Daft as a Goose?

You would think wouldn't you that given the option of a beautiful pond that is spring fed with clean fresh water every day......that is deep enough to swim in WITH feet OFF the ground.......that's open on one side to feel not closed in, but with reeds on the other for cosiness and security.............  a gentle 5 minute waddle from their home...........surrounded by beautiful green grass.................that MIGHT be preferable to this old stinky muddy plastic bucket............?

Wouldn't you??

Gates!

Well the rain has drained away leaving everywhere very soggy. So much damage everywhere from places that have never experienced such devastation before. So much community unity as people rally together to help each other and local businesses get back on their feet So good to see............Meanwhile on our relatively unscathed farm................Geoff got given a gate! A beautiful gate in fact and we spent yesterday putting it in place. It took just about all day as everything had to be retro fitted into an existing very crooked gateway!

We love it but NOTHING is straight! It  is full of wedges and blocks. All quite ugly until it gets painted and all blends in a bit better.

As you can see the posts either side which are old , both bend outwards! A clear case of over strained wires in very wet ground l would say!

But it is all hidden in the front by the pickets! So the Wallabies in the paddock actually get the best view of it. l hope THEY appreciate it! It will all get a repaint ...( when it all dries out!)

The same person also gave Geoff these two VERY heavy seat ends..........we shall have to find somewhere to put these and find a top for them We certainly did well! Well done Geoff!

So life goes on , as we plunge deeper into Autumn. Beautiful grey hazy mornings and still relatively mild...

And l count the days l can still grow my amazing Bleeding Hearts plant outside before the first frost comes along and annihilates it!!

And talking of gates............here is one that the ponies have spent a goodly amount of time leaning on, scratching on and wrecking in general! 

Definitely seen better days............

But a nice new sturdy non gate has been put in its place. One l doubt ANY of them will be able to crush and crumple!

 Fingers crossed!!

 

Unprecedented!

Well, we had a lot of rain.....a LOT of rain! Not just rain, but wind, and a thunderstorm that lasted hours and hours!! We don't get a lot of extreme weather here in Tassie. We don't get a lot of hail, or snow, hurricanes, tsunamis, thunderstorms...... or huge amounts of rain.. We are generally pretty moderate in the extreme weather department.....except for yesterday............
The clean-up from Hobart's worst storm in decades is underway, with the total damage bill estimated to run into many millions of dollars.
The extreme weather event, combining heavy rains, wild winds and thunderstorms, had cars being swept down the main streets in Hobart! Not something you would ever expected to have seen!

It is only the fifth time since 1893 that Hobart had recorded more than 100mm of rain in a day. Mount Wellington recorded 236 millimetres. We are normally pretty impressed if we get 30ml! 150ml  of water falling out of the sky is something most of us have never had to cope with! We were lucky. Our old house coped well, nothing flooded , nothing overflowed , we just got a little soggy and our little Rivulet became a raging torrent!

That is all.........

Definitely one of the lucky ones!

 

 

Duck Weather.

Well, of course l DIDN'T finish my fence today! It has poured ALL day............l DID put the rails up though in-between cloud bursts, but of course l can't staple the wire on until l have painted everything so it's all very unsatisfactorily 'tacked on' now for another week. (Remind me why l didn't paint everything BEFORE l put it all up?????)
So.............. perfect weather today for ducks. They were very happy.

The chooks? Not so happy and they spent a fairly miserable day hanging out in their shed popping out whenever the rain eased up a bit...which wasn't much!

This big fat girl however did not move from her bed ALL day! Goats hate the rain and Toggles is a prime example of that. l think today as this photo clearly shows, she literally took her legs off and left them by the door!!

Lizzie is not quite such a wuss.! Being not such a mollycoddled goat as a baby she is definitely quite a bit 'tougher' than Toggles and whilst she didn't actually GO out in the rain, she preferred to spend her day sitting outside but very much under cover!

And whoever it was that said that sheep's wool protects them from the cold and rain doesn't know OUR sheep! They also spent most of the day inside under the barn lean to. With hay on tap, there was absolutely no reason to go outside whatsoever!

Beautiful little Patch .........

She hasn't changed much since she was a baby. Such a pretty little thing...

And THE most gorgeous sheep we have ever had.....Larry.....This fellow really is the sweetest most docile sheep l have ever met! He only has to be NEAR you to go into a trance.... just wanting a cuddle or an ear scratch He really is utterly adorable....Look at that face!

Named Fat Larry but nicknamed Buddha as a lamb......you can see why!

He was the last lamb born that year (2016) but as you can see by the photos he was the biggest of the lot! He had rolls of fat everywhere!

Here he is at the front. The youngest! (is it weird l know which lamb was which two years later??)

