Week Eight

Well it has been a fun week for me. I got to spend some time in Brisbane again with a good friend, I travelled up there to check out the greenhouse I think I want to assemble on my property.

It is called the Windjammer series 5000

That isn’t actually the one Iwould be buying .. the one I am after looks more like this at the moment:

It is about 9mx20m. A good size for expansion of my garden 🙂 Iam going to need to get some earthworks done to fit it in… haven’t actually bought it yet, but the chap is nice and it seems promising. The initial ad quoted $4000 for the whole thing with skin.. but I am waiting to see his revised total as it will also need shipping and he hasn’t actually got the skin at the moment. There are actually several of them for sale – if any of you are interested, here is the manufacturer website and details on the structure and instructions etc.

http://www.gpstructures.com/literature.html

So Iwanted to touch again on my safety gear. I didn’t really display any of it very well in my last mention. I am using chainsaw and brushcutter up here on my own, so safety gear is super important for me. This is what I actually use when Im on the chainsaw or the brushcutter… We have good solid gumboots, helmet with earmuffs and faceshield, gloves, safety glasses, big bottle of water, phone and chainsaw pants. Wearing the chainsaw pants is pretty brutally hot, so I don’t like to wear them if I am doing brushcutting so much. Im lucky enough to have mobile coverage everywhere I have been working so far.

I bought a new brushcutter, the one I had is about 20 years old, and it just couldn’t handle the thick scrub around my property. I bought the Stihl FS94c :
http://www.stihl.com.au/STIHL-Products/Grass-Trimmers-Brushcutters/Professional-Brushcutters/22338-1621/FS-94-C-E.aspx

It is bloody great. I have been smashing through the lantana and thick grass with this much more easily. My productivity in clearing has dramatically increased.

Heres some fresh ground I have uncovered

..

The area is really opening up now. Iam discovering lots of pots and trash and secret places hidden in the lantana.

So I cleared my way to this big patch of Devil’s Fig. Bloody awful thorny pesty stuff.

See how thorny it is?

So I chainsawed it all down and painted the stumps with Glyphosate. Hopefully I will be able to dig all the stumps up before it gets into the soil… I am trying to cut out as much of it as I can find before it fruits and spreads more.

Much more access to my bananas now too! Ican see  some fresh banana flowers coming out … but way to high for me to reach them still.

As I have been clearing up, I keep discovering these discarded pot plant bases. Someone has been up to mischief!

So this is the gross old pool that was left by the previous owners.  I was hoping I would be able to use it as a fishpond, but it has holes. I was going to dismantle it, but it had tadpoles in there, so I was waiting for them to frog..

I think it will end up as a weed mat or tarp to clear areas for garden beds or something. The structure might come in handy eventually.

Gross.

So while Ihave been writing this a snake has popped out of a rotten board in the ceiling and has been trying to fit back in there. Thanks snake! Ithink it has shown me where the rats were getting in (before the snakes woke up).

ID on this one anybody?

Also last night the mystery animal returned.. four times! There were actually two of them. They both came into the bathroom and tried to eat the peanut butter in the live rat trap. Both of them were bigger than the cage and couldn’t fit far enough into it to get to the peanut butter. I believe it is a very large bandicoot. It is always just a  bit quicker than the camera when I leap into the bathroom to photo it. but the link below shows what I think Im looking at. I want to get a trail camera to observe the wildlife at night. One of them appears to have a sore on its rump. I shall try and observe them more and see if it heals up ok.

http://www.bandicoot.net.au/types_of_bandicoots.htm

Thats about it for now!

Week .. umm.. Seven?

Some good times had this week. My good friend Interbeing had a party, I got to meet lots of cool people including many fabulous local plant people. I am hoping there will be many more meetings (You all know who you are)

There have been several days of slobbing around doing nothing post party, but I still got quite a bit done. Ihave been working with the brush cutter trying to get a better idea of what lies beneath the mountains of grass. My poor old brush cutter wasn’t really made for cutting through scrub, its more of a backyard job.. so Iam thinking of getting a new one.. any suggestions?

Ihave come to the conclusion that I haven’t been sharing as much of what my setup looks like as i should, so even though things are not as Iwant them, I will try and document so there will be before and after and Ill understand all my mistakes so much better. And of course you can all tell me your wisdom! 
So this is my current generator shed. Due to having no solar currently setup, this gets more use than I would like. But Itry not to use much power, maybe an hour a day at the moment. Its about 25m from the house, and it doesn’t make too much of an ungodly racket. This is also my gas chamber for rats. I have a pipe that goes over the exhaust leading into a big plastic bag that the live trap goes into for humane deaths.

