Category Archives: life on the farm

we have geese!

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Yesterday we welcomed 3 new members to our Wind Dancer family.

Three gorgeous geese.

I’m in love with them.

And I never wanted geese.

This is the story: Wayne has always loved geese. I finally gave in and started to consider it. Then I spent about a month online looking for some geese for him.

In the beginning all I found were exotic geese. I didn’t want them. I wanted the plain ones like I’ve seen for years. White. Big. Gorgeous.

I found a guy who had sold all his goslings but had some 1-1.5 year olds he was happy to sell. One female and 5 males. I claimed the female and one male.

When we got there yesterday he offered us another male for free because he just had too many of them. We accepted.

You know us. We have no spine when it comes to animals…

So now we have 3 gorgeous geese who refuse to talk to us.

I’d have taken photos of them but they’re sulking and I don’t want to make them hate me more than they already do by forcing my company on them.

I don’t blame them mind you. We lobbed up at their place yesterday where they’d been minding their own business, weren’t even properly introduced  before we grabbed them, manhandled them into cages in the back of a noisy truck, on the hottest day of the year, driven all over the countryside, then plonked them in a small enclosure (the one we call Alcatraz which had been used for the roosters before) and then had the nerve to try and make friends with them.

They’re not happy.

They haven’t come out of the little shed since we got them.

They just huddle together and glare at us…

Sigh.

I want to make friends!

I already named one of the boys. His name is Henry. He looked like a Henry. He has one slightly squinty eye so you can tell which one he is.

I never realised, but the boys have orange rims around their eyes and their eyes are blue.

I absolutely love our geese. I hope they learn to love us back and love living here.

z

life, death, dam!

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Yesterday morning we had a rude awakening.

Its not like we didn’t KNOW Kevin was coming over with his diggy-diggy to do our driveway and fix the dam… its that I was so wiped out I’d been in bed since 7.30pm the night before (I should  say afternoon before) and Wayne was living in denial or something. He’d woken up, got a coffee and come back to bed with a book.

When the truck arrived the dogs went bezerk. I was up, running around trying to put some clothes on, get to the door, keep the dogs in all at once.

Of course the dogs hadn’t been out to pee cause that’s my job in the morning… so they needed to go out and pee and not eat Kevin before he did our job for us.

So here I am, running around pulling on track pants with one hand, boots with another, breasts bouncing cause who has time to pull on a bra at a time like this, with dogs frothing at the mouth around me, barking at the machine wielding murderer who’d obviously come to massacre us as we slept.

I rounded the dogs up, heading them out into the paddock where I thought I’d release them so Kevin would be safe for a while, get to the gate and what do I see???

Three tiny ducklings in a little pile right outside the gate.

SH#$*#^#T!

Can’t let the dogs out. Those tiny things are like squeaky toys to them!

I go out the gate, grab the ducklings, yelling “WAYNE!!!! WE HAVE DUCKLINGS!!! I NEED YOU! HURRY UP!”

I mean, this is the end of the world.

I have a handful of tiny ducklings.

Again…. its not like we didn’t KNOW they were coming. We just thought we had another week or so.

And yet, this last week I came home one day and saw crows hanging around. One had something in its mouth. I knew we had ducklings…

Wayne and I had discussed this whole plan in detail.

We were going to get out into the area around the dam before Kevin came over. We were going to remove the electric fence which used to protect the willows I’d put in there (which we moved a few weeks ago and which seem to be doing fine in their new spots thankfully), and search the reeds for duck nests.

I’d already found one with about 10 or more eggs in it. We knew there were more cause we hardly ever saw about 3 of our female ducks… we knew they were sitting on eggs.

The plan had been that Wayne would fix up the old dog pen, line the bottom with bird wire to make it duckling proof, then we’d go out, grab the eggs and mothers and move them into the pen to safety.

Because:

1. Every year we have tons of ducklings and none survive unless we can catch them and lock them up. The crows eat them all. Its heartbreaking.

2. Kevin was going to work around the dam and might squash the nests, eggs, ducks….

Right.

Good plan.

So here we are, yesterday morning, running around like jumping beans on speed. Cause we had a plan!

