Wobble-Tee and Mulch

Have just read about a new product ideally suited to our current water shortage - Wobble-Tee
How clever for the manufacturers to come up with a sprinkler solely designed for low water pressure :) More incentive for people to install rain water tanks and/or grey water systems - whether they want to use it on their gardens or lawns !
My back lawn defies my best efforts at murdering it.The front lawn went to "the farm" several years ago when we took a shovel to it and did unspeakable things with weedmats and river pebbles.*NB weedmats are only called thus because the weeds lurve growing through it and river pebbles work as a great form of mulch while giving snails their daily workout as they ascend the Mt Everest of pebble hills ;)
Another by-product of our 21st century lives is shredded paper.Everyone shreds personal letters,documents etc and it just becomes more land fill.
Get a large plastic bucket,fill with tank water and soak your shredded tax avoidance documents in it.Then you can either add them to the compost bin or use them as mulch straight on the garden....or as we do - give them to the chooks to nest in,then after a month or 2 throw it in the compost....if anyone wants to read about the Swiss bank accounts where I'm hiding my millions after a chooks bum has graced it,they're welcome to it !
Off to knock together another couple of vegie garden boxes and think about planting out more green edible thingies :-P

Bunnings and Woofy things

Have just made an important discovery...Earth shattering in fact.....that not all Bunnings Warehouses are the same !!!
Wandered down to one Bunnings and perused their large stock of solar lighting.They were out of a particular solar shed light we wanted so we wandered off to another store...only to discover they had only 3 types of solar lights,despite the fact they were a bigger store !
The 2nd store is no longer on our Xmas card list(much to their dismay I imagine) and the 1st store will continue to get our custom and word of mouth regard.
Solar powered coloured fairy lights,changing colour solar lights,solar lights hidden in animal and rock "sculptures",solar spot lights,solar sensor lights,multi coloured floating pool/pond solar lights,every kind of imaginable solar garden/paving/decking/balcony lighting in every shape and form, the list goes on....all in the Moorabbin Bunnings Warehouse(along Warrigul rd near South rd hint hint).
Re discovered a REALLY decently priced nursery we used to visit -about 6 years ago we ordered 25 kg bags of river pebbles @ $5 per bag.....just ordered some more today even though they've had a price increase since then.....same bags are now a whole $6.Their range of plants,flowers,vegies,etc are pretty wide and very cheap,but good quality - our plants from there are still healthy 6 years later. Oh we were charged a measly $15 delivery fee today too...very decent people !!!!
Diaco's Discount Nursery 190 Old Dandenong Rd HEATHERTON VIC 3202 (03) 9551 0776
We will be landscaping the pergola area again...well I'll be supervising while Him Indoors does the heavy labouring(and swearing at me under his breath no doubt LOL).
Treacle Pup has been attempting to help us garden but somehow she digs up more than she plants and rolls in things of which we will not speak.
Treacle Pup isn't solar powered but Doggie Chocolate powered - after she got into a whole box of the damn stuff one evening she was still climbing walls and trying to launch herself into Lunar orbit at 3am.The cats wisely hid under things lower than 3 feet off the floor.
Have started the elderly Matron Tara on SeaFlex for her arthritic joints,which seems to be really working well.She's moving about more freely and almost trying to jump into our laps again,something she hasn't done for nearly 2 years.SeaFlex is getting a big tick on our vet's survey of it !
Have brought Matron Tara into the house and let her run loose with the felines...once upon a time she would have eaten them as a snack but due to cataracts and age she tolerates them and we can gently remove an inquizative Leo-Fluff-Bum before Matron Tara even sights him snuggling up to her on the couch.

Birds

Ahh the gentle sounds of the power saw in the shed....the hammer furiously bashing some nail....the local builders STILL building the School That Ate The Suburb....and my garden quietly screaming for rain that never seems to appear.
The local tribe of Magpies have taken to squawking at me for food scraps and water,not neccessarily in that order.If we sit on our front verandah the maggies come and perch on the planter boxes to squint at me with the body language of "Hmmph sitting there doing nothing when you could be FEEDING us.Well come on ...what are you waiting for you lazy 2 legged creature ?"
Needless to say one scampers to one's feet immediately to hunt up scraps to placate the tribe with their rather sharp beaks !
But they do scare off those manky Mynah birds that have pushed other native birds out of most areas....and the love sick possum,who hasn't entertained us with his acrobatic feats of late....and they do have a delightful tendency to poop on the neighbours-over-the-back-diagonally withy their extention-forever-in-progress ...she hasn't been screeching about the trees or birds of late....she may be sitting in a corner rocking quietly to the sounds of the suburban wildlife.
Ahhhh fantastic feathered friends !

It's soooo eeeeeasy being greeeen

Wasn't it Kermit that sang "It's not easy being Green" ? !

This is just one of our THREE different solar /dynamo powered radios/lantern.The mirror looking thingie is actually a compact foldaway solar panel(2.5 watts),capable of recharging this radio to run for approx.22 hours .