This is my first banana. Yummy!

This is what the bats do to my bananas when I go away for 10 days. The bananas are too high for me to reach them so Ihad to chop it down to get them. I would like to be able to bag them on the tree but Idont know how Iwill do that yet. Suggestions welcome. Maybe some kind of big pole contraption.

Here is my current compost setup. The middle is on the ground, Ihave paved the edges hoping it will keep the rats from burrowing in there. So far so good.

So Icut my way into the wilderness and found some unexpected stuff

Looks like Imight be able to use that as a garden bed!

And the other pile of corrugated iron looks like it used to be a structure once upon a time. IT has rotted out floorboards but all the metal seems fine. It looks like the roof used to be shadecloth. I wonder what they were growing in there…?

This is the view from the unknown structure… you can see my bamboo field stretching off into the distance…

Week Sixish

My the time goes so fast.

This week has been up and down. I regularly feel overwhelmed with trying to figure out what I should do or feeling low on energy or motivation. Its a little overwhelming I guess. So when that happens I just kick back with a book and before I know it, its dark again and I try again in the morning.

My bathroom has no door to the outside, I was getting paddymelons or very small wallabies having parties in there, which is very cute, but also rats are a problem so I have been using live traps so Idont kill anything native accidently. I have been gassing the rats with the generator when I catch them. The other night I heard the trap go off and went to have a look. Something had tried to get the peanut butter and set the trap off.. but it was too big to fit in the live trap. I got a quick look at it but Idont know what it was. It didn’t hop, it scampered. it was mainly brown, It had to be at least 60cm long and 20cm tall. It had a tail. I think it was way too big for a bandicoot. Any thoughts?

At the moment I am reading brotherhood of the screaming abyss by Dennis McKenna. Its been on my to do list for a very long time.
So here is my new friend Mittens,I don’t think I managed a photo last time. I hve a new camera so in future picture quality should be much better.

I found this out in the bamboo forest. It looks like a nest! it is about a metre deep and 3 metres wide. Any ideas on what would make such a nest? This isn’t brush turkeys is it?

Safety stuff! I bought this helmet with my chainsaw, and boy am I glad. I have been using it with the brush cutter and it has saved my face from so many things. I should really still wear some safety glasses underneath as Iget the occasional little dust bit in my eyes. And those gloves are great! Gel padded work gloves. Haven’t had a single blister since I started using them.

My Kaffir Lime seedling is coming along nicely!

This is how I am attempting to propogate my Pereskiopsis cuttings. I never had any success with them in the past, but Inever put them in a humidity chamber before, so here’s hoping these ones dont die!

Some Psychotria cuttings…

Banisteriopsis cuttings… not looking as happy as the Psychotria, but hopefully will perk up.

This was a gift from a friend in Melbourne, it was looking real sad when I got it, when it got up here it lost all its leaves and looked like a dead twig, but I left it out in the rain and it has perked right up! Brand new leaves now. Go Yopo!

Heres another style of humidity chamber I am using for some cuttings and seedlings. It seems quite effective as you can see from the moisture on the glass.

So a slow week this week.. not much progress to report, planted some acacias and khat, having cut back a lot of the dense grass I am getting a better picture of where all the trash from previous owner is.. Iwant to put it all into one big pile, trying to decide where to put things is my major difficulty at the moment. Collecting rocks for the rockwall continues very slowly. It is hot work lugging those bloody things about.

Week five

Not too much to report this week, learnt a little bit about rock walls hanging out with one of my neighbours (my neighbours are great!)
I have been trying to focus on meditation, but since leaving the retreat the technique seems 10 times harder, or I am not as good at it. I think this is to be expected and definitely not something to feel disappointed about, or the whole effort of going there would be a waste of time.
Putting the new chainsaw to work on the bamboo has been fun. The less fun bit is dragging it all into piles away from where I am clearing. The cleared area has bamboo trap spikes sticking up everywhere, the bases that are left when i cut them away, that would be very painful to fall on. Hopefully the mattock will dig them up nicely.

There is a really nice space developing where the bamboo is cleared. MAybe new meditation spot.

This morning I was woken by a very distinctive noise in the roof… I went outside and had my first encounter with the resident python. A real beauty, I would guess it was 2.5m in length. Alas no good photos as of yet. But my new camera should be operational tomorrow so hopefully I will see it again soon.

