Category Archives: garden

look what i found

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I got a great email the other day from Laure,l from The North End Loft, telling me she had featured my tin crown in her Friday Finds post. Thank you Laurel!

http://www.thenorthendloft.com/2014/02/friday-finds.html

It got me thinking. Lots of bloggers do ‘finds’ type of posts once a week and its a great way to share things with your friends and followers. Maybe I should do it…

Then again I’m a ‘fair weather’ blogger. Sometimes I post a lot, other times I disappear for weeks and my friends have been known to phone E.T. to intercede on my behalf in case if I’ve been abducted.

Its all very well to have time to do everything I try to cram into my day, then I have to find time to blog. And most of the time I’m just too tired at the end of the day to answer emails, let alone be creative and blog.

I think I will join the ‘finds’ club, but make it a random thing… you know, more like a surprise than a reliable weekly thing.

So, in the spirit of sharing interesting things I’ve seen, been inspired by or found… here is the best idea for displaying art. I found it while browsing The North End Loft. Laurel made up boards with pegs and clips up different art according to the room and the mood. Isn’t it brilliant?

I think I’m going to make some of these for myself. There is only so much wall space in this house and there is just so much I’d like to display. Changeable displays are a wonderful idea.
Here are some great finds from a garage sale up the road a week ago. I love this old fashioned bike light…  it’ll make a great something one day. And those clamps. I have ideas for those already, but you’ll see how one has already come in handy in an upcoming post. 

I also found these two old scales to add to my collection. (Anything over 3 is a collection and I now have 4 of the hanging type and 5 of the table type scales). This first is wonderfully chippy with that lovely old fashioned green on the back.

The other has a lovely patina of rust and green. They’re both hanging on the side of the house for the time being, replacing the plants I had in hanging baskets.

Most of the plants I had in pots have gone into the ground now. The garden is looking wonderful. Most of the plants I put in have grown and the place is starting to look like someone loves it. If I continue in this vein my garden will soon look like a little old lady lives here.

– You know. The older the you get the more into gardening you are… the best cottage gardens usually belong to little old ladies who’ve been gardening for 30 years.

z

getting there slowly – kitchen update

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Not much has actually happened in the kitchen yet, so the title of this post is misleading. However things are going to be happening. Soon, I hope.
This is where things are at.
Handyman has been over and worked on the end of the porch till he ran out of wood. That’s semi enclosed for now and already making a difference when its really hot, and today when the wind picked up and it rained horizontally.
Yesterday evening we sat on the bench at the end of the garden and looked back at the house and I’m loving how its looking. I love the enclosed end of the porch and the way the retaining wall frames the house.
Just squint a little and picture the painting finished… perhaps with some decorative corners on the posts…
Meanwhile the electrician has put in the new meter box and the gooseneck thingy where the power comes into the house. We’re waiting on the electricity company to come move the power before we can put the new window in the kitchen and finish lining the walls.
All the power points have been moved and we now have a power point outside for those times when you need power outdoors. Power has been pulled to where it’ll be needed for the new stove, dishwasher and rangehood.
My kitchen maker has been to confirm measurements and will be placing the order on Tuesday (Monday is a public holiday here) and thinks the new kitchen will be ready to install in 3 weeks.
That means that the week before we need to rip out the old kitchen bench and cabinets, lift the lino and masonite on the floor and hopefully find floorboards in decent condition. If so, I’ll need to give them a sand in preparation for the new cabinets to go in. If not we’ll be putting the masonite back and organising vinyl for the new floor.
I really hope we have nice floorboards.
Soon as I get the precise measurements for the new benchtop I can give them to Handyman so he can start making it. Then it can go in soon as the cabinets are in place.
I’ll have to organise delivery of the stove, rangehood and dishwasher so the kitchen can be put together at the same time. I think… The timing of this still kind of stumps me.
I know I need to organise a plumber gasfitter to come get everything ready for the stove and sink before they’re put in place, then come back to connect them up…
Ditto with the electrician when he puts in the bits he needs to wire in.
Remind me never to do something like this again…
Meanwhile I found this little beauty at the tip shop while looking for something else. I think it might be the perfect mobile island bench for the new kitchen. All it needs is new handles, a bit of TLC, a shelf and castors. Oh, and a new top to match the benchtop Handyman is making.
On another note, the garden is going well. I’m waiting for 3 of the 4 of these plants-who’s-name-I-have-forgotten to bloom so I can decide if and where I’ll put them in the garden. I love the pink but I don’t want red.
Wierd, but I don’t remember planting these seeds… Remember, I never wanted yellow flowers in my garden and now I have plenty of yellow flowers.
Oh well. The garden is a work in progress. I can always dig up, pull out and move things I don’t like.
Yesterday I planted a ton more seeds in pots so hopefully they’ll start sprouting soon and I can add them to the garden. There are already a few things which are ready to be put in. Its just a matter of deciding where they should go and put them in.
I’ll have a pretty garden yet!
z

