Doing

Mixing

Finding (the turkey nest)

Looking (for a biscuit of lucerne)

Fencing (reinforcing the cattle yards, getting ready for weaning)

Sniffling (the baby peaches all burned by last weeks frosts)

Hatching

Marvelling (at how something so neglected and ignored can produce something so pretty - blurred but pretty)

 Burying (for later)

Discovering

Stealing

and a little bit of reading (for the second time)

Pottering

I've become very fond of these two little men. They're The Brothers, siblings of the girls I gave to Peter. Normally by now their combs would have been dubbed but I'm not showing them so I won't be doing any dubbing. They're cocky little things, interested in everything that I do and they mix well with the silkies.

The snow peas are growing bigger.

I collected fresh cow manure from the yards and made some cow poo tea.

I'll leave it sit for a while before diluting it to use. It should smell delightful in a few days.

I also collected some dirt from under the trough in the yards. The soil is magnificent and even though I only scratched the surface to collect a bucketful I found 13 worms that went straight to the garden.

I gave some of the soil to The Scratchers and built the rest up around the potatoes.

Final fixing of the new pen - The Teenagers and The Brothers will go in here now

We'll get our sheep dog shorn clipped at the vet in the next few weeks once we're sure the cold weather has gone. He looks a bit the same at both ends.

In Other News

Winter returned to remind us not to become complacent; there's a sting in the tail yet. We had three nasty frosts and had to relight the fire.

Gibbo spent three days in NSW and VIC and arrived home late last night after the drive home from Bris.

I went to two protest meetings during the week; nearly 51 years of living and I end up going to two in one week. A recently conducted flood study has painted the majority of the town red (not in a good way) and enraged many of the locals. The community is rallying to have the flood study report and its subsequent proposed new planning/development rules overturned or at least postponed until a review of the study is conducted. (Actually when I think about it, I did attend a protest march when I was 18 but not because I wanted to protest anything. I went because my boyfriend at the time was a plain clothes chap in the special branch back in the Joh days. I just went along to see him).

Meg had her vaccinations and sent her passport away to have a visa added. It came back in record time. She leaves in less than a month, for a month. We're counting down.

Drew is applying for an internship with an NGO in Geneva, an opportunity that came via College and hopefully partly funded by the Uni.

My friend is coming back to see me (he just doesn't know it yet). I tried to buy tickets in the pre-sale allocation but missed out. Will try again in the public allocation. After not seeing him for 28 years would it be too much to ask to see him twice in 12 months?

This made for interesting reading this morning; 18,000hd, in 9 groups of 2,000, on a 2500km journey; epic alright. I read it to G as we drove home from town. When he was in the south last week he drove past the property where the girls are heading for.

My Dad's house has sold and he has bought another one; he moves in in about 3 weeks. I took him yesterday to transfer some money and I saw him again today at the local supermarket. He's starting to look frail and, dare I say it, old. It scared me a little.

First Pick

I picked a carrot!!! Each time I've peeked over the last few weeks (by digging a little dirt away) each carrot looked so perfectly orange and round but I did wonder what was really going on beneath the surface. Well, this is what was going on! Obviously the soil isn't quite friable down where it matters for carrots. I'll work on that. One day I'm going to grow the perfect carrot!

The wind today has been horrid. I soaked some old straw in water and mulched the latest round of seedlings, trying to protect them a little.

The Scratchers are doing their job, building me a vege garden. We had prawns on Wednesday night; they had them on Thursday morning!

Fluffy bums. The wind has played havoc with The Teenager's hairdos; feathers are everywhere.

This is The Teenager's new home. I just need to do a little repair job on the netting and they'll be able to move right in. It's a great pen; much more room than their current one. They spend all day free ranging and sleep in a small pen. In the mornings they're crawling all over each other trying to get out. This will make a big difference.

Not long now and I'll be able to cut this and eat it. Looking forward to that.

Rainbow silverbeet in the concrete tubs; for the chooks.

The dwarf lemon that I got for my birthday a couple of years ago will be the first citrus tree in the permaculture garden.

More lettuce, this time in the concrete tubs. We don't eat a whole lot of lettuce but I really like to grow the different varieties and the chooks love fresh leaves daily. These ones took a while to get going - I thought the soil mix might have been a bit hot for them. A few died but the rest have powered on.

It's raining tonight. I went out and sat on the day bed on the verandah just so I could listen to it falling on the roof. Most times I can't hear much at all except a ringing in both ears but it was nice to sit and listen. I could just hear it. My garden will love the rain.