This is the other pile. It is about as big as my house, but not as tall yet. Iam worried about leaving this much dry plant material lying around in a pile, but other than burning it I dont know what to do with it. Ifigure slowly burning it all in a 44gal drum is the idea.

So this is looking down to the same area Iphotoed in a previous week. Progress!

Here’s a bit of cleared space that is starting to look nice, with a view back to the house.

Another cleared bit. The bamboo is quite dense so you don’t know what things look like til you clear it. This will be my area of focus now, Im starting to find the edge, and I want to stop it spreading into the bush any further, so I will cut the edges back next. This area has collected leaf litter and debris in big piles about 2-3 feet deep. Im not sure how far this will continue, but Im very happy to have my nice new chunky comfy gumboots to protect me from all the unknowns and the evil bamboo spikes you can see in the area.

So that’s about it for now. I have finished the Jean Auel Earth’s Children series and I am moving on to some Greg Egan Orthogonal series – Clockwork Rocket. Heavy on the maths most of which is waaay over my head but still a fun story.

Vipassana

So I am just back from 10 days of Vipassana. 

It was both gruelling and amazing. 4:30 am starts through to 9:30 pm bedtime, around 11 hours of meditation each day. Buddha boot camp. Mental marathon. If I were to sum up Vipassana in one sentence it would be: Sit very still and do not complain, not even to yourself. But that is just making light of something incredibly deep and complex.

It is very difficult to describe briefly but I will try. Vipassana is about awareness and equanimity. You are supposed to sit with a straight neck and back and do a specific kind of meditation without reacting to any internal or external stimuli, getting your awareness to the point that you can detect sensations and reactions that happen below your ordinary conscious leve whilst remaining calm and equanimous whilst your mind and body throws every ache, pain, interesting thought, fantasy, doubt and insecurity it can summon at your consciousness. It was a rollercoaster ride of sitting very still. I found it really wonderful to be around 60 other people but not have to talk to them or look at them or even acknowledge them in any way. MAles and females are segregated for the duration of the course, and I really understand why… just the site of a female was enough to send me into lusty hormonal distraction for hours. My brain was very rebellious, so many inventive efforts to try and distract me. I had this song stuck in my head on repeat for two days straight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mui4CM2SKWM

 Amazing things happened to me. I don’t want to go into too much detail because I know some people reading this will be doing vipassana soon and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. But observing my cravings and aversions really made me understand myself a whole lot better. I feel like Ihave a lot more control over my deciions and reactions now.
The Centre where I did the 10 days is in Pomona in QLD. Very Beautiful. The local animals have learnt that meditators don’t pose a threat to them, and no longer care. Iwould have to walk around kangaroos to leave my room as they wouldn’t get out of the way and enjoyed sunning themselves on my doorstep. Kookaburras would land a foot away from my head and stare at me meaningfully before trying to nose through ones plate of food. Magpies and butcher birds would try to take food out of your hand if you werent paying attention. 

I saw pythons and frogs and birds galore.

This is the friendly chap who wanted in on the food

This was the view from my bungalow door

This is the view from the gardens near the meditation hall

This was a little wattles birds attempt at a nest. He was doing so badly that when I found an abandoned nest on the ground, Iput it near his attempt, he immediately grabbed it and just stuffed it down on top of his pile of sticks. You can see his messy effort under the nice new nest.

One of the little ones. There was a full mob of Kangaroos that lived at the retreat. Didn’t seem to have any reason to leave. There were at least three generations all of whom were very cute.
So thats it for the photos. I don’t feel like Ihave done vipassana justice in my description. It took me to the edge of my mental endurance. Some days I would be awestruck at the profound realisations and experiences I was having, and the next day Iwould be convinced it was all a scam and I should never meditate again. The truth I guess is somewhere in the middle, and the challenge is being aware enough not to get caught in the delusions of either extreme.

Anyhow I feel really good about it, really pleased with myself for giving my best effort at least 90% of the time. Iplan to go back and do another course as a server – preparing food and general assistance with only 3 hours of meditation a day instead of 11. Ill do this when Jess does her first course so I will be there to give her a big hug when she walks out the gate.

I made a friend there who is travelling from Scotland, took him back home to chill out for a few days and talk philosophy which was a nice way to integrate our experiences. I am back on my own now and feeling really confident and motivated to put in a solid effort at meditating 2 hours every day, getting back on the wim hof and revelling in my solitude again.

Oh yeah, anyone with any great designs for a chook shed, let me know. Im about to start building one, if it ever stops raining…

Week Three

So this week has been all about getting over a cold and learning not to feel guilty for not doing any ‘work’.