redlands – dream garden

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There’s a place just outside New Norfolk which I’ve always wanted to visit, and last weekend Wayne and I finally found the time to go and have a look around. Its called Redlands and used to be a huge farm with lots of outbuildings like its own blacksmith, bakery, distillery, etc.

It still has a distillery where they make their own whiskey and schnapps. Good stuff. Oh, and the bakery is also a going concern now – its not open for visitors but it bakes artisan bread which is sold through some local shops.

You know I’m a sucker for old signs.

And old buildings. The distillery shop is inside what looks like it may have once been a dairy, wonderful stone floors and thick stone walls. Unfortunately the photos I took inside suck.

This is part of the distillery.

Then of course there are tons of old buildings, some in better conditions that others. I’m not sure if they’re in use or not.

This is the old oast house.

This is the workers’ quarters. Amazing. There’s talk they want to restore these rooms as tourist accommodation. 

I love it all. Especially the garden. Its the kind of garden I dream of… the kind of garden I would have loved to grow up with. Its the kind of garden fairies flit around in and leprechauns live in.

There are trees with branches which hang down to the ground, creating ideal secret hiding places… love the sitting area comprised of tree stumps under these birches.

The ducks enjoy a bit of shade on a hot day.

No garden is complete without a cubby house!

And the flowers! Huge trees with hydrangeas growing happily underneath them.

Stone wall fences and more hydrangeas… old fashioned and new varieties. Beautiful. And much happier than mine in the shade of the big trees.

If I had this canopy over my garden I’d spend more time sitting in the garden reading or just relaxing.

I love Redlands. Our garden will never look like that. But hopefully I’ll soon have a garden full of pretty flowers and interesting corners. And an area to sit and relax in the shade.
z

retaining walls and eliminating glassware

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Things are progressing… Every day is a small step forward.
Wayne’s been working really hard on the new retaining wall. This is how it looked yesterday when he stopped for the day. 
He worked in the heat all day to get this far. He’s definitely a better man than I am! Even the small bit of heat I got was enough to knock me out.
Today the weather is cold and windy. It rained most of the night too. It is Tasmania after all. 
But I’m not complaining. 
Anyway, this morning we went in to the hardware store where Wayne bought 24 bags of concrete mix. I bought 2 towel rails. 
Turns out I wasn’t quite done in the bathroom yet.
While Wayne continued on the retaining wall, getting all the posts in, I put up two towel rails. 
Till now I’ve had an over the door type of coat rack for Wayne to hang his towels and 2 hooks on the wall for mine. I was sick of knocking Wayne’s towels off the coat hooks every time I walked past them. Plus I much prefer rails to hang towels on, so today I made the leap. I know that one day I’ll be re-doing the bathroom, but till then I may as well make it more bearable. And I’m definitely liking it with the new shelves.
I’d like to say it was quick and easy. I’ve done this before. But once again it was a comedy of errors, putting the fittings on backwards, putting screws in, taking them out, re-doing things. You get the picture. At one stage I was sure I was going to hit an electric cable so I put on rubber gloves and rubber soled shoes, told everyone I loved them, closed my eyes and drilled.
Luckily I didn’t hit anything.
But Wayne did.
He hit another water pipe.
I told you, the guy should hire himself out as a water diviner. With a crowbar instead of a rod.
Luckily he hit it but didn’t puncture it. Thankfully. Herman Too is too young to hear the foul language that puncturing the pipe would have brought forth.
Did I mention Herman Too is back in the bathroom?
We released him the other day and he ran to the other ducklings in his slightly off-kilter way. They didn’t shun him for living in the big house. All was well. 
Or so we thought.
Yesterday afternoon, after the weather had turned cool, I was watering my flowers when I noticed two ducklings in a deep water bowl. One hopped out. The other was soaking wet and did not look good.
Have you ever seen a soaking wet duckling? I sure hadn’t and I was sure he was a goner.

