Befriended birds in the backyard

The old big frangipani is outside my study (sunroom) window. This morning a kookaburra came and sat for a while ... and then soon after a blue-faced honeyeater came to the other side of the tree. The honeyeater kept hopping closer to the wary kookaburra, and then flitting away, and then closer ... and then deliberately hopped right up to the kookaburra and cheekily kissed him on the beak!

After that they were friends.

Happy birthday Yarrow

All of a sudden, it happens: you wake up, and there's an apple cake and candles and strawberries and family and presents and cards ...

And you're thirteen years old.

Just like that, it happens.

Happy birthday Yarrow love! Welcome to your teens...
x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Nose

Like this...

Pre- and post-puddle

It's been raining rather a lot. Here are some photos of our young brumby/arab x horse Rascal Darius ('THFKAR') before, and after, a very satisfying encounter with a puddle.

We might re-name him "Crusty" ...


:-D

PS it was *very* hard to take the photo because he's so curious and affectionate he tends to put his nose right on the camera when photos are being taken.

Various family graduations and completions

In Europe the academic year has drawn to a close, just about. Here are some updates on my European family:

• Tess and Yarrow's sister Anjes passed her diploma as a beautician; which is fantastic news! She worked very hard for this. Great achievement, Anjes!

• Tess and Yarrow's other sister Lisa has submitted her Master's thesis on social psychology and is celebrating by holidaying in the tropics with her partner Milan. Way to go Lisa!

• My niece (their cousin) Esmee has finished primary school and has been accepted into the VWO (= HSC stream in high school). As you can see Esmee and her parents (my brother Marc and Karin) are pretty happy! Lovely flowers, Es ...

• My nephew (their cousin) Nick has passed high school: you can see him signing his high school diploma in the photo on the left. He has been accepted into the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (= The Utrecht School of the Arts, which offers bachelors and masters degrees in fine art, design, music, theatre, media, games and interaction and arts management). Excellent achievement to get into this competitive university, Nick! Well done!

Congratulations to all of them! Hugs and champagne and kisses and cheers ...

Gawky teenager

Well as they say, from little things, big things grow :-)

Here's Nova in 2005 when she was 6 months old and having just lost a lot of condition on weaning two weeks before.

I must say that I relented and let her back to her Mama, Duchess, for another two months as she was not doing very well at all without her mama's milk. (I don't see how people can wean the foals at three months ... seems cruel to me but then I'm not in the horse racing industry thank goodness).

A closer look at Nova

Hard to know exactly when Nova's foal will be born, but as the foal has shifted now lower in her pelvis and her udder is starting to fill, we figure it will be 'fairly soon' in lunar terms (ie this month). So we've put her in a special separate paddock so she and her foal don't have to cope with the lunatics (see previous post).

You can see here the delicate peach of the perlino colouring and her gracious arab-influenced shape. She's so different than the gawky teenager she once was!

Batteries recharged

Thank goodness! They're not dead after all :-)

Beached whales

I think their batteries ran out.

Work on the farm update

We've been tackling the vine infestation and have now cleared enough space to do some replanting along the border of our place and our neighbour Quentin's place. The previous owner of this place had chopped down the the Battistuzzi orchard (desecration!!), so we decided to reinstate some fruit trees. As John makes lovely lovely marmalade, we've planted a fair bit of citrus. These are the trees we planted (in a row): Nagami cumquat, Tahitian lime, Calamondin, Blood orange, Meyer lemon, and Pummelo (Shaddock).

Not yet in the ground are the Bowen mango, Avocado and Brown turkey fig... we still need to knock more of the dratted Madeira vine back (much as I hate using it, I've resorted to using Roundup). In the photo you can see where the canopy of weeds is dying having been severed from their roots using the snatch strap method (see earlier post).

The finished row looks lovely.

Lunar eclipse

We lit a bonfire and stayed home to watch the full moon rising and the lunar eclipse on Saturday evening ...







Here's looking West over the sheds as John lays the bonfire ...














Tess took this lovely photo of the eclipse itself...

