the ladies in my branch decided we should have a multicultural morning tea. "Bring something from your heritage"
Poor old me and the many other white Australians who just don't know what that means.
We eat what the world brought here and what we have messed it into.
So given that I am a mixed up bit of British isles girl, I am making scones.. with blueberries and white chocolate.

Recipe for a tonne of those delicious scones....
6 cups sr flour
90-100gms butter rubbed in
1 inch of cream in the 600ml container
1 cup milk
3 tsp sugar
300 gms blueberries
packet of white choco buds
enough lemonade to get it to a good scone consistency

make like scones
cook like scones... but it takes longer

Monday, March 19, 2012

Repairs

I am repairing this favourite family snap.

Before
In progress

What stories to tell?


After the fun of gardening last week, I had a quiet one this weekend.

It was the end of my three weeks of doing two jobs at once. And I was tired. Sometimes I wonder if this is getting old. But I am only doing such a junior role and people my age do much more senior things so I am putting my money on lack of sleep not excess of age!

Friday I got a call from school to say that a certain person had not been handing in assignments. That person was having a sleep over on Friday night and the knee jerk reaction was to haul her home and put an end to pleasure.

Instead, after checking with her dad, she was allowed to sleep over- out in the middle of the countryside. That meant on Saturday I gave the new car, Jaffa, a run out of town for the first time.

(When I tell these stories, I sometimes feel like little Ronny Corbet, letting the story wander off and away and leaving you wondering if it will ever come back)

So the Jaffa-out-of-town-experience:
  1. Jaffa is a little beauty for fuel economy. I watched her fuel consumption average drop like a stone while I drove. The hour's driving took the 6.7l/100km for half a tank down to 6.1l/100km. That is an impressive drop given that I was already through half the tank. It looks like I am going to be saving about $25 per tank.
  2. Jaffa is sad little muffin when it comes to monster hills....

I picked up the errant student and ferried her home. I intentionally left her sister at home as I wanted to give 100% attention. Well there was a lot of weeping and some yelling and some apologising and I didn't do any of it.

When we got home I set her straight to the first task and by the end of Saturday the science was completed. I woke her up Sunday morning and I think it was about 10 minutes before she was crying again about history.

I was in my jarmies scrubbing the house and it had not been my plan to do anything but house work. I wonder why I was willing to give that all up to help with the essay?
So we spent 1.25 hours googling. Type 3 words in. Inspect the suggested links, pick the reputable ones. Teach her which points were the important ones, jot them down, record the web address and move on.
1942
Darwin
2 attacks
first- civilians and harbour
second- airforce base.

Now make that into a few sentences and and you have the first paragraph of the essay.

(Did you know that an awful lot of the defence personal ran away in fright and hundreds were still missing after days-presumably not dead)

It wasn't that easy. There was more crying. But when she got the hang of me letting her do some, skipping the bits that weren't working, doing another bit, coming back to the messy bits.. well in the end we got there. Soooo much easier than doing homework back in my days.

I went to high school 42kms from home. When I got home, there was no internet, no town library, nothing. The only resources were the text book and my memory for the stories that Mrs Denholm would tell us in class. I LOVED that part of history.
Naturally without computers there was no internet and the lovely way you can type bits and cut and paste is brilliant for essay writing!

I loved helping with the home work. It was fun. I loved the research, even though it was very limited and not breaking any new ground. It was interesting. We saw the actually documents where the ministers were insisting that the press be forbidden to accurately portray the gravity of the situation up north during WW2. Amazing.

And now because she stole my precious cleaning time, I have an assistant this week!

:)

Monday, March 12, 2012

A long Weekend

 Well, after weeks of rain, unlike Canberra has seen for decades, the sun came out to celebrate the Canberra Day Long Weekend. It was glorious. Nothing like a sunny long weekend for getting you into a gardening mood.

Look what I have now! A pond at the front of the house
When I woke up this morning, I didn't have much planned but I was hoping to install the letter box. This is the second one. The first one died before it could get installed. It fell over, smashed its posh glass front and bent its lid. I was over posh and chose completely practical this time.

I drove to fetch the spade and the pick - and Kate too - from the old house. I put the newest Coldplay into the CD player in the car, cranked the volume up and the windows down and got digging.


Did you ever see a finer hole filled with cement?
I didn't let my lack of practice tempt me to dig a puny hole. When it said 2750mm, I dug over 30cm. I put in the instant cement, poured the water on top, read the instructions and discovered it was supposed to be the other way round.
Que sera sera!
I have done a fine job!

By now though I was in the zone and had proved to myself that this garden wasn't too much for me after all. So I kidnapped Kate a little longer and off to Magnet Mart we went. We bought 10 Nandina plants and soil.

10 Nandinas and one Japanese maple actually
 The side passage out the laundry door has been filling up with weeds. And there is no way I am going to be able to get a bobcat to fix that, so I figured it was best to take action now before it got out of hand.

Thanks to all the rain, the soil is soft and chipping the weeds out was easy. There is a fair bit of cooch that I imagine I am going to be at war with for a while yet. I pulled out and removed as much as I could see, but I can see more under the fence in the neighbours.

It would be nice to think that the garden fairies might sweep the path for me.

So I chipped the weeds, and Kate spread the soil. Then, with some help spacing them, Kate planted the nandinas.
We have done about half the path. That was all we had plants and soil for and I am thinking we did a pretty good job. I can't wait to do more!


Thanks for the help Kate!

I am feeling very cheerful now! If I can dig one decent sized hole in half an hour or so, then with some persistance, I can build the retaining wall and steps. Especially if Mark wants to lend a hand!!!