The Good Life, pt 2

Just before it got into Mozzie Hour, I snapped this shot of how far we got. Turning over the soil is going to be a mammoth task (I've done some in the section closest to the camera - where the ground looks a little ochre coloured). There are heaps of clay+rock patches that make it impossible to get the shovel into the soil more than a centimetre or two. You can see that in my next pic....
Despite that looking like it's just resting lighting in the top soil, I stood on that shovel with my full (substantial 'big-boned') weight and all I did was nearly fall headfirst into the dirt. About a cm of dirt and then its the stuborn blend of clumpy clay packed with pebbles & rocks. I've found a way to negotiate it with the fork, but it involves sweat-intensive labour, and sneaking underneath the clumpiest parts, levering them up and then crumbling the clumps by fork & hand tossing the larger rocks to one side (which you can see in the top photo, along the bench is a growing collection of garden variety rocks.

A Good Life

Do you remember that 70's British show about a couple who decided to escape the "rat-race" and live sustainable?

We had Earth Hour last night. I sat in my sister's backyard with candles (which probably weren't made in any environmentally friendly fashion) and ate our BBQ'd food. It was lovely.

However my sweaty contribution to sustainable living started earlier in the day when I decided started in on one stretch of backyard lawn that Mum & I had decided should be converted to a 24/7 organic, help yourself, food place.



Our plan is to dig up the existing lawn of weeds (as featured above) and plant a 'green manure' crop of bio-mustard, clover & lucerne. This will help enrich the soil for the vegetables we want to plant in spring.

Digging a little below the 'lawn' I discovered a whole lot of sandstone bits (possibly landfill?) and the soil is a hodgepodge mix of sand and clay and fairly bland topsoil. So I'm thinking we might want to remove some of that and cart in some richer stuff to turn through the existing mix.

Because I'm being pedantic about loving the earth, we're avoiding chemical solutions to removing the 'lawn'. I'm currently shovelling it up, shaking the soil out and tossing it into the green-waste bin. Tedious, and my legs are letting me know that they are noticing the squat-shovel-lift routine. But, well worth it!


This is my other contribution to global waste reduction. No more Mountain Spring Water plastic bottles for me!

Idiomatically Speaking...

I feel as though perhaps one of my sisters have shared their germs with me. But I don't really want to blog about how queasy I've been feeling since the bus left the city today.

What I want to blog about is Sunday night, but I'm too tired to do that so I'll settle with showing you pictures that I took on Saturday.

Firstly, (at least I hope it is first) a tiny coffee pot and tea kettle (more pics can be found here


Then a flutter of wings and a pouncing feline (more pics)



And now, with so frightfully few words of substance, (or idioms) I go to my bed to sleep off whatever it is I've got.

Yet another UfO lies waiting in my backpack, calling to me with snuggly voices of cashmere and silk. I'm attempting a knitted wrap, the pattern found on Knitty.com. It is called Muir and, besides being something I cannot knit whilst letting my mind wander, it is particularly pretty. And soft. And snuggly.

I imagine it would be difficult to file, polish and solder on an express bus to the city, I felt that knitting would be my the 'on the bus' project. Admittedly I feel I've spent 1/4 of my time working out where droped a YO stitch..... *sigh*

In other news, I've ordered three books from Amazon.com (after exhausting all my usual book suspects in Australia), which I justified as being cheaper than doing a community college course this term. Which they are. And they will provide valuable, long lasting resources for years to come. But it wasn't till I thought of the justification that I felt comfortable with clicking on the 'Confirm Purchase' button.

Funny how that works. The fear of buyer's regret is paralysing when you think you *should* get something, but you're not sure if you can.

Ants in your pants?

As I sat on the couch to put on my shoes, I felt something akin to a small sharp pain on the back of my lower leg.

I reached up the leg of my pants to brush off what I assumed would be a bit of grit or piece of tree that had come in with the washing and gotten attached to my pants.

Instead I found myself gripping something small, black and moving. I flung it away as my first thought was "SPIDER". I then realised that that was pretty dumb, because if a spider bit me, I'd need to know what kind of spider it was.

After hunting the floor (with one hand clutching the bite area - it was starting to hurt) I found a mid-sized, dazed black-coloured ant

So yes, in fact I did have an ant in my pants this morning.

Spider + Wasp

Imagine this: You're relaxing on a fine, if overly warm, Saturday morning. Out of the corner of your eye you see something tentacled crawling up the brick wall of your house.

You stop relaxing.

You turn your head and take a better look. No tentacles. Just the dangling legs of a large, limp Huntsman Spider in the determined grip of a dangerously coloured insect inching its way, backwards, up the brick wall with a load far larger than itself does not bode well.

Something (your spider sense perhaps?) tingles.

It drops the spider a couple of times, and buzzed with enviable determination to what surely must be its feast. Over many barriers this vibrant beastie carries its load, only to leave it stashed behind the dense Hibiscus bush before mysteriously buzzing off.

After witnessing this event, we hit up Google for the answers. Were we being invaded by killer wasps? Did we need to call the exterminator and hide under mosquito netting?

The Spider Wasp, though occasionally prone to klepto-parasitism, however is of no particular danger to humans (except maybe Spider-Man).

For more information about this very cool insect (and a mug shot) click here: Australian Museum Fact Sheet

Gang aft agley

You know the line that goes "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men..."? The continuation of it is "Gang aft agley".
I'm a 21st Century Aussie girl with no familiarity with the 18th century Scots language that Robert Burns was so eloquent with. Suffice it to say that 'gang aft agley', taken in isolation, is beyond my linguistic capabilities. I would probably guess "Go oft' ugly". However! In context I take a guess that it roughly means "often go pear-shaped" - which isn't too far off something going ugly.

That is a rough estimation of my plans for the 2 week break I had over the Christmas Period. I planned to be productive. I planned to work on new designs. I planned to be a shining example of industriousness. I was house sitting, so I thought that the fresh (quiet) environment would be helpful

Instead I managed to do a frightfully realistic impersonation of couch potato. There was an Xbox and a whole collection of DVDs - many of which I'd never seen. I did go swimming a couple of times, which was lovely... but hardly industrious.

It's a problem I often have when I'm having a holiday at home. I start off with great plans, but usually by the third day I'm reverting to "I'm chilling out" - formerly known as laziness. I'm looking forward to a weekend that isn't busy so I can spend some serious time at my workbench. I have some new designs I'd like to get cracking on, and some half-finished projects that are crying out for completion before the end of the month.