I fished him out of the bowl, gave him to Wayne to dry and warm up while I went in search of the large plastic tub, the heating pad and blankets. The poor little thing couldn’t even walk, he just kind of crawled. I was sure he wouldn’t make it. But he did. He’s back to being chirpy and a bit brave.

Looks like Herman Too has moved back in. I suspect he’ll be here till he goes to college.

Maybe he can be our house duck.
(I’m still pretty sure Herman Too is a girl.)
Other than that, I spent most of the day today cleaning the kitchen. And by cleaning I don’t mean washing dishes and floors (though I did that too). I mean clearing out cupboards.
The work in the kitchen will be done. I need to start preparing. All the top cupboards are empty now since they’ll be the first to go. I packed up a ton of stuff we don’t need on hand and filled up boxes with things to go away.
Getting there slowly.
z

the driveway, the garden… its all happening here

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I thought I’d share some photos of the last couple of weekends here. Its been rather hectic.
As you already know through my posts on the ducklings, last weekend we had an excavator here digging up the driveway and shoring up the dam. 
The driveway is something we knew we’d have to do from the day we bought the farm. See, the guy who originally put the driveway in created a nice slope from the bottom of the hill straight to the house.
It successfully funneled all rainwater from the hill under the house and into the front yard. In heavy rainstorms we’d have Niagara Falls on our garden path, right down into the casita. All winter our lawn (or what passes as lawn) is like a sponge. You walk and squelch.
So, we booked this job in as soon as the weather was good enough.
Below are some photos of the excavator at work putting a slight slope and a new surface on the driveway, and digging a trench to catch rainwater and move it away from the house.
We hope.
Below, Barney overseeing the job.
Now, of course, we have a trench under the gate so need to find a way to stop poodles getting out and wallabies getting in!
Cass (aka the Masked Avenger) checks out the works behind the garage.
The view of the new sloped sides… What will I do with them? I had thought we’d get a steeper ‘wall’ which we’d put in sleepers to create a retaining wall. What we have instead is a slope of hard clay soil. 
I think the rain will end up washing that down so I know we need to do something about it. But what? Ideas welcome. I do plan to put in a lot of plants up the top, things like pigface and other hardy plants which will grow and trail downwards.
Its looking a bit stark and moonscape-ish right now. It needs something, don’t you agree?
The dam looked quite pretty with all the reeds and grass on its gently sloping sides, but it was leaking and all the area below the dam was soggy and marshy. Lately the sides of the dam had started collapsing too. It definitely needed fixing.
This is what the dam looks like now. Another moonscape. But hopefully, no more leaks. What the guy did was build up the lower side of the dam and scoop out the high side. That way rainwater from the paddock will flow INTO the dam, not around it. It was wierd, but the dam walls were higher on that side and lower on the bottom side. Wierd.
Anyway, we hope this works. We’ll see if things dry out around the dam this summer and see how it goes in winter. That’ll be real test.
This weekend there was some gardening work done as well. I’d mowed and organised what I wanted to have done, then I got a friend to come over and put some new plants in for me plus a new garden bed.
I’ve already proved to myself that I’m not made to garden so I decided to pay someone to do it for me. That way I can have a pretty garden without the pain!
Below is the back of corner of the house (the office window). Our old picnic table and an old metal table serve as my potting area and seedling raising benches.
I have to admit… I’m absolutely loving growing plants from seeds! I get a rush when I see the tiny plants breaking through the dirt, then plant a heap of things in my garden which I grew myself.
I have more seeds to plant now. I think I’ve become addicted. Soon I won’t have room for more plants in the garden unless I put in more beds…
I’m gonna need a bigger yard!
Below is the corner of my cute timber shed. The hydrangeas are going really well. Even the stumpy one the horses ate and which was in a spot it hated. Its been moved and is starting to grow now.
