Garden photos

Diane's new camera is certainly going to up the ante in garden posts. No hovering bee from me but this is my latest aquisition - another bromeliad.

Bromeliads are easy to look after and cope with a shady garden, this one only gets a bit of dappled sun for about an hour a day. They're expensive (this one was $30 though you can get them a bit cheaper at the markets) but they put out "pups" which can be cut off and planted so one plant generates an endless supply of babies.

Some have spectacular flowers, other just interesting foliage. This one has a combination of both - deep inside the middle pink bit is a weird flower. If you want to get them to flower you cover them in a plastic bag with a bit of apple. The decomposing apple gives off a gas (ethylene I think) which causes things to ripen. It works, I got some to flower by just putting cut apple pieces around the plant - and they'd never flowered in the past few years. So don't keep apples and bananas together unless you want to ripen bananas quickly.

The cause of all the shade imy garden - way too many massive old Terminalias and assorted palms. Terminalias are native, the billy goat plum is one. Mine aren't billy goat plums but the dog enjoys eating their hard little berries anyway. They don't seem to do him any harm and he's been munching on them for a few years now. No grass around for him to eat so maybe they're a substitute.

I have no worries about the ability of my house to withstand a cyclone - in nearly 30 years it would have seen a few. The trees however are another matter. Not many houses would withstand one of those beauties dropping on it!

This was my strobilanthes in it's heyday, it flourished for a couple of years and then just dropped dead literally overnight, both the one in the ground and the one in the pot. I'll have to get some more and try again.

Another weekend gone too quickly. I worked all yesterday, running a stall promoting sustainable fisheries at a community fair held by a rural school. I'll have to take some time off soon to make up for my short weekend (don't get overtime but can take time in lieu).

looong time no blog

I've been slack, I've been busy, I've been caught up in lifes endless dramas. But now it's time to dip my toe into the blogwater so to speak.... Biggest change in my life is that the bloke and I have split, still a bit raw that one. So I've been keeping busy with work, house and garden and of course the animals. Sorry if I have dropped of the radar for the past few months, I don't usually comment on other peoples posts unless I am posting myself, but I have been reading them. Hopefully I'll be a little more productive from now on.

Today I took Oscar the Wonder Dog to the beach where he displayed a very wicked sense of humour. I was walking along the waters edge and he was trotting in front of me with his favourite ball in his mouth, as per usual. He came up to a young lady in a bikini sitting on her towel and I watched as Oscar communicated with her in a very obvious way. He stopped, dropped the ball about 5 foot in front of her towel, pointed at it with his nose, then backed off and dropped his front legs and focussed on the ball, as he's wont to do when ball-watching requires 185% intensity. Of course the young lady got the very unsubtle hint and got up off her towel and walked towards the ball. Just before she got to the ball Oscar dashed up, grabbed it and continued trotting along without a backward glance!

It was very cruel, forcing her to get up from her comfy towel, but I couldn't help but laugh. The young woman lifted her arms up in the air and laughed as well. What went through his little doggy brain? It looked like humour to me.

I didn't have my camera with me, this one was taken last year and Oscar hasn't got his bum up in the air like he usually does. I'll have to start taking more photos again.

Pinked

I had my last morning at work with the fuel company recently, sad to go in some ways because they've been very good to me and it's been a pretty relaxed place to work (despite some high-pressure times). At the same time I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the new job - part time with it for the last month has been hard.

The boss started making a little speech about how they had thought long and hard about an appropriate going away present for me. By this stage I was thinking "holy cow, what on earth could they have come up with???" I know if I were in their position I wouldn't have a clue about what to buy me! Then I was handed a box (an old oil filter box appropriately) and inside was an exquisite pink cowgirl hat, a pink golf cap and a bottle of Moet pink champagne in it's own monogrammed pink bottle cooler! So we had the photo op and it was emailed down to all the Fremantle staff (most of whom have never met me, I wonder what they think of their weirdo Darwin office?).

I was very touched, they HAD thought long and hard. Apparently they had to search in both Perth and Darwin to come up with just the right ensemble.

