busy bees

When I say 'busy bees', I mean real bees, not me. I'm lying around the house trying not to move and work up a sweat in the heat. 

And not to put strain on my aching ribs which have put a limit on the amount of oxygen I can pull into my lungs at any given time...

Do you have bumble bees where you are? We do. I'd never seen these bees till I came to live in Tasmania. They're big and round and drone kind of like the Boeing 747 of the bee world.

Have I mentioned I love my new camera? Its a cherry red Nikon Coolpix L830 that I got almost new on ebay.

Have I mentioned I love ebay?

It has an incredible 30x optical zoom (incredible when I had a 3x with my old camera). Its very handy when you want to take pics of animals in the distance. Like the geese.

Of course, full zoom needs a tripod or you just get blur, but I have one of those. A Velbon tripod, in great condition.

I got it on ebay.

Naturally.

Did I mention we're one goose down? We had three geese originally, they had 3 babies. Two girls and one boy.

Unfortunately one of the girls got into the yard before Christmas and the dogs killed her.

I was really upset. But to be fair, they did leave her when I called them. It was just too late. They'd already broken her neck and she died in my arms.

Wayne and I buried her near the dam.

Everyone said "Why didn't you eat her? She'd have made a great Christmas dinner"...

How could we? She was our goose. She wasn't bred to eat.

One of our new chickens is going broody. She's trying to nest in a sky box in the chicken coop. No forethought on her part. I mean, what'll happen to any chicks she has soon as they step out of the box?

Splat.

Anyway, we've been taking her eggs and she's been getting increasingly cranky about it. Wayne thought that maybe we should just catch her and let her go broody in Stalag 13*. That way any chicks won't have to skydive before they can walk, and will be less likely to be crow food.

I'm not sure I want chicks.

We have 4 chickens and currently get 4 eggs a day. Its hard for us to keep up with that. Sure, with the new law saying that people with under 20 chickens can sell eggs without going through all kinds of regulations and stamping of eggs, which cancelled out the previous new law which made it illegal to sell home laid eggs without accreditation, we can sell our eggs to support our chicken habit...

But having chicks means getting roosters as well as hens.

And that means we have to make a decision: what do we do with the roosters? We can't drive them up the highway and dump them on the side of the road like so many people do. We can't bribe people to take them, or smuggle one into every visitor's bag as they're leaving. 

We can't eat them cause by the time we know they're roosters they'll have names.

Sheesh. 

Mom was wrong. I'd never make a good farmer's wife!

z

*Stalag 13: Original dog kennel on the property when we bought it. Its been used to incarcerate escape artist dogs, house roosters (given to us by a friend for the pot, and accepted by Wayne who thought 'no worries' then found he couldn't kill and eat them cause "they were cute"), and raise various clutches of ducklings to save them from aforementioned crows. I was considering converting it to a green house for winter, but hey, winter is months away and who needs a green house in summer?

anatomy of a fall

I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon. The pain killers no doubt helped some. I think I'll live.

On one of my short breaks from the ugly purple recliner I thought I'd take some photos for you.

These are the culprit tyres.

And this is a diagramatic re-enactment.

I don't care if that's not a real word.

Ouch.

Imagine me lying on my side, elbow bent underneath me bottom left, my feet up between the two tyres. Not a pretty sight. Luckily no one around with a smartphone.

Please note the gravelly clay soil. Much like cement.

On the upside, I'm getting to catch up on computer and mobile phone stuff... On the downside I'm not crossing things off my never-ending-renovation-To-Do-List.

Speaking of smartphones, did I mention my new mobile phone? New to me anyway.

I had an el cheapo mobile phone which I bought when I lost my old mobile about 4 years ago. It cost me something like $75. It was simple. Took calls, made calls. Took photos which were impossible to see on the tiny screen, and refused to open multimedia messages.

I'd been wanting a new phone for a while. Not a long time, but I was getting there.

Then one day I ran over my old phone.

I swear, I did not do it on purpose! Many won't believe that, but I swear its true.

In fact I have no idea how my mobile ended up on the other side of the driveway, near the gate.

Anyway, while lamenting my carelessness great loss on FB (as you do) cause I was going through an especially broke stage and couldn't afford a new phone... and at a time when my grooming work should have been booming, but wasn't, due to a lack of aforementioned roadkill phone...

... someone offered me an old phone.

Its a 2 year old Huawei Ascend and its my first ever smartphone.

A steep learning curve which I'm enjoying.

I am ever so grateful.

I am a big believer in doing good for people cause good will come to you from unexpected sources. I'm always giving things away to people who want or need them rather than sell them for personal gain. I've never been a "what's in it for me" person.

Then, when I need something, someone kind will give me what I need.

Like a mobile phone. Or old carpet, or a doona cover.

So I've spent today working on a logo design, editing and cropping photos, cleaning up files on my computer, learning about apps and figuring out how to fix an "insufficient storage" error on the phone.

Anyway, I leave you with a couple of pretty pics of the tyre embankment which shows that one day, this will be a pretty wall of plants and not just a row of tyres.

z

no longer an ugly duckling

You've come a long way baby!

(Does anyone remember the Virginia Slims ad? or am I just too old?)