I was going to set up an archery range, and found myself feeling guilty for not doing all of the things I knew were on the to do list first. Once I realised I was feeling guilty Itook the whole day off to go fishing in the lake.

Which really just means reading in the sun with a fishing rod in the water. There isn’t much to catch in there at the moment. Lots of tiny rainbow fish the other landowners hate and want to get rid of.
There used to be some freshwater bass in the lake, which are meant to feed on tiny fish but they dont breed and are probably gone by now.
The other landowners are also complaining that the water doesn’t seem as clear as it used to be. To me it looks like that would be because there are no aquatic plants. I volunteered to do a bit of research and see if i could find out what would help clean up the water, and how to get rid of pesky tiny fish – I think putting lots of predatorial big fish in to eat them all that I can then fish for sounds like a good idea 🙂

But if anyone knows who I should be contacting to find out more about dams, fish for dams, cleaning up water using plants, do let me know. I have a few ideas but more is always welcome.

Sorry if the pictures are rubbish but its too bright to see what im taking pictures of.

It rained most of the week which helped me relax and not feel like Ineeded to do much.

I got a few more cacti in the ground and chopped some more bamboo. Got my first tick. Awful things.

I am doing lots of stretching, seeing an osteopath and practicing sitting up straight as I am off to Vipassana next week for silent meditation retreat. Don’t know how I am going to hold up to 6+ hours a day of sitting straight meditating, but I’m going to give it a crack.
When I sit real still with the door open curious birds come and peek into the house until they notice I am there. Haven’t yet got them to eat any seed and when I leave meal worms out for them they crawl away before anything has eaten them. Need to make  a nice rat proof bird feeder.

More rat dramas, another failed rat killing method. Projectile apparatus was bloody and looked painful. Onto next method… Carbon Monoxide. Going to use generator fumes channeled into a bucket/bag.

Doing good at wim hof, breath retentions over 4 minutes. I’m really feeling good about the cold showers now. Can jump right under without flinching or gasping, and I know the water nust be bloody cold because it gives me an ice cream headache rinsing my hair!

Bought me  chainsaw but haven’t got to use it due to crappy weather. Ah well sooon.

It’s night time, I can hear noises like something is throwing coconut shells at the house and some kind of non human screaming noises from the bush with much rustling and commotion. I suspect yowies.

Week Two

On Saturday I was invited to one of the locals birthday party, good opportunity to meet everyone. So Ipassed on the opportunity of sacred ceremony with friends to try and make new friends. Iwas pleasantly surprised. Seems everyone up here is really lovely and generous. They all seem very encouraging and willing to offer advice and assistance. And they like to party! It took me days to recover. I remember now why I dont drink. So I lost half the week to being completely useless. It’s actually been a tough week I guess it is to be expected. This is the first time I’ve been solitary in a long while with just my thoughts for company. All my anxieties doubts and insecurities about what I am doing came bubbling to the surface. I didn’t have any answers to them and they ran rampant for a day or two.

I knew it was coming but it still came as a surprise. I have tried to reframe my thinking about what I am doing. It is a holiday and an experiment. There is no failure, just learning. That keeps most of my anxiety at bay.
Other than anxiety I am quite enjoying the solitude. Plenty of birds to keep me company. Lots of work to do. I have managed to get things a little more controlled now so I don’t have to drive to town every day for something else I need or have forgotten.

Onto some photos.

So here is the balcony shot now there is actually some cactus in the ground.. most of the big cactus is in, but I am running out of room in this patch and there is just endless amounts to plant. But definitely more than half the cactus is in the ground now.

Here are some shots of the terraced cactus beds.

Some are a bit lopsided and scarred up but they made it. No deaths in the family so far!

Idont know if you can see it in this photo but Ihave fruit! It happened so fast. There is now lots of fruit, new ones coming up every day. So the next generation will get started soon.

All the plants that go in pots.. ARE IN POTS! And most of them have a lovely coarse sand dressing on top to keep the weeds out – Im saving the task of dressing the pots for when Im hot and need some time in the shade but still want to feel productive.

Look at that big happy crested cactus in the background, what a beauty.
My potting mix currently consists of: 1 part perlite, 1 part coarse sand, 4 parts high grade potting mix.
For the lophs I have been doing 1 part perlite 1 part sifted coarse sand 2 parts potting mix. (Loosely based on Interbeings suggestion. Idont know what ratios he uses)

So the field behind those is where you will later see my bamboo discard pile.

This is one of my freshly mown patches. Note the nightmare bamboo forest in the background that Ineed to remove.