Now, I'm not really a pink sort of a gal but as a joke ages ago I bought a hot pink cowgirl hat and it became my "on the wharf" hat, it was very popular with the fishermen though I never did manage to convince everyone to start wearing one. Some of you might remember this photo from my previous BigBlog times. These days the poor old hat is faded and a bit grubby, but still in use. I kept meaning to replace it but never managed to find just the right hat. Now I have it.

Later, when I was at my new job, they sent me this photo of Oscar getting in on the act (because of course Oscar is still on their payroll....).

Easter almost gone...

The photos throughout this post are from a drive the Bloke and I did the other week before he went to sea. We wanted to see the last of the Wet Season water before everything starts to dry up. Fogg dam is a remnant of a rice project from the fifties, a failure on that front but now a great haven for water birds - and crocodiles, while we were there we saw a ranger with a croc on his trailer, could get any photos unfortunately because it was on the dam wall and we couldn't get out of the car (plus I was trying to hide the dog......).

Hope everyone had a lovely Easter. For the first time in ages I didn't work, well I didn't go To Work, but I did work! This is the time of the year for getting all those post-Wet Season jobs done, the weather just makes you want to get stuck into it all. I spent one day in the garden - tidied up my nature strip and collected piles of palm fronds, raked leaves and mulched and fertilised. I don't have a lawn out the front, too many big trees, but it does get weedy in the Wet and now is the best time to attack them. Then I spent one day on the roof, another section with almost one coat on. After that I had to take a day off, I'm usually exhausted and stiff and sore after bending and squatting on a sloping surface. So just reading, sufing the net, a visit to Bunnings (more roof paint) and just a little dabble in the garden to plant out a few new plants (an inevitable side effect of a trip to Bunnings).

I didn't have any Easter eggs but I did manage to stuff myself full of almost everything else when I went to dinner at my Italian neighbours place last night. Mamma mia I was full! I had to try and eat everything but I am just not used to eating a four course meal...... I was the only one there with food left on my plate, embarrassing (but I'm sure her dog loved me). Potato soup followed by a main course of meatballs, vegies, salad, caramilised baby onions, slow cooked pork in a sort of apple stew. Then hunks of fresh rockmelon while we "rested" until able to squeeze in the special Easter cake. All interspersed with Chianti, white wine and mineral water. Thankfully I only had to roll across the road and collapse into bed.

Today it was back onto the roof to work some of it off. Phew, don't feel like going back to work tommorrow.

Garden visitor

I know I've been slack on the blogging front lately, but sometimes life just gets in the way of some quality computer time!

I'll start off with a recent visitor to my garden, a pheasant coucal. You usually hear them more often that you see them, a haunting coo coo coooool sound like a cross between an owl and a cuckoo on valium. He was not very cooperative in showing me his beautiful long tail unfortunately.

I started the new job last week, while still doing my old job, so that's been a bit frantic. I do mornings on the wharf with the fuel mob and then afternoons I put on my fisheries hat and go to the new job. The new office is only 100 yards away, upstairs overlooking the wharf but the work is very different. Suddenly I have to get my head back around organising meetings and communicating with all sorts of people instead of just swearing at fishermen and yachties! Last week was mainly spent getting the office stuff up and running and linking it all in with OceanWatch, the NSW organisation that is employing me. This week I will get down to some nitty gritty - a meeting with some key people in the fishing industry to nut out exactly what my work programme should be.

On top of all that I am STILL trying to paint my roof, a slow process for it's a huge job and the preparation is endless. Today I spent 5 hours doing the last of the water blasting ready for priming. I must be mad. But I did committ myself to this when I had a nice little part time job and lots of time on my hands. I'll just do a bit at a time when I can. I'm now stiff and sore from all that bending and squatting. Exercising? I must have done about a 100 squats wire brushing and daubing primer on innumerable spots where it's back to bare metal. Most of the roof you can bend over and work up the slope, but when you get close to the edge of the roof it's a squat job. What a fun weekend!

