The Prodigal Blogger

Ahem....well it has been 'some time' since I have posted on the Chook Whisperer. Much has happened in the intervening space of time. For a start, I've had another birthday and Nicole made me a birthday cake. She asked me what sort of cake I would like and that sent me off into a nostalgic anecdote about the birthday cakes Grandma Binny used to make me when I was a kid.

Well, that was enough for Nicole, who took up the challenge and made me this delightful cake. I promised Mum I'd send pictures of the cake, but this seemed a good opportunity to blow the dust off the chook whisperer and use the blog as a medium for providing them instead.

So here is picture of the whole cake...yep its my garden in cake form!!

Another shot (and the last fuzzy one I have before I figured out to put the camera in 'macro' mode)

Looks like the carrots are doing well in that garden!

Here is the chicken getting into the chicken feed on the ground


Hay Bales!

Another good shot of the Hay Bales (I have them stacked up in the back yard)

Overhead shot showing off the sleepers surrounding the garden bed

garden stuff and bikes

had a long week at work this week. very long hours. also didn't get as much riding in as i would have liked as i broke a spoke which makes the wheel waaaay out of true. its hard work when the brakes are jammed on for half of every revolution.

Anyway today i replaced the spoke and another bent one at the bike maintenance workshop. took the bbq too which was a nice addition to the workshop.

the rose bush near the shed is blooming now. This is the one that Raechelle took to with such gusto in July. Seems to have responded well to the attention.


The mint is also starting to look like its going to do all right in the old container


the spuds are going great guns, all but 4 are now well and truly established. mmmm pink eyes!


the last shot is a general backyard shot with the fig tree to the left of picture. Thanks to Trish (Ben's wife) for indentifying said tree.


sorry the pics wouldn't load. will bang them up soon - ALL FIXED NOW. Don't forget CAPS LOCK is the cruise control for the awesome :-)

anyway i have finished 'truing' my rear wheel and getting it all back together tonight. Its 'true' in the sense that its mostly true. I don't know if anyone has ever tried doing this, but its no where near as simple as you imagine it to be.

Quick Montage

Wow time can really get away from you. I didn't think it had been so long since I'd added a post.

The beans are pressing up against the top of the seedling try cover now. I'm going to take out the big ones (not all of them have sprouted yet), let them harden and then plant them out next weekend.

The potatoes are going great guns. about 15 out of 25 have sprouted lovely green foliage and are growing well. Pink Eyes in the new year for me!

Just got back from the movies - saw Death at a Funeral which was very funny.

For those of you that know Rhys, he is turning 18 this Wednesday so that will be a big day for him

This week I am going to try to ride to work every day. Need to get myself organised though. SOmehow I always seem to forget something. belt, cuff links, etc.

I also ordered a shiny new laptop for myself. I'll probably be doing a fair bit of travelling in the soming months and my desktop (this one I'm using right now) is getting quite long in the tooth. was time to update and a laptop can be salary packaged which makes it a bit cheaper. Anyway I hope that will arrive later in the week. I certainly have bucket loads of work I need to get done.

Today I went to the Kingston Markets with Ben and Trish. Sampled heaps of yummy stuff and had a very enjoyable day.

Best get back to the ironing, have to get 5 days clothes ready to cycle in tomorrow morning.

Newstopia!

Brilliant! I thought it was a sad indictment of Australian broadcasting when the Shaun Micallef show was pulled from the air a few years back. There is something about his comedy that makes me laugh until i cry. There is an intellectual (and i think philosophical) slant to his comedy that takes it beyond simple parody. Anyway I just finished watching his return to glory on SBS ( a far better place for his kind) and it was brilliant. Admittedly, for every 1 person who thought the micallef show was brilliant, there were 20 who thought it was rubbish, so it may be just me (and the 2 other people i managed to find who loved it). But he is back with bells on. Don't miss Newstopia, 10pm wed nights on SBS.

Today was ride to work day and it all went off very nicely. Had a great gathering for DVA here in Canberra. About 35-40 at our breakfast and everyone having a great time. Ok bed time!

Beans are getting bigger too!

quick beans

just a quick one cause its getting late and i have to get up early and ride to work. have to brief the Secretary at 8.30 tomorrow morning.

so here is a picture of the beans growing.


here is one of the walnut looking particularly happy.

Magic Beans!

Well what a week. Been flat out with the AICD course, but its been brilliant. It could well be the best course I've ever been on. But its truly terrifying how exposed you are as a director. I'm not talking about the dodgy ones like HIH etc. I mean you can get yourself in trouble by doing nothing when you should have been doing something, even if you didn't realise you should be doing something, because you should have known, and so on.

Had a bit of a play in the garden again. The beans I planted a week or so ago are leaping up! Theres at least 10 of them up now and one is quite large. The $500 cabbage is still the only one from the first tray that has emerged. The second tray had nothing, so i took all the punnets out of the mini greenhouse thingy and replaced them with 4 punnets of peas and 4 punnets of sweet corn. I am hoping that these will come up quickly like the beans did with daily watering as the beans have enjoyed. Today was also 'seasol day'. watering with seaweed water mix rather than just water. I'll try to remember to take a photo of the beans tomorrow. I planted about 70 bean plants i think (5 different varieties-all 'bush' beans -- kidney beans, flageolet beans, cherokee beans, yin & yang beans, basmatti beans. If all of them grow i plan to dry the extra in the trusty dehydrator and have them in winter soups etc.

I unwound all my dripper tube today and lay it in the sun under some pavers to try to get it straightened out a bit. I also constructed a grid of dripper pipes for 'bed number 2' (which is assigned to legumes at this point in the crop rotation). Unfortunately i didn't quite have enough connectors/elbow etc to get it all together. Will have to grab some from bunnings tomorrow.

For those following the EQ2 front, I dinged lvl 49 this morning before it warmed up enough to be wandering around outside. Was a bit chilly overnight in Canberra. As the tomato growers here say, you don't plant your tomoatoes out until you know the winner of the Melbourne Cup. Late frosts don't you know! Have finished the quest line in the Steamfont Mountains and now moved to the Sinking Sands and finished a dozen or so quests there.

Did a heap of laundry, etc, and have been listening to a lecture series on archeology and the discovery of various civilisations.

Also made some little loops of 5mm dripper line to go around the lemon and the walnut in their pots. The walnut is going great guns by the look of things.

Hide the Sausage

First day of the company directors course today. Was absolutely fascinating though very tiring. If I learned one thing today it was that you are absolutely mad if you are on a board. Even if its just the local cricket club or something. The courts have made it absolutely clear that if you are a director on a board of anything, you need to be away of your duties as a director (even if you are not called 'directors') otherwise you could end up sued for millions and wind up in jail. If you haven't read the Corporations Act and understand how to determine an entity's financial position, resign now!

But now for the headline story. Last night I cooked some curried sausages. Enjoyed them and went to bed. I have been getting up very early to ride to work (5.30 this morning) and so have been going to bed early. I was in bed and suddenly remembered that I hadn't put the leftover curried snags in the fridge. So i got up, went out to the kitchen, got a pyrex container (with lid) out of the cupboard, put the leftovers in and put it in the fridge. Tomight I got home and thought that some leftover curried snags would be just the ticket. nice and easy.....only i couldn't find them. Eventually I discovered them in the cupboard from which I had taken the container. In my sleepy haze I had taken out the container, filled it up and put it back....be honest, you thought the "hide the sausage" story was going to be rude, didn't you?

Not riding tomorrow as thunderstorms are expected. A perfect excuse to take the car tomorrow.