A mother duck hissing at me with her ducklings under her wing.

First nest was the one I’d found first time around. It had no eggs left, just a few ducklings. About 6 of them I think. I put them in a basket and started fixing up the pen. The mother duck was going crazy. We left the gate open and she eventually came in and sat near the basket. Good. When the pen was finished, we put the basket inside and she followed.

All’s well.

Well. Not all.

One duckling was dead at the bottom of the basket. I don’t know if I killed it when I was catching them and it wriggled and I dropped it… It wasn’t high. But it was dead. sigh.

Later on, I found another one dead. Both the dead ones were fawn coloured…. probably girls.

Then I went out and found another nest. Right next to the first. It had an egg with a hole in it but nothing was happening… dead duckling. Sigh again. 6 unhatched eggs and 8 ducklings. We got all of those, picked up the entire nest, and put it all in the basket.

This mother didn’t seem to care that much. She didn’t come for the ducklings.

Mind you, they were much quieter (younger) than the others. They weren’t squeaking for mom.

Plus the excavator makes a lot of noise. And our neighbour was brushcutting on the other side of the paddock. Even if they were squeaking, she probably wouldn’t have heard them.

I covered them with a blanket to keep them warm.

Then I spotted 2 ducklings, most likely from the first batch, on the dam.

SH#$*#^#T again.

No way I could catch them on the dam. They were on their own.

I hated that.

I saw a magpie flying over…

Anyway, after about 2-3 hours of no success enticing the mother to come after the ducklings, I made an executive decision. These nests were really close to eachother, maybe ducks raise ducklings in a kind of ‘village’ approach.

I put the nest, eggs and ducklings in with the mother duck and her remaining 4.

She sat on the nest and covered all the ducklings.

Success!

I felt so much better.

This morning there were 2 casualties. Wayne found one outside when feeding them, I found another in the nest when mom and babies were out paddling in the playpool. Darn. Down to 10 now.

Still… its better odds than they’d get out in nature.

Mind you. We found another nest. It had eggs and ducklings. Some totally newly hatched. We watched some of them hatch right in front of our eyes. It was amazing. I’d only ever seen something hatch out of an egg on TV before.

I almost feel like these are MY babies…

I so want to save them as well, but we just can’t catch those other two mothers. I think they’re older and wiser. I can’t expect that one mother to hatch and raise all those babies, can I?

Someone said a chicken can raise up to 20 young… dare we try? Or do we let nature take its course and see what happens? Its almost certain death for them if we don’t try.

We don’t need a million ducks on our dam, but it would be nice to raise some more… I figure we’ll probably end up with 6-7 of the current 10 making it to maturity. I hope. Should I grab the rest and up the odds? Or not interfere?

When we moved here we had 12 ducks. We’re down to 7-8 now. Maybe less cause of the mothers on nests I have no idea how many we actually have. If we only raise the ones we’ve captured now and all 10 survive, we’ll have about 16-18 ducks. Surely thats enough for anyone, right?

What am I trying to do? Convince myself that I shouldn’t go out and catch the rest of them?

We have 2 geese coming next week. I’ve always been against geese cause they can be aggressive, but Wayne loves them. I decided a while ago to find him a couple for Christmas. I couldn’t find plain white goslings when I looked, but I found a pair who’s about 18 months old. Probably better. They can have their own young here. Then we’ll have to worry about catching goslings…

Meanwhile, one of the two ducklings on the dam yesterday disappeared. They wouldn’t get out of the water while Kevin was working so it may have been a fatality of the work. This morning the other was gone as well. Maybe it got out and joined the nest. Maybe not.

On another, related note… while looking for duck nests I found a wren nest. Darn. I picked it up and looked inside. Tiny unfeathered babies, alive but seemed asleep. I put the nest back further over cause I knew we’d be disturbing it when we went for the duck again.

I checked it later, they were still alive. Hopefully mom found them and went back to them. I dread looking again… I may be responsible for more deaths.

So, here are the ducks yesterday afternoon (minus the mothers) looking over the dam works.

