 Another Country Diary Links to images and other pages are in blue. These pages are broken up into weeks, or when the page gets too image heavy. |
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| Week of 13 to 20 October '02 | ||
 This
blue wren and its hard to see female mate have been collecting
insects off the window frames of the shed. I managed to get some images
of them together but unless there was an overlayed arrow saying 'female
wren here' you wouldn't see it. That's obviously an adaptive pattern
that allows her to blend with sticks and branches but the alternative
bright plumage for the male must make him a better target. On the front
lawn, I found the
body of a silver-eye that must have been caught by a butcher bird or a hawk. It's insides were neatly
ripped out, it's not at all like how a cat kills, where it spreads the feathers everywhere. |
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 When
I cut back the pond reeds, as we have to do every year, the frog spawn is
dotted throughout the edges. I tried to slash around the biggest lumps
and not disturb them, but I'm sure I stirred up a few to be eaten by
goldfish.
I've put a small sticky blob of the
eggs into a bucket of pond water and I'll try and photograph the
emerging tadpoles. |
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 This
morning we
woke up to a muddy world. Dry red dust blown in from the west in a
windstorm, had covered Canberra and the valley, just after some rain. It
stuck tight (and it's still there some days later).
The windstorm lasted
about two hours or so and only the daughter who was working late at the
pub saw it. We were asleep unaware that our world outside was being clay
coated.
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 The
asparagus didn't suffer from clay-coating, the spears have been growing
as you watch. We've picked a small bunch, cutting a few each day and
wrapping them in a plastic bag and storing them in the fridge. We mixed
them with a bunch of
store bought spears and had enough for three of us for a good entree.
The taste is stronger the fresher they are but the most obvious is how
the commercially grown ones are not as crisp. I don't know how many days
they take to get to my plate. From next week on there's usually enough
for two snacks a week for a month. That's from ten plants. If you wanted
to feed a bigger family you could double that number, just as long as
they don't get tired of eating them (fickle kids!). |
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 There's
two young possums that live in the hollow wall of the shed and if
they're just emerging, they get startled when I turn on the light. This
one startled me because it was on the ground when I stepped in from the
yard and reached for the switch. It raced past my legs and up the birch
tree beside the door. It then stopped at eye level showing no sign of
fear and asked for a portrait.
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The clematis is out in showy glory climbing through the red flowering
quince and up the dead overhanging branch of the apricot tree. It seems intent on
getting to the top of the forest canopy but somebody should tell it that
there isn't a forest
competing with it. It's also climbing artfully along the wobbly wire fence
between our place and Val's next door, with the benefit of making even that look attractive.
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| Fred Harden | ||
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Hosing
down the cars and the garden furniture seemed to wash it off but when it
dried, the clay was back. You actually had to scrub it off.. We've been
told that there is certain to be more dust storms this year because it's
so dry out in the central NSW countryside. We've noticed how the fruit
trees are looking distressed, and started to water the smaller ones.
We've never done that in the time I've been here. Excess water charges
coming up.
The
grass didn't look that dirty, but some things in the garden stayed
coated. These lily pads in the pond, and the surface of the water stayed
coated. I sprayed them with the hose and watched the clay run off, but
it will taken a lot more than that to shift it. 
The
heron is having a great time with the goldfish. I found the first one on
the bank, it was medium size, about six inches long. It had a speared beak hole in it, so that answers the question
about fishing methods. I left it there thinking the heron would return
and eat it rather than kill another. It went flyblown and was dried and
smelly by the end of the day. Max, the younger dog had a great time
rolling on it, and had to be washed before we'd let him into the house.