School Holidays Already

Wow, it seems as though the school year had just begun and its end of term one already! The girls spent the first week in vacation care and didn't get up to much exciting, Karren has the second week of the holidays off work and they will spend plenty of girl time together up until I get a break over Easter.

We have just finished decorating the girls rooms, paint and paint and some more paint, plus some stickers and a new desk and book case were the order of the day.

Rosie's room with her new desk freshly painted in Fuchsia Falls

Feature wall in Fuchsia Falls

Toy box and Book case in Fuchsia Falls

Milly's room painted in Minted with new desk and book cases.

Owls feature prominently, bed repainted in white.

Very green but Emily is very happy with the result.

 When uploading photos to the laptop I found some photos of Emily's badge presentation ceremony. Due to health and safety concerns only parents were allowed to pin the badges onto the kids! We really are producing a generation of risk averse, mollycoddled, cotton wool wrapped kids! I try my hardest to encourage the kids to take risks, have a crack at things and take risks when appropriate. They are not allowed to run at school on concreted areas!! How do they play Basketball and Netball? Gee imagine if they fell and grazed a knee or even worse broke a bone? Don't even mention climbing trees.

Walker House Sport Captain.

Emily turns 11 next week, I can't believe how quickly those 11 years has flown by, scary really.

We spent some more time in the garden yesterday planting some grasses, more Cordylines and Bromeliads. This afternoon we took a heap of cuttings and then replanted them, heaps of Cordylines and Rhoeos planted to fill some more gaps. Rosie's veggie garden is progressing nicely, the lettuce, pumpkin and herbs are flourishing, the carrots and beetroot have just sprouted. The pumpkins are apparently giants, all we need to do is remove all but one pumpkin from each plant and they will become enormous. Time will tell!

Some  more Fountain grass planted down the driveway.

Planting more Cordylines and Bromeliads at dusk.

 I have really found a soft spot for Bromeliads and I am starting my own little Brom garden out the front, I only have six so far and I am trying to get sun tolerant ones to plant in clumps.

Bromeliads

We bought a couple of Elephant ear succulents a while ago, one didn't last but the other has thrived, we took two suckers off the main plant and replanted them today, again trying to clump them up.

Elephant ears with suckers replanted.

These Cordylines are incredible plants, we have managed to get more than twenty plants from two original plants. We simply take cuttings, whack the stems in the ground and wait for them to establish them selves again then take more cuttings. It is amazing what will eventually sprout as stand alone plants. A simple cutting of no more than a stick has sprouted. Even a couple of chunks of the root mass, no more than 30mm square have sprouted as well. Brilliant!

Cordyline cutting taking off.

The above photo shows a stick that was just shoved in the dirt. It has taken off nicely, you can see the growth at the bottom of the stick. Makes it pretty cheap to fill up and establish heaps of plants in a garden. It's not too difficult if I can do it!

Rosie's Vegie Garden

Rosie has been pestering us for months, she desperately wanted a vegie garden. On Friday afternoon she bought some mung beans home from school that she had carefully propagated from seeds. Of course these mung beans needed a home so she upped the anti on the vegie garden.

Sunday arvo I was finally worn down, off to Bunnings for some sleepers, seeds and seedlings then some dirt and the afternoon was filled by building a garden.

Fully Loaded Trailer

The trailer was once again loaded above and beyond the call and we gingerly made our way home lest we blew an over burdened tyre! A sigh of relief was heard as I backed the trailer down the drive and the real work began.

The design was basic, nothing ground breaking, just simple sturdy and easy to whack together. I still haven't managed to get myself a decent circular saw and I didn't fancy making eight cuts through 200 x 50 treated pine sleepers with a hand saw so Stihl provided a less physically intensive cutting method. Not millimetre accurate by any stretch of the imagination but close enough for this job.

The kids made themselves scarce while I cut up the timber then reappeared to help with construction. Large noisy power tools like grinders, chainsaws, mowers and whipper snippers make the girls disappear quicker than a rat up a drain pipe.

Assembly was quick and painless.

Rosie "holding" everything in place.

Ready for soil to be added.

When the unpleasant task of filling the contraption with soil began, the girls disappeared again, no surprises there! Especially given both of them are seemingly allergic to physical work. I wanted to get a cubic metre of soil to fill the bed in one trip, alas the trailer would not have liked carrying more than 1.5 tonne so I had to settle for 3/4 of a cube on the first load and 1/2 a cube in the second load which was completed this afternoon after work. Initial measurement indicated that 3/4 of a cubic metre would have been sufficient, but whilst at Bunnings, Karren insisted that I build the base two sleepers high rather than one which was my first intention. This of course increased the amount of soil required. It does of course look much nicer two high and makes it less back breaking to tend the garden.