And here is the dam this morning, finished. The lower side has been reinforced so it won’t leak (hopefully!!!) and we won’t have the swampy problem we’ve always had below it. The top side has been lowered to allow water to flow into it when it rains.

 In theory, any excess water in the dam will now flow out on the other side, into the paddock and away from the house. That fence is the house yard fence. The house is only a few meters from there. That’s how close to the house the dam is…

Meanwhile, Kevin has been working on the driveway.

This is yesterday morning when he’d first started. The plan is to make it so that water running off the hill doesn’t just stream down the driveway, under the house and into the casita. Seriously, whoever designed this place had no brain. The house is at the bottom of a hill and in a valley… all rain runs off under our house, our lawn and down under the casita. We hope that with Kevin’s help we can change things and direct the rain towards a drain, down the side of the driveway, into the drains on the side of the road. And away from the house.

Barney oversees the work being done.

I’ll have more photos and updates after the work is finished.
Its been a very expensive project but one that really needed to be done. I really hope it works.
z

about the birds…

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Like all big plans, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You know what I mean. You think about a problem, you take your time thinking through the possibilities and solutions, you pick the best (easiest, cheapest) and go for it.
Then you discover it was a huge failure.
Not only did the solution not work, its created a whole new problem. In other words, its a monumental failure of epic proportions.
So it is with the bird wire under the eaves bird nesting deterrent solution I came up with.
I had a problem: birds nest in our roof. They pull out insulation as they muck around up there. If it wasn’t for the poop all over the walls, the deck, everything ON the deck, and the fact that, apparently, nests in the roof are a fire hazard, I’d have been happy to leave them there.
I like birds. We have starlings, swallows, sparrows, wrens, the occasional robin and pardalotes.
I love the birds. I love watching them flitter around and chirp to each other. I love waking up in the mornings and the only sounds I hear are birds, ducks, chickens, frogs, the rooster, the horses… and/or rain.
Come to think of it, its pretty noisy around here…
So. Anyway. What I decided was, to stop the birds nesting in the roof and stop the poop on the walls and windows, to stop losing our insulation and limit fire hazards, that I had to block off the eaves so the birds can no longer get in to nest.
Right.
I decided that the easiest, cheapest way to do it was to use bird wire under the eaves, moulding it around and stapling it to the beams and walls so they can’t get in. I had a friend come around and give me a hand and we did about 7 metres of it…
…Only to find the birds could still get in. They just use an alternative entrance: the gutters!
All I’ve succeeded in doing is create a catchment area for dead chicks. Yep. I looked up there yesterday and there were 3 tiny corpses in various stages of decay.
Wonderful.
At this point I can blame MEN. It was men who organised new gutters on the house and men who didn’t even think of getting gutter guards put up at the same time as the gutters. It would have cost, what… another $400? Tops?
I can’t blame Wayne. He probably didn’t even know there was a product which fits over corregated iron and screws onto the metal so it doesn’t budge, forming an even solid seal for the gutters.
I should have organised the quote myself. 
The guys who quoted the job should have mentioned it. The friend who was here at the time, while the guys were measuring and quoting (and who’d actually used the stuff on his own house) didn’t mention it…
I should have organised the quote myself. If you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself.
But, onto happier subjects.
The other day I went to an auction. I hadn’t been to one for years. This is a regular auction place in Hobart, once a week, every week. I love it.
I’d like to say that it was pure strength of will that kept me away, but I’d be lying. It was ’cause I’d been working on Fridays.
Now that I’ve dropped back to 3 days at my regular job and spend the other two days working as a tutor and grooming from home, I gave in to temptation. I stopped by before work and eyed the goodies… 
I fell in love with this plate. Its old and crazed like crazy (heheh, sorry), discoloured and chipped. But I had to have it.
Of course if I wanted the plate I had to buy 5 boxes of crap.
I put in an absentee bid and won it. I donated about half the crap and kept a few things I know I can use or make things out of. And the plate is now decorating my kitchen.