I got Sharon to put in a few of my seedlings and a bog salvia I bought last week. The tag said it’ll get big. I hope so!
Here’s a sneak peek at some plants I bought for the driveway wall. I’ll re-pot them till they get bigger, then put them in in autumn. That way they’ll have time to settle in before the next hot dry summer.
My snap dragons are going well. Except the red one. That seems to be dying. That’s fine by me. I didn’t like the red one anyway.
Actually, I dreamed of a garden of blue, purple and white flowers only. Then mauves and pinks snuck in. I have a salvia hotlips which is red and white. I put in 2 pale yellow banksia roses. I planted a ton of osteospermums which are pastel yellow, orange and white… I have the yellow snap dragons (I’m hoping the red one is really on its way out)…
Looks like I’m not getting my blue, purple and white garden. Its more of a cottage garden with all colours, but I would prefer not to have red or bright yellow. Or bright orange… I’ll be ok with those on the driveway, but not in the garden itself.
I can always pull things out, right?
I’m a floral racist.
Anyway, here are some photos of the front of the house. I really need to finish painting. I have a huge potato vine dying to climb but I can’t let it till I paint the post its meant to climb up on. The lavenders are doing really well, and most of the other flowers are doing great too. Some not so great. I had to replace a few which died with my home grown seedlings.
Any ideas on what to do with this area? Its where the septic tank is and I have these pipes I’d like to hide somehow. I have plants growing on both sides, and up on the trellis. That will hide it a bit, but the pipes in the ground… maybe I need something cute, little gnome houses or something…
Excuse the washing on the line. This is the new garden bed I got Sharon to put in for me. I wanted to pretty up that area of the yard. I had tried to grow 2 blue plumbagos there before but managed to kill them both. Hopefully the new plants will do better. I have a sort of orange blossom tree (no idea what it is but its not an orange tree) some lupins (no idea what colours), plus my homegrown seedlings including swan river daisies and columbines.
Watch this space. One day it will be a garden! I can’t wait to see it all growing and full.
When Sharon finished doing the gardening she had some leftover pine bark. I had her put it in the swampy corner near the carport. For now it is a good place to grow my succulents.
I really have become quite interested in gardening. I blame old age. A friend of mine once told me that the older you get, the more you appreciate watching things grow. I think its happened to me.
Dad would be proud.
z

weeds and other realisations

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Let me introduce you to cape weed.

Ground zero (otherwise known as our lawn) is covered with the stuff.

Over the last week I’ve become obsessed with the stuff.

Now you know I’m not much of a gardener…. but I have this ‘grandpa weeder’ thing I bought a couple of years ago and never used, which allows you to pull out weeds without having to bend over or dig them out. I rediscovered this handy little tool last week and I’ve been waging war against the cape weed ever since.

So far, the cape weed is winning.

I’ve been out there every chance I get, when the weather is nice, when I have some free time, when I walk through the yard and spot another cape weed glaring at me with its beady little eyes…

Last week I filled four big garbage bags with weeds. This week I filled another three.

All I have to show for it are a whole lot of ‘holes’ in the so-called lawn.

And the cape weed continues to thrive.

I’m not ready to give up yet. Sometimes it takes a long time for defeat to sink in.

Like how long it took me to give up on the all natural, home-made, eco-friendly cleaning products.

I read all this stuff on Pinterest about how you can clean the shower using vinegar and dish washing liquid and I was like “Yeah! Healthy and natural, not to mention cheap!”. So I scrubbed and washed and scrubbed and washed. But the mold kept coming back stronger than before. The vinegar was only making it angry.

It was a few months (and a disgustingly black shower) before I gave up and pulled out the big guns. Give me strong chemicals any time! At least now I don’t need a tetanus shot to have a shower!