I am loving my home. I get so much enjoyment out of stepping out the door onto our front porch and just looking at it and the garden. Sure, the back deck (or the poop deck as its affectionately known) is still a mess, it really needs a roof and bird evictions, and there's still a healthy farm-like amount of crap around the place... but its home and its becoming beautiful - and I love it.

We went from this:

To this:

What's not to love?

You can read more about the before and afters here.

Here is the back deck, unpainted, exposed... I have plans for that... one day... till then I pretend I can't see it.

The deck is welcoming and cosy now. The potato vine has gone bezerk and provides dappled shade in one small area.

Soon the pale yellow banksia roses on the trellis should also hide the water tanks on the left. And once the potato vine spreads a little more to both sides there'll be more shade in the afternoons.

The plan is that when we roof the back deck we'll just put more trellis on the corner and make it sort of like an arbour area where you can sit in dappled sunlight with plants growing around you. Perhaps a pink banksia rose... I'd love a purple potato vine but they're not so hardy, and I'd love a jasmine but I've killed two of them so far.

Maybe I'll stay away from them.

Ah... home. In this pic you can almost not see the bare spots on the weeds lawn where I sprayed Roundup. As I keep saying, if it wasn't for weeds we'd have no green. 

There is still much to do but at least I can say I've managed to do something over the Christmas break. I finished painting the front of the house where we had bare timber from moving the kitchen windows. I undercoated the enclosed porch area ready to paint. And I put up my corner brackets, something I'd been planning to do for the last couple of years.

Now, if I wasn't such a clutz I'd be out there painting today. Top coating the enclosed area and all the window surrounds.

Instead I'm sitting in the ugly purple recliner trying to move as little as possible.

Why you ask?

I was climbing ladders, on uneven ground, for days painting and screwing in brackets and I was fine.

All I did was water the embankment yesterday and I think I've cracked a rib.

I need to rethink riding again... I don't think I should get on anything with its own feet. I can't be trusted on my own two feet.

Let me explain: the embankment is made up of old tyres. A bit redneck but in the spirit of recycling, which I'm into big time. Its a steep embankment, impossible to walk up at the best of times. The other day I'd walked along the top tossing down the tyres from the top line that I thought were unnecessary.

Obviously, I didn't put them out of the way or stack them nicely. I left them where they fell.

My bad.

So, while watering last night I was walking along the bottom of the embankment, a small channel which catches rainwater and directs it away from the house, when I tripped on one tyre, stepped back to get my balance and stepped on another, bounced off it and landed like a sack of potatos.

Hm... not quite. A sack of potatos keeps its shape.

I landed like a sack of potting mix. With a big splat, on my left side, on my left arm and on my ribs. My whole weight just kind of formed around and over my arm so that I had to kind of pry myself up.

After I'd caught my breath... ie about 3 minutes of moaning and groaning in pain.

It probably took me 5 minutes to stand up and pick up the hose again. I'd been lying in the ditch of course so of course I was covered in mud.

Like a trooper, I kept watering. It had to be done, right?

Then I went into the house and sooked to Wayne while I changed and washed the gravel off my arm.

The elbow is bruised but doesn't hurt. In fact, the right elbow (which was nowhere near the squash zone) still hurts more than the left, but the bruising is impressive.

Its my ribs that hurt. And the weight of my left breast. Youch. (Wayne kindly offered his support. Pun intended.)

I can breath but deep breaths hurt and moving hurts.

Wonderful.

I've had broken ribs before. Many times.

You don't want to know.

There's nothing to be done but rest and patience. So, whether its soft tissue damage or a broken rib, I just have to wait it out.

Wonderful.

I still have a week off work and I had so much to do.

NOT happy Jan.

z

PS. I watch too much TV and have a head full of quotes and movie trivia.

new year, new resolutions?

Its been a quiet day in Lake Wobegon at Wind Dancer Farm. I know its the beginning of a new year and all that, but really, its just another day for us.

I got up this morning and brushcut the lawn since our mower is broken (great). And soon I'll be going outside to attempt more house painting despite the wind. My resolution is to finish painting the house before I need to start re-painting it.

I spent the last couple of days painting my decorative brackets, figuring out how to attach them to the porch posts and pre-drilling them. They're now ready to go up. If my right arm can manage it, I'll put them up today. I own a very heavy drill and have a dodgey elbow and wrist...

It'll be nice to have the porch finished. Wayne got annoyed with all my junk on the porch a few weeks ago and did a huge clean up. It looks great now (or will once I finish painting and can pick up drop sheets, ladders and paint buckets), but my workshop is full of the crap I had 'resting' on the porch. 

At least the front of the house is almost looking gorgeous. The porch facing the back of the house (though its technically the front of the house cause that's where the front door is... go figure) doesn't yet have a roof over it and thus no posts to fix brackets to. I haven't even painted it. Seems silly to paint the rails on that side since I'm planning to redo that part of the porch in the future.

The distant future...

You know what they say? Time flies when you're having fun. I've been resting, relaxing, reading, socializing and trying to get a few things done while I'm on holidays. Hopefully I can cross a few things off my To Do list before I get back to work. And do some creative stuff to share as well!

Hope everyone has a great 2015!

z