What do you think of the awl collection? Cool huh? Wayne found a few of these, for working leather, at an antique store in town and I bought him a couple more. I love them stuck in the old flower frog. 
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

redecorating the casita

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When you come home and the poodles greet you with white nails and white noses it can only mean one of two things:

They baked you a cake.

or

They started redecorating the casita.

I’ll let you guess which one.

Yep. You got it.

The poodles decided they’d put a shelf nook in the hydrobath room for me to keep bottles on.

How thoughtful.

Romeo poses in front of the grooming room door, proudly showing of their handiwork. Pretty neat huh? Almost a perfect square.

Mind you, there are teeth and digging marks all over the place including my fancy dog lead hanger and chalkboard. Sigh.

By the time I took the photo I’d also swept up the piles of plasterboard bits.

So… Anyone want to hire two poodles to do demolition work? They come cheap! All you have to do is drop a small furry critter  (or feathered, they’re not too fussy) into the wall cavity you want removed. They’ll do the rest.

Of course, if someone hadn’t left the casita door open this wouldn’t have happened… I won’t mention any names but it starts with ‘w’ and ends with ‘ayne’.

After the great possum debacle of a few months ago, when we came home to find the contents of my workshop in the casita re-arranged, we decided to keep the door closed when we went to work.

Now, I was very mature about it. I didn’t yell or jump around like a two year old denied a lollypop. Nope. I just laughed and cleaned the mess up.

Then I told Wayne what had happened. The words “Its your fault” never crossed my lips.

They didn’t have to…

z

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

there must be a name for this…

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Surely. 
I mean there’s a name for everything these days: OCD, ADHD, Packratting… why not a name for an attraction to old, broken, rusty things.
Why is it that when I see places like this one that my pulse quickens and all I can think of is how I wish I was there, climbing over things, into things, digging around, getting dirty, finding the hidden treasures anyone in their right mind would see as junk?
The best presents I’ve ever gotten were from junk stores. 
An old tool caddy. Some rusty pliers. 
Really, I am a cheap date!
I have to practice serious self restraint to stop myself from visiting every garage sale, every op shop or tip shop. Street markets and country fairs are impossible to resist! Sometimes its only Wayne that stands between me and the uncontrollable desire to hunt through piles of rubbish to find some treasure. Physically. I mean he has to hold me tight and steer me away, while I crane my neck to look behind me at the missed opportunities…
I’m not quite as bad as that TV show, but if I don’t get some intervention soon I might be.
Its been a couple of weeks since I saw the floor in my office. Today I sorted out piles of fabric and stashed it neatly in the cupboard. I have an excuse.
Of course.
I’ve been working on some sewing projects. And I’m planning for a workshop. So I had to have fabric everywhere and boxes full of stuff to take to the workshop.
Today my left brain kicked in and said “Ok right brain, enough with the creativity already. This place is a pit. Time to clear the clutter.”
I didn’t actually get rid of much (heaven forbid!), I’m just re-homing stuff. You know, moving it around so Wayne can’t keep track of it….
Some will go to work for a project or three. Some will go to the workshop for other projects, some will just go sit in the casita till another day comes when I get around to doing something with it.
One of the good things about running workshops is that I’ll be able to give some of the stuff I’ll never ‘get around to’ to others to work on! Two birds with one stone. I still get to work on projects, but they get to go home with someone else.
Kinda like grandkids… You get the joy of spending time with them, but they go home to mom and dad at the end of the day.
Anyway, our week hasn’t been without its dramas.
1. My computer is preparing to die. Not right now, but its coming. Its been coming for a couple of years now. I’ve called in the PC doctor and his prognosis was to make the most of our last moments together cause time is limited.
2. On Friday my netbook failed me. Its not the first time I had trouble booting it up. The PC doc said it was fine, he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. But on Friday it took 30min to boot up.
Not good.
3. You already know the wood heater is on its last legs. The baffle plate has been replaced 3 times since we moved here and that doesn’t stop it from crashing down occasionally. Then a few months ago the air vent jammed and wont unjam. Sure, we could probably have it serviced… but the actual box is cracked at the door. Seems silly to spend money on it. I’ve managed to keep it working properly by fixing it in a very high tech way…  I plugged the hole with aluminium foil.
So we’ll be needing a new wood heater soon. Before next winter in fact.
Now, you’d be right to think that that was three. Bad things come in three’s right? 
Well… maybe cause neither computer has actually turned its toes up yet, they don’t count as 2 bad things. Maybe they count as one combined thing. Maybe. Especially since I’m planning to replace both with a laptop, portable AND faster than the dinosaur I have right now. 
The one that runs on coal.
Yeah. Turns out Murphy had another thing in store for us…. thus we come to #4 on the list of bad things that normally come in threes…
4. On Friday the oven stopped working. 
No warning. I just turned it on, put on the timer, came back to check my apple crumble and found it stone cold.
Yeah, we hate that free standing cooker. Its one of those builder type ones you find in rentals. Plain, small… ok but not great. And the hotplates (electric of course) don’t work all that well. They’re hard to control temperature-wise so you’re either boiling things too hard or too slow. The oven didn’t cook evenly either. I had to turn it on max to preheat, then turn it down or a 40min bake would take 1.5 hours.
Time for a new stove.
And a new wood heater.
And a new computer.
And a winning lottery ticket!
I’m going to go drown my sorrows in a nice hot shower.
z