Similarly, the gardening attempts… We’ve been here for over 2 years… All this time I’ve been kidding myself that I’ll create a garden… that I can create a garden. Despite all evidence to the contrary – as attested to by all the dead plants who came home with me in great hopes of a good life in the country.

When I was flat on my back groaning in pain a couple of weeks ago, I finally decided to admit defeat. I will never be a gardener. So I did what any self respecting failure would do: I paid someone else to do it!

I hired a friend to come over and weed and put in a couple of garden beds for me. I had planted a line of lavenders along the front of the house. (Most of them actually made it surprisingly.) But the weeds were drowning them.

This is the planning stage: weeds gone, weed matting down, pots placed where plants would go in.

I found this great mini corregated edging which is so ‘me’. I love the yard now! (Well except for the cape weed.)
Just imagine how great the place will look when the painting is finished and the plants are grown….

The area around the trellis has a new garden bed too.

I’m really loving my new garden. When its mowed. And I can’t see the cape weed…

 

I swear, I was never into gardens or flowers, but come spring, I kinda go crazy and want a garden and buy plants like crazy, then have to smuggle them into the garden so Wayne won’t see them. He has no faith in my gardening abilities.
I love watching my flowers grow (some of them…) despite my ignorance! It actually makes them more special if they survive me!

 

I still have a few unusual containers with plants in them but I’ve decided to stick with succulents in most of them cause most flowers can’t handle the heat in pots, and cause I love the way this old metal ammo box has filled out.

Eventually all these should fill up like the ammo box. Pretty cool, huh?
Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a gardening blog is it? I apologize… I just haven’t been doing a lot of creating lately. I have started a few new projects so hang in there, it will come!
z

PS. Thanks to Ginny who sent me a link to a handy page about “identifying that weed”, I now know the names of all the weeds in my yard. Now I can greet them by name.

The sad thing is that if I were to actually succeed in getting rid of the weeds, I’d have no lawn, just a mudpit in my yard. Maybe the wogs had it right…. just cement it all! No weeds, no mowing, no mud! LOL

the view from the couch

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I’m going crazy.

I could handle being stuck on the couch if I could sit up. I can sit for hours and do creative things.

What’s killing me is not being able to sit. There’s only so much you can do in 5-10min bursts of sitting or leaning over the keyboard (leaning is probably not recommended).

So, how did this happen?

Well, I had an unfortunate incident at work while packing for a move which included a slip, a fall and a jolt to my spine. The physio explained that its perfectly normal to be stiff and sore after something like that, but what I couldn’t understand is how things could get worse a couple of days later… However he says its totally explainable and can easily happen.

See, after the slip, fall and jolt (doesn’t have the same ring to it as ‘flip, flop and fly’ does it?) I was a bit stiff, had a headache, a kind of reflected pain down my left leg. 

Nothing too bad. Just another day at work, right?

We had a wedding to go to for the weekend so we went.

Have you been to a wedding? I’m sure you have. Its a whole lotta standing around, waiting for the bride to arrive, watching the ceremony, mingling with other guests, then a whole lotta sitting down waiting for courses, listening to speeches, etc.

I got through that without too much discomfort. I had to find spots to sit when I should have been standing, or places to stand when I should have been sitting, but I made it through.

Then on Sunday it was such a beautiful day. I walked around the garden taking photos of the flowers as they start to bloom and grow… and I sat on the cement pad which looks over the paddocks and hugged poodles for a while…

It was so beautiful.

Till I went to stand up.

I was in a world of pain. I could barely walk. I could barely move. I could barely stand up.

Since then I’ve seen the doc again and started seeing a physio. The instructions are: gentle walking, gentle exercises, horizontal or standing, avoid sitting.

Seems the sitting down low aggravated the already compromised area. Since I was ignoring my back it was going to give me something to listen to. A subtle warning to take it easy.

Paralysis.

Ok. Not paralysis, but paralysing pain. Same result.

Zefi is incapacitated.

sigh.

Its like a prison sentence!

On the positive side (he who always looks for the bright side soon gets sore eyes), I’ve finished Game of Thrones and am halfway through the Hunger Games Trilogy.