Help with the crossword

Sometimes when you're doing the crossword it helps to put your thinking cat on.

You can see how it would help.











... You can see why I love John very, very much ... :-)

When it gets cold at night ...

... an old dog likes to get snug.


Chicco (aka Chook) on her bed at night.

Looking at her like this you wouldn't think she's a huge burly scary Rhodesian Ridgeback witha very resonant woof!




... awwwwwwwww .....

G'nite Chookie ... sleep well, see you in the morning ...

Very happy horses

Saturn celebrating the winter paddock with a very undignified but no doubt very satisfying roll ...

Winter solstice

Yesterday was winter solstice, and at dusk we let the horses through to their lush, longed-for winter grazing. John had slashed the paddocks just before the equinox (see this post), and then we had fenced these off to allow the grass and seed heads to grow. John filmed me letting most of the horses through to the larger paddock. The smaller paddock on the side is reserved for Nova who will have her foal soon.

We celebrated winter solstice in the evening with a merry bonfire, and the good company of our lovely friends Willa & Andrew and kids; John & Marre; and our neighbours Grace & Harry and their daughter Ella. I made a cheese and pate platter, mulled wine, pumpkin soup and garlic bread; and Willa made devilled eggs and sushi. We sat round the fire and quietly revelled in the moonlit night and the warmth of the fire and the company and conversation of good people.

I loved the gentleness of the day in its entirety, which to me was an exciting and deeply satisfying celebration in its own right.

Wonky

Sometimes life goes a bit wonky. But then it straightens out again and things are ok... for a while, anyway. But whatever happens, life prevails, and things continue to grow...


(This tree grows down by the creek on what used to be Grange land but now is owned by a neighbour, who lives elsewhere).

Photos of the Grange

Here are various photos & aspects of our lovely old house, The Grange. We don't know exactly how old it is but it pre-dates the 1890s for sure. There are various features that indicate potentially early C19th architectural building styles, such as single skin walls with cross bracing and studs exposed, the separate (straight! not bullnosed, which is a later style) verandah roof. Probably early Victorian in style, and of the Queenslander type.

About Queenslanders ... this is from Wikipedia: "Queenslander buildings are primarily of timber construction and can be low or high-set, one to two storeys. They are typically "tripartite" in sectional composition; underfloor (stumps), primary rooms (can be two levels), and roof. All have one or more veranda spaces, a sheltered edge of the building that is typically only part-enclosed and used as another living zone. This consideration for climate is the defining characteristic of the Queenslander type."

Long weekend

I only had a short long weekend really, as I was away in Sydney on field research (interviews for the hospitals project). But luckily there was enough weekend left to really enjoy a rare and precious visit from John's darling and much-loved mother, Tuffy, who is 85, and her loquacious learned engineer husband Tony.

On the Sunday evening my parents came for dinner too and we had a merry bbq dinner with much conversation and laughter.

Despite the daytime rain John and I got quite a lot of gardening done, managing to pull down most of the horribly invasive madeira vine / potato vine and rubber vine which was smothering an entire row of native rainforest trees on the village-side border of our farm. We used the tried and tested method of weaving the snatch strap through the massively heavy entanglements and pulling them out with the 4WD Forester. This will disperse tubers which fall on the ground but there was no other alternative: at least we can reach the ones on the ground as they start shooting up again ... Tuffy and Yarrow were very helpful heaving logs and branches out (from a tree which had collapsed under the weight of the vine) and onto the bonfire stack. Despite her diminutive physique, Tuffy is amazingly strong!

John spent part of the weekend making a lot of marmalade, but unfortunately, while cutting peel, due to a slip of the knife and the ensuing distraction involving bandages and bandaids, it partially burned and now tastes a bit smoky. Only a bit, though.

Tess wasn't very well (sniffly cold and an allergic skin reaction) but she did take some nice photos of Remy playing on the frangipani tree. See the bit of elkhorn fern there peeping at the side.

Gosh, on reading this it doesn't sound as if we had a very jolly weekend but we did, very much so!

