Christmas is coming and in most years it seems to sneak up on me from behind and wollop me over the head before I have a chance to duck. This year I am determined not to let that happen, if at all possible. So I have started making pressies for everyone at work. This is not as easy as it should be. If I chose my favourite work people and gave them really good pressies the others would be, well maybe not jealous, lets just say they would make life a bit more difficult than it already is. So I want to give every one more or less something similar, all for a few dollars and a bit of time cross stitching, painting, stamping and assembling.

I will also have to do nice things for the relatives. Some handmade cards, a few pressies. Of course the daughter wants something with Dr. Who. At least that makes choosing something easier. I refuse to give the grandsons any more toys or clothing. Wading through their room is hard enough as it is without adding to it. Books for them. Not rocket science that one.

The old person only wants clothing. Sack cloth should do there.

My sister and her son will need something nice. Maybe I could get away with Dr. Who for her as well and a book for her boy. If I get her something I feel obligated to get my other sister something, and that is a large pond to swim in as well.

There are a few other relatives, eg. my father and his wife and my aunt. I will be a very busy person. And I am going to photograph all projects and post them on here. After Christmas.

The garden is pottering along. Still. I saw an interesting concept on Gardening Australia yesterday that I liked (okay I watched it again today, I was cross stitching, okay?) to do with charcoal, fish emulsion and soil/sand. So I am thinking I might experiment myself with some corn. I used to have much success when I lived in Whyalla with just soil, kooch grass and horse manure, so if it grew in that (did I mention kooch grass?), it should grow even better with this stuff. Gotta find some charcoal.

I love compost. I love making it, I love turning it, and I love using it in my garden. However, as the old person has never made it etc., before, he doesn't believe in it. He will end up in it the rate he is going. Anyhow, one useful thing in compost, at some stage in the proceedings is to use waste paper. Best thing to do, is lay the paper down, water it, pile the organic matter to be composted onto it, add some manure (in our case horse but any kind is good) and mix it in. Then cover it over with some plastic (in our case, old horse feed bags) and leave it cook for, oh, about a month to six weeks. I turn it every two weeks.

Waste paper can be ripped up old phone books, newspaper, misprints from your fax/printer etc., but even though colour on newspaper is okay, I don't use glossy paper unless I know for sure they are made from recycled paper. So unfortuneately junk mail is, to the most extent, not used. However, on the topic of waste paper, it can also be used for papier mache so don't be in too much of a hurry to turf it all into the compost and you can use glossy mags/junk mail. This is a recycling area quite large if you want it to be. You need more time than money. Haha.

For glue, although there are a ton of flour recipes on the internet, I prefer PVA glue mixed half and half with warm water. PVA glue is more expensive, but if you are using your papier mache for art it is a much better choice. You can colour the PVA glue with acrylic paint, the stuff you can wash out with water.

When you soak the paper, don't throw the water on your vegetable garden, but on your flowers or lawn. The vegetable gardens can get water elsewhere, but your lawn doesn't get much water at all.

You can make a real pulp for this by using your stick blender (use a separate one to your kitchen stick blender). You can add almost anything to this, including glitter. Shape it around your base or armature.

Anyhow that is your bloomin' lot for today. chuckle.

I forgot ...

On the fifteenth of this month was blog action day, when bloggers were supposed to blog about environmental issues.

Sorry.

So to contribute, I will say this, if you need manure for your gardens, bring a trailer and come help yourself.

The Martians are Coming ...

Oh, er. Last weekend sometime, the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard finally called an election.

So I am a member of my local union, the Public Service Association, as one of my bosses got me in a pickle a few years ago. So my e-mails have been bombarded by: make sure you and your family are registered to vote, now we can punish Howard, make sure you and your family are registered to vote and by the way are you registered to vote.

One the one hand the Liberals are offering us tax cuts and more money in the wallet is always good. On the other hand the Labour Party would give some power back to the Unions to give workers a bit better deal. But then, when I think about it, the Shooter's Party would give us our guns back and that would fix all of them.

Alternatively, the Marijuana party would allow us all to smoke away our problems (cool man) and that would be even better. I ride, I vote. Well that would fix the EI problem, plus put all those TB millionaires back where they belong, at the bottom of the manure pile. Bet none of them ever mucked out a stable. Even one with gold handled buckets. Does Miss Finland know she is worth a million bucks?

The Greens? Hmm, lets see, in one of their booklets I once read they say that they are committed to reducing the population of the world to 1 billion people - but I never worked out what they were going to do with the other 5 billion. And they are not particularly impressed with companion animals and would prefer we didn't keep them. So where does that leave all the cats and dogs and horses and other critters? Feral? That's a brilliant idea.