And he was the oddest looking little baby..............here he was at only a few minutes old...........

But always worth spending a bit of time with......He's a special boy!

 

 

 

 

And so it goes on.......

l don't know why l ever select a nice little job and always presume l can do it in a day ???  Ha Ha!! So this morning  out l go and ripped out the fence line....

And dug the hole...... l then looked at all the dry crumbly earth that was meant to go BACK into the hole and decided there was no way it would be able to go in tight and compacted enough without cement to hold the fence post securely.........Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

So out came a bag of cement...........Luckily we had one............

It takes 24 hours to cure strongly enough to be able to drill and screw things into the post so that pretty much shelved the plans l had for the rest of the day AND l had pulled all the fence out!!

So l had to put up a makeshift barrier and hope that holds the wallabies at bay for ...probably a week!!!! It's going to rain now for the next three days so this job will now not get finished until my NEXT days off!........ AND it's not painted either! (why didn't l paint the gate BEFORE l hung it up outside??) Ahh well.....

So instead l moved my three cherubs and their willies out in to the garden.......

 

l like it.....As long as the greenery grows up around them a bit! It's quite Victorian really....

l put it in my pond garden which is ablaze with red at the moment!

And then l put up the ornate corners in the courtyard. Love it!

The other gateway is too wide to get the whole gate in the photo but l love this one too!

Then the rain came.............

So I repaired the cast iron ones inside as well.... (well.....l HOPE l repaired them!) We shall see today when l take the clamps off)

So all in all a successful day!

 

Best Laid Plans....

All keen this morning! Up and out nice and early. Gate superficially in place to get an idea what l am heading for...

Turf dug out first thing. All the little birds loved me! There were worms everywhere. Gorgeous day!

Thank goodness for the mower! It certainly saved me some back breaking wheel barrow trips carting all the turf away. 

So l was going great guns...........turf out, horse poo on the ground ready for composting over Winter.......

Gate hung................ready to pull out the post and move it further in.....then decided the gate was crooked! Not just a little crooked but a lot! Not even built straight!!!.You can't actually tell from here but trust me ......it wasn't straight!! 

So l had to pull the whole thing apart and rebuild it straight!!!  Which took a while...............

Then I HAD to mow as it's going to rain a lot tomorrow and that's all l ended up accomplishing for my whole day! When it's dark at 5.30pm , days suddenly become very restricting indeed! .........But the lawn DID look pretty!

And l DID get to hang the gate , put the pavers down and chuck lawn mower clippings on the top  of everything to mulch it down ..

And noticed before l did that, that, that the lawn now has a lovely curve to it....

 

And l STILL had time to appreciate a beautiful evening........and there is always tomorrow!!

Jobs for tomorrow!

Three days off! Can't wait! Even though l think it's going to be a bit wet! A few jobs lined up for tomorrow though! First up is a bit of glue required. This isn't QUITE my thing......a bird bath......three little cherubs complete with all their bits....but it was given to us by someone who is leaving Tasmania and the top itself is lovely, all old looking and covered in mossy licheny things... So Possum proofing is imperative with bird baths here AND a solid wide base for the bottom. If this isn't done the Possum jumps up (no doubt to see if there is any food!) and tips the whole lot over AND breaks the bath part if it separates from the base! So some serious Liquid Nails at the ready for this job!

Then some repair work required for these lovely old decorative cast iron veranda corners. Again from another person we know who is selling up. These can go around the side veranda posts (once they are mended and painted) and will be perfect as they match the ones we have already on the front veranda...

And THEN ...the thinner aluminium decorative corners we already HAD on the veranda , have been painted matt black and will go into the old wooden entrance doors to the courtyard.....A touch of overly ornate Indian style coming up I think!!!

 

THEN.....under all this hay on the back of the ute are a couple of gates given to us by ANOTHER friend (we have lovely friends!!!) who has revamped his fence and was going  to THROW these older wooden picket gates in the Tip! WHAAAAAAATTTTT!!!!???????

So anyway......they are now ours and will go to my biggest job l have planned for tomorrow which is................

ANOTHER FLOWER BED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay! l think l will be up to 63 by now? Or actually maybe not......this bed involves joining two together so this is actually making my flower bed amount smaller!
So, this ugly farm gate is going and being replaced with a much narrower prettier picket fence gate. The turf is going so the two flower beds either side will be joined up. The pavers will go in the flower bed as a path to get to the gate! That's the fun bit. The boring bit  will be pulling out the gate post on the right and re digging it closer in to accommodate the narrower gate and then having to cut three new rails ,paint them and put them up and wire it off so the wallabies don't get in the garden!

Wooohoo! Just hope it doesn't rain tomorrow!!