UFO...

This is what the aliens left us in next door at the Girl Guides camping ground. No, it is not a green TARDIS. (Alas). It's a Port-a-Dunny. And you can see it directly from the kitchen window. What a thing to wake up to of a morning and go to rinse your cup to make your morning cuppa. I think there is going to be a gathering of the clans in the next 24 hours or next weekend. Bell will be so happy, she just loves the little girls and will be hoping a few will have brushes, combs and ribbons for her mane and tail. I guess if they do you will know that they really are prepared.

The sister came again today with Sunnyboy. Her computer has died. It looks like it died a horrible death too, with bits missing. We tried to see if it would regenerate Dr Who like, but alas it does not have a Eye of Harmony. I guess for the price she paid for it, it would have been asking too much. She is going to try and find her reboot disk, and if not or, if that doesn't work I shall have to give it to one of my teachers. They love that sort of thing. The challenge, the gauntlet, the despair ....

Ooo Oooo I nearly forgot. EzyDVD will order in Forbidden Planet for me, if I go in and pay for it in person. Coooool.

So back to the drawing board ...

The Forces of Darkness ...

are gathering. Yes we are.

Why is everyone so interested in a wannabe like Danni Minogue? She always seems to me to be riding on Kylie's fame, and can't quite make it herself. But I guess she is more accessible to the journos than Sis, so she makes good copy. I guess we should be grateful she isn't as batshit crazy as Britteny Spears ...

I am breaking one of my own rules here, if you don't pay them any attention they will go away.
Eventually, I suppose.

Everywhere you go, someone is commenting about some looney, wannabe. Maybe I am just old and cynical, but I don't remember them being so talked about when I was in my teens and early twenties. The big raves then were all the scandals the famous groups were getting into, like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. One of the girls wouldn't invite me to her birthday party because I wasn't a hard core Rolling Stones fan. In the end no one turned up anyhow, and it was supposed to be the birthday bash of the year. She came to school about two days late and was very contrite. Funny what sticks in your mind after all these years.

Now, of course, we are into Jazz and more classical music. My daughter is talking about taking the boys to Paint Ball, and I am trying to talk her into getting them taught music. I guess she wants them rough and tumble so that they grow up as men and not effeminate. Being a single Mum is not easy when you have boys. I don't think the boys care either way other than they will be doing something better than being at home.

This is our Oleander bush growing outside the front of the house and near the front paddock. I like Oleander, because it is so pretty, but it is poisonous to animals if they eat it. But none of our
animals are ever that hungry. We have privet and Lantana as well which will make animals sick
as well. None of them show the slightest interest in eating any of it.

Insanity rules ...

So the further adventures of getting to work Day 2:
I was running late this morning. Only half an hour, but oh, what a difference it made. No trains. Get the bus. The lift does not work, so I clamber down the stairs, ask the Cityrail person who points to another person. Luckily the bus pulls in just at that moment. All aboard. It is a little cramped, but sitting down. Bus turns around and drives off. Talk about the long way round. It took 45 minutes to get to East Hills station. Then I have to wait for the next train.
Waiting and then it leaves. Station by station. I was glad I wasn't going to the city.

Finally reach Padstow station. Walk down to Georges' to buy some salad for lunch. It is a mile from the station to work. Luckily it is downhill. Lucky too that it was not stinking hot. Got in at nine fifteen. Aaarrrgh! Lucky it was a Millenium train going home.

The Boss wants us to think up a name to have a Newsletter and put some pictures on it. Since I am doing computer studies, I get to look at clip art. Joy, oh, joy. I know full well that someone else will be doing the exact same thing and it will be their work that is selected. There is just no way known they will go with what I have selected - it just does not happen. But dilly me is still obliged to sit there goggling (and googling) at clip art. Not as there is all that much else to do, so I can't complain. I guess that is just the way it is in my life.

I am starting to look forward to the end of the year, let me tell you. No more employment, no more old person (I don't want to move to Queensland, what's in Queensland?), her ladyship will be off getting a foal, just peace and quiet. The daughter says she and the grandsons will look for a little cheapie farm, so later her ladyship can live with them. If I can find a nice little caravan on the coast somewhere, I shall be so happy. Well that is the theory anyhow, and what is going to keep me motivated for a few weeks at least anyhow. Till real life kicks in again.

I have asked the Sister and her Sunnyboy to visit on Saturday. We have some hot dogs for lunch and rice crackers with gerkin dip. Usually we don't have anything interesting. I will load her up with some tomatoes. Red, red, yummy sweet organically grown (thanks to Cody pooh) tomatoes. Even the wasps like them. lol.

Look at that lot. There were 17 of them there before we knocked them down. Right under the kitchen window. Real puce coloured they were. If ever you want to see what puce looks like, enlarge the photo and have a gander.

Insanity rules ....

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.

*****************
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...

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.