One Nation? lol. Democrats? ROFLMAO. Nationals? Well, they have been in their own way quiet about all the EI, and by not taking an interest I am not interested in them. I am joe average and if I haven't heard of what they are doing, how many other joe averages have not.

So that just leaves the Indies.

Have fun choosing and make sure you are properly informed before you vote, so you don't get a nasty shock in the morning.

Our native garden ...

So we have this "native garden" out the "front" of the house. It is more like a bed of weeds with some natives struggling through it. Anyhow, the old person decided it needed weeding. Like I need a heart attack. So we pull and pull and pull. He hacks and cuts and rakes. He uses a plastic rake because it is "flexible". He totally refuses to use the metal rake simply because I bought it. The metal rake would remove more of the weeds. No flexibility needed.

Well two of the native bushes are grevilleas. One has pretty pinky red flowers and the other creamy white flowers. As soon as we pulled the buffel grass from the bushes two birds flew down and sang some songs, pecked at the flowers and took off. One bird flew down, sang a song and began gorging himself on the nectar. He just could not get enough, hopping rapidly from flower to flower. Another bird joined him without singing first, so I assume he was one of the first two. He began gorging himself on the flowers as well.

I call these birds honeyeaters. They are the size and colour of the local mynas. But their beaks are slightly different and their tails seem to fan a little, almost like a starling. They also have spotting under their tails. They also are not afraid of us doing the weeding while they are gorging themselves.

I would have spent another hour at it, but the old person became grumpy and I had already given up of my art time to do the gardening the moment he demanded me to.

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Classes begin again tonight. I have this dread I will forget, but I have set the alarm on my mobile phone. It is an ongoing nightmare I have when I sleep that I will forget something really important. I have a bit of a memory problem, mostly I put it down to insomnia, but if it gets any worse I will have to discuss it with a doctor.

We have only seven weeks this term and I hope that I can get through it without too much difficulty. Then we have only one semester next year to finish the Certificate 4. I have to finish some work from Certificate 2 by the end of this term as well. I was hoping to do it during the holidays but with all the children here during the holiday, I got very little done. It has been very frustrating to some extent, but the boys were very well behaved and I can't complain.

My niece has done a pretty good job with them. They will make nice young men in the future.

Well I am still arting on, so I will write again soon...

A parcel in the mail ...

About a week or so ago I found out it was compulsory to register the fact that you had a horse if you were in the designated "Red Zone". So I went onto the website and registered the fact we did, yes have 1 horse, no donkeys. So they wanted to know if we wanted a thermometer. I indicated we did, since, well we don't have one.

So in a registered mail parcel today was my digital thermometer. I am impressed. I thought they would send out an old style mercury one. This is a nice quality one. In a plastic container and in a box. The Japanese English is a little hard to decipher, but I think I managed it all.

I have to shove it in her rectum morning and night for ten days and record her temperature.
She will be so impressed. Last time I tried to look under her tail, her back leg came up threatening and she put those ears down flat against her neck. Still, we are working on brushing up our ground manners and a vet would have to do this. Lets face it, Her Ladyship would go home with the vet if he would take her. He can walk up to her from behind and jab a needle into her neck. If I tried that I would be in low geostationery orbit a few minutes later. I will do it while she is distracted by her dinner. If you see a funny object in lower space, ask NASA to pick me up, please.

Also in the package were instructions about what you can and cannot do within each of the zones. We are in the "Red Zone" which means horses have or have had the EI. Some have even died from it. I hope that should Her Ladyship get it she would survive it, she is in very good health just now. Well she should be, we were all set to send her off to stud when this thing broke out. Now she can't go anywhere. I have not noticed her cycling for a long time now, and so I doubt if Artificial Insemination would be of much use. I'd rather not use that anyhow, and we are not all that desperate for a foal.

I would have liked to have gotten her a companion, because she is alone here. We try to keep her company a little while each day, but lets face it, we are not of the same species and we are not as superior as she is. Even Eternal Strangers was only tolerated in the same paddock because he was another horse. But eeuuww he smelled, according to her.

So once this is over, we will get a nice quiet gelding and next year she can go and visit a nice Arabian stallion.

Talking about fussy, she has decided the old person puts chillies in her breakfast. She will eat it, but she treats it like "foreign food". At least the UFO has gone. Horses - go figure.

The garden ...