We have a larger solar panel(10.5 watts) which charges up our other things - like mobile phones,radios,12 volt lamps,12 volt fans,anything at all - can even trickle charge the car battery.

One radio/lantern comes with it's own solar panel attached and a 9 watt "U" fluro tube that lights up a whole room for 4 hours.

We have 2 other rechargable lamps that also run off the solar panels.

The humble solar garden light has been brought indoors as "night lights" throughout the house,illuminating enough so people avoid falling over the cats in the middle of the night !

Also have 2 solar battery chargers-stick 'em in the sun and recharge your batteries for free.

With a small outlay,we have halved our electricity bill within the first month of using these rechargable thingies.

Our house has now 9 new water barrels,holding a total capacity of 2,000 litres( not including the water tank).Our grey waste water is being diverted everywhere and we use so little mains water we are now over $1,000.00 in credit to the water company.

Ahhhhhh gotta love how easy it is to be green .

Crackerjack in the wet

Ventured forth for our first taste of Twilight Bowls last evening. Now many immediately think only 70-something year olds play lawn bowls...but between you,me and the fence post not only were 3/4 of them(male and female) under 40 but it could be a an untapped social event to meet people(partners?),rather than the meat markets at pubs/clubs.
No one was in their whites...jokes,cheering, general frivolity and jocularity was heard loudly across the Greens - none of the hushed heavy silences you see on televised competition bowls.
The toddler running amok across the greens was just redirected to his toys and no one had a hissy.
Jocularity continued even during the sudden downpour with slippery fingers scrabbling to collect bowls,mats,jacks,bags and head for the bar.
Ahh yes the bar - open before and after the bowls,with prices waaaaay cheaper than your local pub(hmmm Mick Molloy in Crackerjack was onto something there !).
For a night out for cheap fun and laughs call...your local bowls club !

Drought and Crackerjack

My adventure today was to trot off to Shepparton via train(not broomstick) to collect a set of lawn bowls.
I could hear the Mission Impossible music burbling away as I tried to track down a VLine person...eventually found 3 bailed up against a wire fence by an 80-something year old grandmother trying to find her train from Wonthaggi that was somehow misplaced.....
Anyways I and many others hunted down our train and followed our prey as it crept up the platform(obviously trying to escape without us noticing).
The catering staff attempted to scare us off with processed food goods but we prevailed and gained seats.
We chugged along quite merrily until 30 mins outside of Melb then things got ugly.
Everything was dead - grass,trees,empty dams,...the further we went,the worse it got.Scrawny cows trying to climb into the irrigation channels,mini dust storms created from the top soil blowing away,dam after dam with nary a skerrik of moisture in it.
Oh I DID see wheat crops ...the tallest wheat crop ready to be harvested wouldn't have reached my knees.
In some places it was like a lunar landscape....I searched for Neil Armstrong in vain...
People at Shepparton seemed hale and hearty,no long faces worrying about global warming caused by our politicians blather...no angst about the very real drought.
Chatted to a service officer at Shepp station and she stated,very succinctly " Droughts come and go ,like Govts.Wait long enough there'll be a change soon enough".
So I sallied forth and paid for the lawn bowls,glad even my tiny purchase will be spent in the economy at Shepp...maybe tiding someone over a wee bit longer til either the Govt or weather changes!
Oh and one other thing ....if you haven't seen National Lampoon's Blackball the Brit lawn bowls movie, go and have a giggle watching it .

Bloody poop damn crap pooh buggeritall

Bloody crap - just read about Belinda Emmett passing away.
How does this crap happen to someone who hasn't wracked up enough bad points for the grim reaper to come visit ?
The kid was 24 and diagnosed with breast cancer (24 FFS !!!!!).Then she spends the rest of her life fighting this insidious disease,mostly in the public eye. She didn't shoot anybody ...she didn't order the mass murder of whole religions or countries.....she hadn't tried to play God and fiddle with stem cells....she hadn't caused this f%*@king drought or global warming.....Shyte she could never be accused of bad acting or bad fashions at the Melb Cup ! Actually she was a pretty decent actress that could have been our Cate Blanchett before Cate Blanchett herself.
Belinda Emmett was a basically NICE Aussie soap actress,who wouldn't hurt a fly,when she came across a lump in her breast- which she initially ignored as "I'm too young to get breast cancer".
My mum died that same year,from the same bloody rotten nasty insidious indiscriminating evil disease.
Think I'm a little pissed off coz I was always hoping Belinda would find that secret cure,that impossible diet regeime,that alternative medical miracle,that 1 in a million chance that would help others,or basically the answer...The ANSWER for such a cruel disease that takes our women from us...whatever age they are , we always need our wives, mums, aunts,grandmothers.
Bloody damn it all ....with ALL our fundraising for cancer research,our MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of $$$$ donated to finding a cure or even a CAUSE......WHY the bloody hell, in this year of 2006, are we STILL asking "What causes breast cancer?"