We had to plant something once the bed was full so the seedlings for the herb garden went in, Basil, Thyme, Oregano, Parsley, Chives, Coriander some Chilli and of course the Mung beans were all planted.

Seedlings planted.

 The biggest challenge we face now is to keep the Deer, Kangaroos, Bandicoots and other critters out of the vegies. Hopefully the dog will finally make himself useful.

It's raining so we don't have to water today!

Plenty of room left for vegies.

On the weekend we will plant the seed for Carrots, Pumpkin, Snow Peas, Lettuce, Spring Onion and Beetroot. You know what they say about Beetroot don't you? Well you can beat an egg but you can't beat a...

It has been a while...

I have to admit to having very little motivation regarding the blog of late. I finally got into action and thought an update was in order. It has been nearly three months since I bothered last and as you would imagine quite a bit has transpired, here are some highlights.

After the new year we had a few southerners visit which was great, we caught up with the Klein klan and Mark Van de Heuvel and his partner Faye which was fantastic, we shared some beverages and a BBQ and had a great night.

We showed the Kleins around Street's beach, young Ashley showed me how to eat ice-cream like a
BOSS!

Rachael, Damian and the boys very generously shouted us a ride on a Jetboat out of the Gold Coast. We went down a fortnight ago and we had a ripper time! I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone, it is all kinds of awesome!

As you would expect we have been continuing to work feverishly on the front garden, I can finally say it is finished. Well we will still need to plant some additional plants to fill some gaps. I like to - for my sanity - consider it complete! I reckon it looks great! Knocking down the fence at the front helped open up the garden and it looks much better. I am not unhappy about the length of time taken, there was a ship load of work that went into it.

No fence!

Mulch done!

No fence

Charlie wants to come...

Looking north west

Looking good I reckon!

There are one or two little things to get done, I want to get a new mailbox, remove the pencil pines at the entrance and down the side of the driveway. All the irrigation is working as it should, the local birdlife like to drink the water that accumulates in the Bromeliads.

In the last few days we have noticed a critter digging and turning over the mulch in search of tucker, it could be either an Echidna or a Bandicoot. The markings initially indicated an Echidna but I am not convinced, to help solve the riddle I have purchased a game trail camera off the eBays interweb thingo, it should arrive early next week. Hopefully we will be able to identify the culprit soon.

Holes that look a lot like an Echidna snout

Emily had her school house captain elections a few weeks ago, she was fortunate enough to be named the Walker house captain, we were all well chuffed! Rosie has finally lost her two front teeth. Both girls are now playing netball at Graceville for the Raiders Netball Club, they are both excited about it, but by god sport is ridiculously expensive up here, it is a disgrace and makes sporting endeavour in Ballarat down right bargain basement!

Hopefully I can provide further updates more frequently!

Happy New Year

Another year has come and gone…

We were fortunate enough to have some of our family visit for the Festive period, it was great to catch up with everyone and the place was a bit hectic for a week or two, but it was well worth it, catching up after many months was an awesome Christmas present in itself! The kids of course make Christmas, and they were in fine form!

Pool Time!

The lounge room looked like a toy factory on Christmas morning and all the kids were well and truly spoilt, of course this scene was prefaced by the annual argument that Karren and I have regarding Santa's salutary generosity. I recall that Santa was not quite so magnanimous when I was a child and my predilection for Christmas was not diminished by this!

Of course boxing day was spent watching the cricket, the next four days of cricket capping off a great end to 2013 with proper cricket equilibrium returning to where it belongs. Apart from the cricket, everyone took the opportunity to cool off in the pool, in fact Pa even had a splash and I can't remember the last time I saw him swim!

A big splash awaits

Another Cannon Ball

Fun and Games

Aside from being pretty busy preparing for Christmas not much of note has happened for us since the last post at the start of Summer, a little more time was spent in the garden and one half of the front is now complete! We added some cardboard to act as a weed mat then topped with 3 cubic metres of Hoop Pine mulch. In my opinion it looks much better! The planting is still a little sparse and we will add more into the garden beds as funds and supply meet.

Looking decidedly better

We transferred a couple of Bromeliads from large pots into the front garden and replaced them with two Yucca.

