Not feelin’ the ‘love’!

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There hasn’t been much ‘accomplished’ in the last couple of weeks.

Firstly we had about 10 days of much needed rain, which of course made the paddocks super-sloppy, and meant that no mowing could be done during that time, so the grass almost got away from us again – but we managed to get it mown in fits and spurts during a couple of dryish days, when the storms didn’t come in until the afternoon.

After the rains, came the insane heatwave that most of Eastern Aus has been experiencing – and with the energy-sapping heat – it meant that just making it through the routine mundane chores that one needs to accomplish each day (as well as work) didn’t leave a whole lot of ‘mojo’ left to do much else…

Of course then theres the whole story of the industrial fan making ghastly noises, and in the end we had to take it down and return it to the shop – so right now we’re back to just using a couple of pedestal fans…
Yep – first world problem – but gawdddd this heat is kicking our butts big time 😐

About 4 weeks ago we ordered another couple of raised beds from Bunnings, and finallllly they called this morning to tell us they’d arrived!
We’d pretty much come to the conclusion that they were being constructed by the Ikea folks at their home base in Sweden!!

We did have a sad event a couple of weeks ago…

You’ll remember our first chickens to come to the Farm – Jac & Izzy.
Well, whilst out gardening late one afternoon, we noticed a flash of silver down by Cluck-Manon (aka the chook pen).
We quickly realised that it was our neighbours dog, that is actually a breed of bird-hunting dog.

She’d managed to get out of their yard, gone through three other properties, to come in via our back fence, and at that time of the day, the chooks were all out free-ranging.
Well Izzy was a very squat, very round little bantam, who waddled very slowly when she walked – which she didn’t do a lot of, because she really couldn’t be bothered.
Izzy also didn’t much like the free-range life, and pretty much stuck to her pen…

Basically – poor lil Izzy was a ‘sitting duck’ as far as meals-on-wheels for bird-dog was concerned.
She was too bloody fat to run or fly away, and she was a captive in her own pen.

We got down to the cage just as the dog grabbed her, but the dog had managed to sink her teeth into Izzys back, and between the shock of it all and the injury, she passed away later that evening… 🙁

She’s buried in the huge big garden bed that our visitors moved down to the back paddock back in November – so she will be ‘feeding’ some beautiful plants in the future.

We’ve still got four chooks: Charlie, Margaret, Ramona and Jac, and they’re giving us miles of eggs, and are happy lil campers.

The neighbours apologised lots, and have said they will keep a better eye on their dog.
And so will we!

Charlie has recently learnt to crow.
He’s also recently learnt to bonk the Ladies.
He’s quite proud of both these achievements, however Margaret is a bit ‘over’ his advances, as he manages to squish her leg somehow, every.single.time he bonks her, and she spends the next two hours limping about looking royally pissed off – while he struts about, thinking the he’s gods-gift to Hen-dom!

We might end up having to get another couple of Ladies, just so that he’s got more of a selection to practice his acrobatics on…

We finally finished our jigsaw, and have started on another, but it has been on the back-burner (well under a cover actually) over the last coupe of weeks, as we’ve spent more time reading.

The open-house at our house in town went well, with seven groups of people through, but no bites as yet.
Its early days so far as being “on the market” is concerned, but we’ll be super happy, less stressed and breathing a lot easier once its done and dusted.

We’ve managed to score another singer sewing machine base!! (and for free – wheehee!!)
This one will be adapted to be a desk for the computer, that mostly lives on the dining room table right now…unless we have people over. lol

The other singer base is our tv table, and we love it.
Perfect height with a nice big slab of natural timber on top.

We’ll be using another slab that we have tucked away in the shed, for the desktop too.
Should look great once its done, and will be super-useful!

The first part of the western red cedar cladding went up last week, alas the timber place had shorted us one sheet 😐
We have enough to do either side of the glass doors, and they’ll be next to go up, once we have put in an extra upright for support.

We’re painting them on the back, sides and top, and then completing the painting once they’re up.
Pretty happy with hows its lookin’ so far! 🙂

You’ve also heard the previous fire-failure stories, however we can report that finally a fire was lit that actually burnt(!!), to get rid of some old unneeded paperwork, and we piled it all up along with some twigs, mounds of leaves leaves etc, that came from a big morning of raking.
The fire was lit in the big garden bed down the back, so that it too can provide goodness for the garden once its filled up and planted out.

It looks like we might have had a couple of plant losses, along the fence-line.
We’re waiting in hope to see if they will come back to life from the base.
We think that they might have a dose of over-spray when the neighbour was poisoning a few weeks back 🙁
Fingers crossed for them tho.

And lastly – the back corner block behind ours has finally sold, and is being build on by one of the local builders, as a house and land package.

The guy is not doing much in the vein of ‘neighbourly relations‘ – thats for bloody sure!!

So far, he has completely torn up our driveway and paddock, had one of his trucks bogged up to its axels in our paddock, has his workers parking all along our driveway, used our paddock as a storage space for the rio for his slab, and used our water (we installed a tap at the corner of our property, to water the orchard, when we first ran the line in) to make up concrete to put in fenceposts around the entire perimeter of the property; and to damp down the slab after it was poured!
Oh, and repeatedly blocked our driveway with cars, truck, diggers etc…

A friendly ‘word’ has now been had, so hopefully he’ll pull his head in a bit, and stop thinking he can do whatever he wants, wherever and whenever he wants!!
We’re just glad he’s building to sell!!