romeo may not live much past four

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Yep.

I’m not impressed.

Romeo killed another of our ducks this morning.

See, Wayne has been taking the dogs out for a run in the paddocks every morning when he goes out to feed the chickens and ducks.

Normally the poodles have been really good with the feathered critters. They ignore them as they run around sniffing wildlife trails. They’ll run through a flock of them, scattering them and ignoring all the flapping and squalking…

But one duck, acting differently… well, turns out that was too much for Romeo (‘duck f@$ker’ as Wayne affectionately calls him).

One duck has been nesting in the fallen tree branches in the top paddock. We only noticed it when Romeo chased her out of there a few weeks ago but didn’t think much of it.

Till today that is.

When he not only chased her out but caught her.

Sigh.

And she was sitting on eggs.

Double sigh.

Wayne is up there now disposing of ‘cover’ to avert another such disaster.

We are now down to 8 ducks. Lately only 7 have been turning up for feedings, which means there’s another one nesting somewhere.

Did I mention we’re also down to one chicken and one rooster?

Not due to Romeo, he’s innocent of that much at least.

Since our chickens are free range we don’t always know whats going on number-wise. We had as many as 6 isa browns and 2 black hens at one time. One black hen was killed by *guess who* when she landed in the yard. One red hen was found dead, decapitated. Most likely by a quoll. They do that apparently. I found another dead in the hen house the other day… no injuries that I could see. The others have just disappeared. I know the rooster has been very rough on a couple of the hens, so I’m betting they ran away.

So now we need more chickens.

And I’m thinking I may buy a couple of geese for Wayne.

He loves geese. And geese can hold their own against dogs. That’ll teach Romeo some respect.

sigh.

Life on a farm ain’t all rainbows.

z

a day in the life

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Today is Romeo’s birthday.

I’m a bad mother.

If his brother Merlin’s owner hadn’t mentioned it to me, I would have missed it.

Again.

Yesterday I groomed the kids, the poodles anyway. Barney always manages to find ‘important work’ to do on the other side of the property when its time for a clip, bath and blowdry.

Wayne’s not impressed cause this time I left some slight bell bottom bracelets on their legs. I like them like that even if it is higher maintenance than clipping them off all over. But tomorrow the kids are having a visitor. A lady who wants to buy a standard poodle.

I’m like an ambassador for standard poodles in Tasmania. When someone is considering a standard poodle I invite them round to meet my two. If they can survive that, then they know a standard is for them. If they run screaming, well… they might consider a goldfish instead.

Things have been busy around here lately. On the positive side I’ve been on a roll regarding my art lately. Firstly I got a 2nd at the DVRA Art Competition. Then I got 1st Prize at the Salvaged Art Competition, and the project I worked on with some guys at work won 1st Prize in the amateur category. Plus I sold the painting of the quoll from the DVRA comp. I now have either half the price of a trip to Greece, most of the price of a new laptop, or a start towards a new bathroom or kitchen….