Two transplanted Bromeliads 

Yucca Elephantipes

A couple more days and the other side will be transformed from this…

Messy and full of weeds

To look more like this…

More plants will come over time

As you can see from the above photos the weed and feed added to the front "lawn" has made its presence felt, amazing how much of the grass wasn't actually grass isn't it!

A few months ago we bought what we thought were Dwarf Purple Fountain Grass or Pennisetum Advena - Rubrum Dwarf, unfortunately it looks as though of the five we purchased (from Bunnings) only one was indeed Rubrum Dwarf and the other four simply Rubrum! Of course we threw away the plant labels so we can't prove that was indeed the case.

Dwarf on the right 

Dwarf on the left

So what I hear you say, well Dwarf supposedly gets to about 60cm high, the standard to nearly 140cm. This extra height takes the seed head above the pool wall and nicely distributes seed heads into the pool as the heads gently sway in the breeze and the aforementioned seed heads are a pain in the freckle to remove!

We headed off to Tamborine to do some bush walks with the kids and soon found out that a large proportion of the QLD population decided to do the exact same thing, busy doesn't begin to describe it. 

Curtis Falls

                  

Still we had an enjoyable morning walking through the rain forest with hundreds of others... At lunch Rosie saw an ad for a reptile and crocodile show so that was next on our list to visit. Furry put on an interesting and educational show that had Rosie enthralled.

First Day of Summer

The first day of summer was as usual spent working in the garden. It was a pleasant enough day in the high 20s, but a little muggy after the rain we had on Saturday and early this morning, we had a very healthy 48mm and the water tank is now full and the weeds are thriving!

Last week we had some work done on the Body Corporate common property, the common property is the bushland around the estate and as a Body Corporate we have to maintain it. Lantana had gone wild and vast tracks of the common property were over run by it. The BCC had given very specific instructions as to how the Lantana was to be removed. A special rubber tracked Bobcat with a large grinder mounted on the front was secured to carry out the Lantana reduction.

Lantana everywhere

Our house is up there somewhere

More Lantana

Jungle like.

A full day was required to do all that was allowed, no Lantana was to be removed by machinery where the slope was greater than 1 in 4 and all basal roots needed to remain intact. At the moment it looks a bit barren, but the Lantana will regrow and we will have to control it further with a frog friendly Glyphosate. I am thinking of contacting LandCare to see if we can get some more trees planted.

Lantana gone - for now.

Hopefully the trees will grow now.

Big difference, dead trees choked by Lantana.

Today we focused on the area under and around the trampoline, I finished off the garden edging, thankfully it is now all completed, all 55 metres of it. Once the edging was complete we hit the weeds with Glyphosate and then mulched the whole lot. We used Hoop Pine mulch, it is ideal for sloping garden beds because it resists being washed away due to its curly bark. The down side is that it is near enough to impossible to shovel. So 5.5 cubic metres of mulch were moved by picking up handfuls and chucking it in the wheel barrow. I can tell you now the skin on your fingers is not tough enough to handle 5.5 cubic metres of mulch! I am currently typing this with my toes so please excuse any spelling mistakes.

Biggest Trampoline ever?

Charlie is happy with the job!

Fountain Grass is thriving.

In the New Year after the weeds have been poisoned a few more times we will start to plant throughout this garden area, more grasses are the favourite to get the nod at this moment in time.

We managed to get a thriving self seeded tomato plant growing in the garden on the west side of the pool, it was producing plenty of fruit, however, we were not able to get any ripened. It was apparent they were being eaten by something, up until this afternoon we did not know what.

Beautiful male King Parrot getting a belly full of Tomato

Not fussed by us at all!

We have a Tomato loving male King Parrot that has taken an obvious liking to our plant. I can only imagine that there will be plenty more self seeded Tomatoes popping up around the area due to this bloke!

Our neighbours saw an Echidna last week so we are keeping our eyes wide open in anticipation of seeing him, here's hoping we have some photos for the next blog update. I am pretty sure he is responsible for a fair percentage of the holes in the lower part of our garden, the Bandicoots did the rest.

We have had some solar panels installed to help reduce our electricity bill and cover the running costs of the pool and the A/C when it infrequently runs. We have  changed the timing of the filter pump and we will be doing all our clothes and dish washing during the day now to get the most out of the power we produce during daylight hours. Our first full quarter bill with the pool was $850 so we look forward to seeing how much smaller the next one will be!

So Christmas is less than four weeks away and we can't wait to catch up with our Families, the girls are super excited about seeing Nan, Pa, Grandma, the cousins, aunt and uncle visiting! They are not at all excited about the Chrissy presents.