Week Thirteenish

Another interesting week(s)

Been a little uninspired to write, but things have happened.

I did a lovely little ceremony with my best mate, not so sick this time. I feel like vipassana and lack of impatience has really paid off dividends. Although aya told me I really should try and meditate more. Fair point. Very excited to explore further in the near future.

The weather is warming up real nice, its sweaty doing anything at the moment.. Ilove it.

Bloody rats ate my entire arioacarpus collection. Such is life I suppose. They must taste good, they leave my lophophoras alone so thats the main thing.

Heres my local land mullet.

Heres the 5 foot long goanna thats beem wandering past my bedroom!

Oh yes he is big. But shy. Cute.

Heres the new  graft a friend gave me. Thanks nrivers! Ilove it. Potted up now.

Heres one of my new arios that is now rat poo. I hope they realise this means I will turn them into food for the 5 foot goanna.

On the up side Ihave got some vegies in the ground that havent been eaten  – yet – ordered lots of vegie seeds, got some new grafts happening, cleaning up the house in preparation for my lovely partner to arrive, funny how you only notice the clutter when you think of someone else living in you space!

I finally figured out that it is microbats coming and shitting in my bathtub every night! I dont really get why they are shitting there at night… being nocturnal I would have thought they would be doing that during the day. Anyhow im not really mad, just sick of cleaning their shit. So going to build some microbat nesting boxes. Lovely little things eat all the mozzies! While Im at it might build some boxes for kookaburras and owls and anything else I spot in the area. Gonna wait til Jess arrives so we can do the fun stuff together.
No luck with the Wildlife camera yet, and I just broke my computer so I cant read the SD card at the moment. Will have to wait til Isort out somemore technology.
Feeling very good about life.

Week Eleven

Snakes! I love them. Lots of snake action in the house at the moment. The brown tree snakes has taken up residence in the corner of my lounge room during the day. Very discrete and non threatening. Needs a name but it hasn’t come to me yet.

I have had a fun week. Went to a nice new friends party, made new friends, visited The Channon market for the first time. It was the 40th annniversary of the market. Very big! Bustling with everything. Lots of music and great food and good stuff. I bought some plants for the garden, I’ll detail that next week. Definitely a place for me at the market. Going to have an awesome stall one day.

So there were some setbacks this week. Something has eaten all my vegie seedlings. Well, the ones I put in the ground anyway. Very frustrating, but to be expected I guess. Looks like vegies will be needing full rat proof enclosures. Thats going to be a bit of effort and some cash expense. Fortunately the animals haven’t eaten anything in pots, (yet) so Istill have some seedlings to be working with.
If anyone has some seeds they would like to share, Im keen on anything edible, Iam starting from scratch so all is welcome, but particularly keen on chillies and herbs.

Iturned the hot water on for the first time since arriving. I am having a guest next week to help me with permaculture design (Yay Audrey!) and I want her to feel comfortable and have the full luxury experience. She says she is fine sharing with snakes so I think it will all be ok.

This is mittens, the carpet python. Mittens has reappeared in the yard this week. Haven’t seen her for weeks, but shes back.

Mittens found the rat trap. She wasn’t going to let it go, I got a couple of long sticks and opened up the cage, Mittens missed the opportunity and left again.

This little fella flies around making as much noise as a blowfly. Cute.

Black cockatoos are back. They are elusive to the good photos though. I will work on it. Im told some local indigenous folklore says that the number of black cockatoos you see and the direction they are flying tells you how many days til it rains and from what direction it will come. So far this has been true from my observations.

This isn’t my photo, but this is the new discovery. Land mullets. They have been elusive to the camera so far, but I suspect they may be eating my vegies.

Week 10

So this week has been accidently pick up huntsmen spiders when I am not looking week. It just keeps happening. They are not very bitey thank goodness.

There was some noises on my roof the other night so I had a look with the torch, brown tree snakes mating on the kitchen roof. Camera flash wasn’t bright enough to capture the action and they don’t seem to like torche very much. How romantic. Speaking of romance it is only 30 days until Jess arrives which is pretty exciting. Ihave started the process of tidying the house. I know she will get her tidy on when she gets here so I’ll try and make it as nice as I can so I can try and teach her all about how to do nothing for a while and get her out of city mode.

So I have started some vegie seedlings. I thought my seeds might be a bit old, but I got a good rate of germination from them. (These are my last year leftovers from an order from Eden seeds) These ones I just chucked in some soil and kept them wet, most were coming up within 7 days, however after about 2 days I got impatient and put down another bunch of seeds on some wet sphagnum moss in takeaway containers.. Not so good as soil, but got some more things coming up.

I am starting pretty minimal this time round, I have 

Butternut pumpkin

Roma cherry tomato

Sugarsnap peas

climbing beans

chamomile

Sunflowes and giant sunflowers

cucumbers

passionfruit

none of the spinach, basil, onions, other varieties of tomatoes seem to want to germinate so Iwill try resowing them.

This is my temporary garden bed. I chose this spot because it is easily reached by the hose, hose some nice soil, isn’t overloaded with tree roots, gets full sun most of the day.

My mango tree is flowering. Im very keen to eat them all. There was lantana growing all through the mango tree 9and most other places) so I have been hacking it off at the base and removing as much of it as I can to get more light and space to the tree. Need to get a tough long sleeved shirt. My arms are all cut up from lantana.

 I thought I would try growing pineapples. Seems easy enough from my readings. However something pulls them out of the pots and eats them each night. All the wildlife had been so nice about not eating my cactus I thought that maybe this wouldn’t be a problem for me and my garden would be the exception. No. I guess I better start thinking about fences.

My new chair finally arrived! Oh my goodness. Luxury. Rocking recliner. Good lumber support. Can stretch out and get horizontal. There’s nothing better than dozing to a book in a rocking chair. This is another little dream come true and such a massive change from a camping chair that makes my feet go numb after a couple of hours. (see lonely abandoned camp chair in the corner of the photo)

This is the view out my lounge room window. Im slowly cutting back all the lantana and bamboo and scrub so the view is expanding. Within the next few months I am expecting some arborist assistance to get rid of some Camphor and a few gums that are threatening the house. Then that valley view will really open up.

I need to figure out my exactly how much clearing I need around my house to meet the bushfire safety standards. Haven’t done that yet.

So my plants are recovering nicely from the move now, new growth coming through. Iam relocating the pots from my soil and potting area into a new place where I can admire them more readily and the hose reaches much more easily. 

Looking much happier now! the rootstock for this graft started sagging and snapped before the move, so I had to cut it much shorter, looks like is has rooted up again nicely, new growth showing, feeling much firmer and such beautiful flowers. I really like the extra colour in the Jourdanianas.

Also looking happy. Can still see some of the damage from moving, but hopefully it will grow so much that all those blemishes will end up being covered.

This is my hard luck cactus. I don’t know why, but this guy always gets the worst run of it. Attacked by bugs, knocked over, get some rot from beig wet in the bug eaten bits. Also I always liked using him for grafting stock, so he was always being attacked one way or the other. I think Ill be nice to him for a while now. The rootstock got damaged in the move and went all soggy and gross at the base, so I had to surgery, He is only a week back in soil, but I see new growth appearing, hopefully he will have better luck up here than victoria.

Yay for recovery.

This is one of the chaps who was cut up by a wire cage in transport. The rot got to the rootstock real close to the graft, but it didnt get into the core so Ithink it is going to be alright. The main heads of the graft were turned to smoosh but there is still a fair sized button growing up there.

Yeah thats still a happy button. I think he will be just fine.