Other positives are: The lawn has been mowed. Some plants have been found amongst the weeds. The rain tanks are full. I caught up with the dish washing and the laundry.

On the negative side the dishes keep piling up, another load of washing appeared when I wasn’t looking, the rain tanks are overflowing, I can actually hear the grass growing thanks to the rain we’ve had, I’m sure there is less lawn and more weeds than ever this year, and I was unable to locate some of the plants I put in last year, even once I’d cleared up the weeds around the place they were last spotted.

On Sunday I finally started a project I had planned to do last summer. I hate having birds nest in our roof but I hate the thought of baby birds in nests dying of starvation cause I locked out their parents. So the idea was to put bird wire around the eaves at the end of summer, once the nests were empty.

Of course the end of summer snuck up on me quite suddenly with rain and wind and I put off the wire thing till the weather was better.

Then, this year, spring snuck up on me and suddenly there were birds building nests in the roof again.

Time to try out that new air stapler Wayne got me a few months ago. I already had some bird wire (only 10 metres of it, but that was a blessing in disguise), I had staples, I had the air stapler… I had a friend to help. I had ladders. I was set.

We managed to do the short side of the house plus a bit around the corner. My friend cut the wire, then held it up for me on her ladder. I balanced precariously on my ladder, wielding the staple gun and missing two out of every three shots.

Serioulsy, those staples are SO narrow.

By the time we’d put up 10 metres we were done.

…I mean, we were done. The job wasn’t. I had to get up on the ladder again on Monday and cut and staple bits where the vertical boards on the house left gaps. I had to add a bit of extra wire where I’d totally missed a gap, allowing our feathered friends to still get in an out and continue construction of their mansions in our roof. I also hung up some old cds on string from the wire to further discourage building without permits.

The cds looks kinda ‘redneck’ but I prefer to think of them as a cheap, practical and environmentally friendly way of discouraging birds from squatting in our roof. The downside is they make a lot of noise thumping on the house in the wind. I’ll get used to it. Better than finding our insulation in the driveway, pulled out by birds extending to put in a pool room.

The birds aren’t the only things I’ve evicted this week. Remember Ponsonby, the black possum who moved into the casita? I did love seeing his little pink nose and his tail hanging down as he watched me do stuff in there.

What I didn’t enjoy was the full scale destruction the dogs caused trying to get him. Or the possum poop. Everywhere.

So, we bought a possum trap and trapped him. Then we released him in the bush.

Actually, Wayne released him in the bush.

First he gave me this long lecture about how FAR away I had to release him cause possums come back. Kind of like ‘homing possums’. I was going to take him up the hills opposite our place. About 10-15 klms away.

But Wayne decided he’d do it. And he just drove up our road for about 3 klms and let him go.

If Ponsonby comes back I’ll find it incredibly hard to not do the smugly superior thing…  

I told you so!

Man the weather’s been wierd lately. Strong winds. And rain. Lots of rain. I was woken up last night by rain pelting down and thunder so long and loud the house shook!

Our creek is flowing like Niagara Falls again, and the paddocks have more than one river running through them. Poor Wayne was out there this afternoon with his bucket and spade trying to direct the flow.

Even the ducks are looking water-logged.

z

the derwent valley regional arts competition

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“I live here too” – mixed media on canvas

I mentioned that I’d entered 2 paintings in the Derwent Valley Regional Arts competition. The theme was “Hidden Treasures of the Derwent Valley”.
One of the works I entered was a mixed media on canvas of an eastern quoll. I love those little guys and it just kills me to see them lying dead on the roads on my way to work in the mornings.
I used the local paper, pastel and charcoal, glue and coffee. Talk about working outside my comfort zone!
The other one I entered was acrylic on canvas – much more ‘normal’ even though I used the acrylic like watercolour on the background.
“I see you” – acrylic on canvas

Its a much freer painting than my usual work. I successfully resisted the urge to overwork it.
The cow didn’t do that well, but the possum won 2nd prize in Mixed Media. That’s something to be pleased about! Especially how I’d been feeling about my art lately.
Guess I’ll keep doing it.
z