The bloke has gone to sea, taking young Kurly the Rat with him. It will be interesting to see how the crew deal with that! But we've always found an animal on board provides a lot of entertainment for everyone. The Cat always won over those deckhands who claimed to hate all cats and initially thought she was only good for crab bait.

Of course no update is complete without a mention of Oscar the Wonder Dog. Sadly, I can't take him to work with me at the new job, it's just not that sort of place. But luckily for his social life the fuel people insist that he still goes to work every day there! What a spoilt dog. So Oscar gets left with them while I swan off to my new office and then I pick him up when it's time to go home. Ridciulous really, I think they were more unhappy about the thought of losing Oscar than at me leaving them in the lurch. My replacement starts there after Easter and luckily he's a dog lover, in fact he probably wouldn't have got the job if he wasn't.

Yet another pet.....

Meet the latest member of the menagerie, Kurly the baby rat..... Yes, I know, people hate rats but they do make great little pets if they're not your horrible wild gray rat kind. The Bloke was talking to a mate who has a pet python and he was saying how sad he felt for the poor little mice he had to feed the cranky old snake. Well, bloke decided maybe he could get a cute little mouse as a boat pet but I half-jokingly told him rats were much more interesting - intelligent, clean, funny, friendly etc. About 20 years ago I had a pet rat called Hieronymous Bartholomew (Ronnie Rat) and he was quite a character. Well, we talked ourselves into it I'm afraid, both suckers when it comes to animals.

So here is Kurly, a female Norwegian Hooded rat, only the size of a mouse at present but already so unafraid and friendly, loves a snuggle and a pat. Some strict segregation going on between Kurly and The Cat I'm afraid, that will be an ongoing battle. But Oscar loves her, just like a little black and white mirror image of him.

I don't know how many lives a rat has but she used up her one on the first night - I left her cage covered and hanging up out on the verandah, let The Cat outside at her usual 5 am the next morning. Then an hour later when I got up I uncover the rat cage and there was Kurly sitting on the cage, OUTSIDE. She must have been small enough to squeeze through the bars but then became afraid to move anywhere else! She seemed very happy to get back in the cage.

I have to do some serious thinking tonight - I've been offered a job that is going to be very hard to refuse, now I just have to negotiate with my present employment so I can leave gracefully. The new job is more aligned to my past fisheries work, with an organisation that is looking at expanding from its base in NSW. It's the sort of position that just NEVER comes up in Darwin, normally if I wanted to continue in that line of work I'd have to be prepared to work outside of Australia again. The only drawback is they only have guaranteed funding until the end of the year, though they are optimisitic it will be an ongoing position. I'm inclined to go for the challenge and hang the risk. I feel like I'm coasting with the job I'm doing at the moment and it is only part time - that was a big drawcard when we had the boat and I needed the flexibility to help with that, but now I could do with something a bit meatier.

They need me to start as soon as possible but have been kind enough to suggest maybe I could be part time in both jobs until my old work can find someone else. I feel pretty lucky to be faced with this dilemma when so many others are losing jobs.

Wharf work

Well here's something completely different to my last post.............. All week at work heavy machinery has been setting up to repair a wall of the wharf that has sat unsused and condemned for years now. I only thought to take my camera with me today doh! But no doubt they will be at it for some time. It took them all week just to set up the big pile driver (and, by the way, did you know that a "pile driver" also refers to a professional wrestling move AND and acrobatic sexual position. And no, I don't know any more than that, Google it yourself).

The noise of cranes and machinery from the past few days is nothing compared to what we are going to get once the pile driver starts. This monster is only several metres from our little office, which is only a demountable sitting on concrete blocks, so I guess we are going to start jumping up and down with the booming of the pile as it rams into the ground.

Guess who will be finding all sorts of excuses to run errands away from the wharf?

The only one who is really enjoying the extra wharf activity is Oscar the Wonder Dog as he now has about 10 new friends to do the rounds for pats, not to mention some serious smoko snack opportunities.



Lucky the guys don't seem to mind an inquisitive canine wandering around amongst trucks, cranes and workboots. He will NOT wear a hardhat though.