So, since I have no new creations to share I’ll share some photos of my pitiful garden. I so want a gorgeous cottage garden but I don’t think I’m meant to… for one thing with the rain we’ve had lately I think I need to grow water lilies (or rice), for another I missed out on the gardening gene. Totally.

Warning: these images can be very distressing to those who have an affinity with plants, an ability to garden or knowledge of landscaping.

My beautiful ornamental currant which broke in our gale force winds. This is my second attempt to grow one of these. The only one of 16 cuttings I planted that actually grew.
An almost blooming tiny mexican orange blossum, struggling in the weeds.

The margerite is blooming and seems to be doing well, though its probably in the wrong spot.
Ok. It did seem like a good idea at the time. I had a small bed with a tiny pom pom bush in it (viburnum) so I tossed in some columbines (granny bonnets, aquilegia). Now I think the pom pom bush is gasping for breath…. on the plus side, the columbines are doing well! 🙂

The potato vine is growing well despite the fact that the wind has caused major bedraggling and it has nothing to climb on cause I haven’t finished painting the porch and can’t put a trellis up for it!

The sage bushes are doing well. One better than the other…
The snap dragons are growing well, only lost 2 of those. Victory!
And a surprise! White columbines. Only three years after I put the seeds in the ground! Is that a record? I grew the purple columbines from seeds I collected myself, the white came from a packet in a hardware store. Compare the purple growth to the white…. interesting, n’est pas?
The lone surviving gaura. Its growing. That’s something! (the old chairs are there to protect it from stampeding poodle feet which I believe is the reason the other gaura departed this earth.)
My pathetic clematis… I thought it was dead but it turns out it was just pretending. Still, at this rate it’ll be 15 years before I have a trellis covered in flowers.

At least the rosemary (and mint) seem to like me. Can you base a garden on rosemary and mint?

z

rustic crate window boxes

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I thought I’d share something I did a few weeks ago now. I had meant to share it soon as I finished it but the weather got nasty, then I never seemed to remember to take photos while the sun was out, you know how it goes.
This morning while taking photos of the fallen tree I noticed the window boxes and remembered to photograph them.
When I saw these crates at the tip shop over summer I knew they’d be perfect for the driveway side of our house which is BORING. I wanted something to brighten it up and make the house look more welcoming. These boxes are outside the mudroom and toilet windows.
(Excuse the ugly pipe, it will be painted to match the house. Its where the sink went into the mud room.)
I just love these crates! I have temporarily put stuff in them, some plants really need to go into the ground, but for now they brighten up the place. I love seeing them as I approach the house.
Mainly I’m going to keep succulents in them. This spot gets late afternoon sun in summer and I don’t want plants to shrivel up and die. Though I think a couple of them are already showing frost damage.
And just cause I happened to take them, here’s a couple of panoramic photos of our place from up the top paddock. I had to stitch these together from a lot of separate photos and I have to include them very small but you get an idea of the land around our house. (You can see the fallen tree to the right.)
The casita is the one with the red roof, the house with the blue. The wonky little shed in the foreground is the woodshed. Not so pretty from this side. 🙂
z

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collecting junk on the porch

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On the weekend I finally got a bit of work done on the porch.

I had planned to have the entire porch (and house) painted by now, but oh well… them’s the breaks. I only got so far (to the high bits) before winter set in. Now its too cold and too damp to paint outdoors.

Oh gee…. guess I have to stop, huh?

So this weekend I moved everything back to where it was meant to be, instead of pulled out into the middle of the porch so I could paint.

Now that the sun isn’t an issue (lack of it might be soon enough) I could move some of the potted plants to the front of the house. They spent the summer cowering under the shadow of the casita. Seriously… the only thing that survived the heat on our front porch is a cactus.

I collected the rusty, galvanised and just plain old bits and pieces and put them near the front porch where the ground is uneven and ugly. Now its just a collection of junk covering an ugly spot.

I am not above some fake greenery till the real stuff grows!

I also to around to putting the louvre doors I bought eons ago (and painted to match the house) on the porch to hide the hot water cylinder.