The old person thought it would be useful to put stakes in next to the tiny tomato bushes. The bushes are around 20cm high and the stakes are around 1.5m above the ground. They are around 3cm square and look quite huge next to them. I got him to plant out the spinach and I planted out quite a few onions. The rows are about 3m long so contain about 20+ onions each, and there are four rows. This supply wont be an entire year's worth of food, but it will be a good start.

So I will keep plodding along with it, and keep researching to grow more stuff.

We were given some tyres today. Some old ones. I am going to experiment with growing some potatoes in them. You stack 3 or 4 on top of each other to form a tube, fill it with soil and organic matter (which we have in abundance), plant the eye potatoes and bob's yer uncle. We are watering with watering cans at the moment, as we can use our household water for that. We will mulch once the plants are a bit bigger.

Last year we had some trees cut down and parts of the trees were taken away by the loppers but branches etc were just chipped and left in a large pile. So that is perfect mulch. We used a little on a garden today, and parts of it are rotting nicely.

We don't seem to have any natural occuring worms, so I will buy some soon. We have a very good compost started off, we recycle in the kitchen, the weeds and other bits and pieces - organic.

Much of this has been difficult for the old person as he has never used any of these methods before and has little understanding of how they work. Even though he watches "Gardening Australia" on the ABC every Saturday and many Sundays.

I am going over to Alien Thoughts when I finish this to discuss the use of animals in organic systems.

My craft work is going very slowly - but hey - it's going. The project I am presently working on is quite large. I will post a photograph of it, but not until I have given it to my baby sister for her 50th birthday in a couple of weeks.

My other project is a sepia cross stitch picture of David Tennant as Dr. Who. That is for the daughter for Christmas.

Talk to the birds ...

We have a magpie around our place we call "Cody's friend". He was friends with my late horse, Cody. He was the only bird that Cody would not chase and he was not afraid of Cody, either. They would smell each other and go about their business. It was always amusing to watch. When we moved Cody out to the back of our place, the magpie would fly down and seemed to talk to him, and then fly back. Now that Cody is no longer there, he has only flown down there about twice that I am aware of.

Lately he has been hunting for worms quite closely to the house. He is not eating the worms, just gathering them in his beak and then flying off. We think he might be feeding a chick. Mind you I have no idea that it really is a "he" it could be a female.

I can get quite close to this magpie myself, and I talk to it. I talk to it to get it used to my presence and my voice so that he knows I am not a threat to him. He looks at me and while he will hop a few steps away, he doesn't fly off and seems to be looking at me. I am not trying to make a "pet" of him, just to let him know that if I am around, he doesn't have to fly away.

With spring in the air (although mostly it seems like high summer), there are many birds coming by. We leave water out for them and change it every day so that the mosquito larvae do not live in the water. Her ladyship, the ex-racehorse, has a bath for her water, so we have placed a large rock in it. The birds come and go from the bath, without fear of drowning. I do wish the cockatoos would not crap in it. That really is pushing it. The feathers are bad enough. We also change that water every day. So we only put in as much as her ladyship will drink and a little more, so that it is not wasted.

The garden is getting along. I have planted lettuce, tomato and capsicum. Oh, yes and a couple of burpless cucumber seedling. Tomorrow I will be planting some onions and spinach. I planted some herbs in another garden beside the garage. In front of the garage I have built a little garden and put some lavender and dianthus in it.

To build the garden, I had some old logs lying around, so I moved them with the aid of my faithful trolley into the place where I wanted the garden to be. Then I laid newspaper down over the grass and wetted it all down with the hose. On top of that I put leaf litter. We have evergreen trees around here, so they constantly shed leaves all year around. On top of the leaf litter I put about six inches (15 cm) horse manure. I have let it rot down through the winter. I mixed in some blood and bone and lime prior to planting the seedlings for the lavender and dianthus. I want to get some other flowering plants into it. It gets sunshine, but not all day.

Eventually the place will look nice. It is slow, because gardening is also not my forte. I just potter now and then, although I am trying to make a bit more effort. With the birds around it is nice to be outside early in the morning.

It's a new me ...

My other blog is going, and I am going to post here from now on. The site was okay, but I could never remember the password and kept loosing it. It is my problem, not that of the hosting people.

I have been sick, got better, got depressed, got over that and starting to do my art again.

I hope that I will be able to upload pictures of what I am doing on this blog among other things.
I had thought to start up a craft blog, but I am not that focussed as far as my blogging goes. I want to keep up Alien horses and Alien Thoughts so specialisation just will not be my forte.

I am going to change some of the way of doing those things as well. This will just be my thinking about things aloud blog.