Speaking of Sunny...

... Ain't he just the sweetest thing?

:-D

This morning ...

Whilst walking Chook the dog (accompanied as usual by my two affectionate familiars, Sunny the cat and Nova the perlino mare) ... I found a feather.

I wonder what sort it is ... given the long fringe / fray I thought perhaps an owl. Claudia suggested perhaps an ibis, but then reconsidered on account of its quite striking markings.

Yesterday morning

This is what dawn looks like when viewed through the branches of a very old winter frangipani...

The stockyard saga continued...

A while ago I posted about the barbed wire festooning the grass in the stockyard. It had proven very difficult to remove. In the end John and I opted to wade in there with chains, and weave the chains through the clumps of barbed wire. Then we attached the chains to the Hilux (in 4WD mode), and backed the Hilux out, dragging the wire out in clumps wreathed with grass. Once out, we roll them up into semi-manageable rolls. Quite satisfying if we managed a large 'catch' (the biggest single draw catch is proudly shown by one of our cats, Sunny, who of course helped haul it in ;-) ).

The rolls are then gingerly hoicked onto the back of the work ute ready for taking to the tip. In all, it's taken us two full days (spread over a couple of weekends) to clear the yard. It's been prickly work: after yesterday's efforts, our hands were covered in scratches and small perforations from all the barbs. Ouch!

But now as you can see the horses can freely graze in the yards. In the photo are some of our herd: from L to R: Saturn, Emu, Gandhi and the Horse Formerly Known as Rascal (we're trying to change his name but not doing too well as you would have noticed).

I have used a similar technique to remove lantana, blackberries and other weed entanglements. Once I worked with a local Landcare group to remove dense entanglements of lantana under a huge old fig. We had a mate with us who had a merry little terrier. We threw scraps of meat into the tangled undergrowth. We tied fishing line to my friend's terrier and he'd go in and find the meat and then come out. Then we'd tie a long snatch strap to the fishing line and pull it through. We then tied the snatch strap to the car I had at the time (an old Pajero) and pull the entire clump of lantana out! Worked a treat. Dog loved it.

The floodwaters are receding

We took some time out on Thursday afternoon to go play with (what we thought were) the receding floodwaters. This is a normally small creek / rivulet running under Boatharbour Road, where Tess, Yarrow and Briony's school bus normally goes. Good fun for playing in.

But then the water actually rose again Thursday night as I was bringing Yarrow to and from music lessons, and I was very worried that we would be cut off from home as the Wilsons River broke its banks. The water came as high as the door sill on the car on Eltham Rd. Luckily the Forester made it though the water, though not without some palpitations on my side! If it had been an inch higher I would not have dared cross. (I've been swept off a road by floodwaters before, and it's very scary!). By midnight the same stretch would have been under more than a metre of water...

By the Friday the little creek crossing shown on the photo was absolutely impassable and the school bus had to turn back.

Wilsons River peaked at about 8 metres above its normal height. Today's screen capture from the Bureau of Meterology river heights data website shows the amazingly rapid rise in river height.

Yarrow's Junior TIP performance

You know, sometimes your child does something, and it's such a brave achievement, the result of so many hours of practice ... and then, your heart just wants to burst with pride!

Today, Yarrow attended TIP (= Talent Identification Program, funded by the North Coast Regional Arts Council - see more at this link). She spent the day in workshops and the evening culminated in an individual performance by selected performers. Last time she attended she didn't make it to the finals, but this time she did!

Yarrow sings "They Weren't There", written by Missy Higgins. She told the music coordinator beforehand, that she was feeling quite a lot of nerves, and the coordinator whispered softly to her "Just blow them away...". And then, after Yarrow left the stage, the music coordinator pulled her over and whispered again "See? You blew them away ...".

Well, yeah ... she did. She blew me away, too ...

Oops, it was a big storm after all...

The coastal village not far from here (Lennox Head) was hit by a mini tornado this morning - quite impressive!

If you click on the photo it takes you to the Sydney Morning Herald site with a good series of five photos showing the progression of the tornado.