I hinged them together, put a hook on each side to hook them to the wall to keep them in place, and to keep the wind from blowing them into the dam. Now I have a huge big louvre door ‘cupboard’ on the porch instead of a smaller round hot water cylinder…

Maybe I should have just painted the water cylinder.

Still, I’m nothing if not stubborn. I planned to put it there so I will darn well put it there and LIKE it.

I have tried to make it interesting by adding some more of my old tool crates (collections of old hand tools on shallow old crates). And hung a few interesting things on the louvres as well… More on that in another post.

Meanwhile we now have 2 separate sitting areas on the porch. One is for eating – hence the higher table… sporting another rusty item with fake greenery (heheh).

The other is the bright/navy blue adirondack chairs with their small table. These are for sitting and relaxing. If its warm enough. And not windy. And not rainy and windy in which case the rain gets blown right onto the porch.

The birds meanwhile are still here. They haven’t gone south for the winter. Or is it north when you live in Australia? I doubt they’d fly to the South Pole for winter.

Their presence has given rise to a new name for the porch – the poop deck.

z

what do the internet and potted herbs have in common?

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 I’ve been having some time off blogging.
Some of it was voluntary. I actually made a decision to not blog for a few days last week. Then a couple of other days I didn’t blog cause I was too busy doing other things… like… living.
Then I had some internet connection issues which caused me to mutter under my breath a lot and storm out of the office in disgust repeatedly.
The internet issues are continuing currently but I’m on the netbook, connected to the modem directly via a red umbilical cord. I can’t move from this chair if I want to be online.
At least I’m online, right? It would be better if I could remember my email password so I could log on to my webmail.
That’s the thing when you get too comfortable with your own computer. You set up your passwords in the computer memory (probably a really bad thing if you let others on your computer!) and you log in to sites on a permanent basis. ie no need to actually remember passwords.
Now I have to search for the safe place I wrote my password.
But I may have the situation under control before I need to panic.
See, I’ve been having internet connectivity problems for a while now. A couple of months for sure. Some days it worked fine. Other days I couldn’t log on at all. When it was bad I couldn’t log on to the Activ8me website to get the phone number to call… When it was working fine I would think ‘eh, its ok now, why call?’
Yesterday afternoon I finally snapped and called. I spoke to a nice man in India who said that the only way to get to the bottom of the problem was to disconnect the router and hardwire the computer into the modem direct.
Great. That means only one computer in the house has internet access for the period.
(Guess who’s?)
So I crawl around on my knees, unplugging bits and pieces and plugging other bits in. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that step 1 didn’t work. I had to spend a second day, talking to another nice man in India, in order to set up the netbook to actually connect using the red umbilical cord.
Now that’s working. I’ve been putting it through its paces and so far no dropouts.
Step 1 seems to show that the satellite dish is working fine.
Tomorrow I’ll call again and see what the next step is. It could be the router. It could be the little silver box thingy on the modem cable.  Whatever it is,  I have finally gotten someone to confirm my suspicions:
That the satellite dish is interfering with the TV antenna and our reception. 
Sigh.
Why is it that when I say something is a problem I get pooh-poohed, but when someone else says it it makes sense?
Anyway, on another subject entirely, I made these little hanging baskets for outside the casita a few weeks ago and never got around to sharing them.
I used some old colanders I’d been collecting for a while with this project in mind, and some chains bought from the hardware store. I then lined the colanders with hanging basket fibre, added potting mix and put in basil and coriander.
I made one double hanging basket and 2 single ones which I hung on either side of the casita door.
You may have noticed my collection of pot plants below the double hanging basket. I actually I had to move all my pots there to get them out of the worst of the sun before they died.
Notice the barbed wire clover Wayne made me? He called it a flower, but its a four leaf clover. That’s ok by me. I can use the luck!
Anyway, this is how my plants looked 2 weeks ago. Since then the coriander has died and the basil is looking sickly.
I never have luck growing herbs. I don’t know what I do wrong but they just don’t seem to like me much. I give them pretty pots to live in and they repay me by dying.
hmph.
z