Also note the completely rundown pile of caravan I dont know what to do with yet.

Here is what will one day be a lovely bush clearing once the bamboo is defeated

Promising looking bushland, just a bit of lantana to clear…

Here is a pile of bamboo I have recently defeated. I really wish I had a nice samurai sword to chop it all down with, it would be so much cooler than hacking it down with a machete.

Here is the promising clearing now that I have cleared it.

It even has birds nest ferns! And rocks! Lots of rocks.

Here is the view from the nice clearing. Bloody bamboo. Ican tell I am going to get sick of clearing bamboo before this is done. The trouble with bamboo is.. it grows back. Any clever tips for eradicating bamboo would be most welcome. It is looking like I may have to use some poison to get rid of it.

So.. what else?

Icaught my first rat and had to drown it. Im using live traps outside so I dont kill any wildlife and I hadn’t actually thought through what to do when I got one… drowning seemed pretty traumatic and not that efficient, so I am going to devise a small projectile thing to euthanise live caught rats from now on.

I have a cold, I feel pretty average, so I am taking things slow. I work til I am hot, then I read in the shade until not, and repeat. Still trying to get over my feelings of everything must be done in a rush and feeling like I am a lazy uninspired slob, so I am deliberately not working so much and spending a lot of time reading whilst not feeling guilty about it.

Jean Auel Clan of the cave bear. Good read. Yummed it up. Theres another 4 or 5 books in the series but they will go fast. Suggestions welcome.

Week one

17 hour drive to get here, so we had a rest day before getting stuck into everything.

Slight complication in that the shipping container did not make it onto the property. Truck too big for driveway. So we had to unpack everything into the trailer and drive it to the house and unpack it all again. It took a while. we had to lay all the cactus out on the lawn while we sorted the house out.

These are the before pictures: 

So that actually looks quite neat.. it wasn’t. Dust and crap everywhere.. dog hair on everything.

We did a lot of house cleaning to make it habitable.

This is the view off the verandah at the cactus carnage before we really started any gardening.

We got about 7 tonne of material so far for repotting (see jess below hard at work) landscaping and fixing the road – there was so much rain that the constant back and forth of us moving in and the truck bringing us garden supplies dug the road up quite badly.. it was dangerous for the truck so we had to do some road remodelling. (photos to come)

Heres my lovely driveway looking all smashed up

So first priority is of course the cactus. HAve to get them all in the ground so they dont get rotten laying around on their sides in the wet. There has been varying degrees of damage during the move.. but I think every plant will actually survive with a little care.

The following photos are the slope next to the driveway where most of the cactus are going to end up.

We are developing a landscaping method I call ‘impulse gardening’ we haven’t yet got any cactus in the ground, but the ones that are going in pots are in the pots.

So, it was a mess. I haven’t taken the update shots yet, but it almost looks like something you would put plants in.
Below are some photos of damage to my poor babies…

Heres is a graft that was cut up like butter through a cheese slicer. The majority of the graft is just gone. I believe it will survive but there goes more than two years of growth.

I don’t suppose it looks too dramatic but a whole chunk on the lower left side has been smashed off. This plant was pristine so I was not happy, but I am putting on my zen face with all cactus accidents, at least they are alive.

Another poor graft that was cheese gratered. Another few years of growth gone.

So that’s all the photos I bothered to take this week. It’s been a lot of fun. Theres been lots of little hiccups along the way, phone didnt work at first but I got that sorted, at first I couldnt get the hot water to work, but I have just been having cold showers, and now I know how the hot water works, but I dont want it anymore. Hooray for Iceman skills. Besides, it got to 27 today, most nights have been 12 degrees or above. It is lovely.

What else? my 20 year old generator just died along with the battery inverter.. so I am running off a car battery tonight until I can get some light to try and fix it all or get into town tomorrow to buy another.

The stove started shooting flames out where the on off knobs are, so thats off limits. I am using a camp stove for the moment, that works just fine. Stove is a later problem. First cactus. Then vegie garden. Then figure out house renos.

There is heaps of wildlife here. The variety of birdcalls I hear is amazing. Seen some lovely big black cockatoos and some kookaburras. Definitely heard owls about. Seen lots of skinks, been finding snake skin on the front verandah each morning so I guess theres one up on the roof. Seen some wallabies and paddy melons about, they are very cute. There are definitely lots of bandicoots around but Ihavent seen one alive yet, just roadkill. Rats/mice are a problem I have to sort out. Ihear them prowling about in the night.

So thats it for now, more update next week