Haiku from the Hour of the Wolf

                                                     Welcome the Problem

                                                       Solutions come in Silence

                                                       Ponder the Reflections 

Haiku for December

 

                                                Call Day this Delight

                                                 Night's Rejuvinations

                                                Magpies' Sonatas

      

Sequel to Storm damage

Continuing on from my previous blog which showed photos of the tall Eucalypt torn apart by that horrendous storm we had, laying on the ground, it has since been cut up by my son Gordon into fire wood. I bought him a chainsaw as a welcome home present after he lost everything in that Gidgegannup fire in February 2021. Well, it has already paid for itself with all the cutting up of various other trees that fell down and as you can see, the trailer was filled with this latest tree by Kym and me last Friday.

This time we also put down recycled vineyard posts first so the fresh wood will have plenty of air circulation and dry out fairly quickly.

Kym has an artistic eye and the wood is stacked in a very pleasing manner which the chooks, on the other side of the fence ,enjoy as  a windbreak.

It will unfortunately take twelve months before it is ready to be used in the wood burner.

The other rather exciting thing that has taken place, is that Gordon, after a lot of patience and a lot of trial and error, got the little Chevi truck which he got just after he returned here to South Australia, to run and was able to bring it round from the shed in the paddock to the house under its own steam this week.!

It is the cutest little truck to look at and he wants to keep it as it is and not paint or restore it but keep its history plainly in sight.

I look at it and wonder who it may have been who had it first and how proud and pleased they would have been back in 1925.....

It zips along in first gear at an amazing speed and is really quite a comfortable ride...mind you, if it was on a dirt road the dust would be quite unbearable and in winter of course you would freeze to death....

 The photo of the Willy Wagtail was taken in the Pepper tree and I had been walking underneath it for well over a week with out seeing it as I went to feed the chooks. Normally they have been nesting in the Holm oak in the front garden so am not sure if this could be a new pair.

The Wood duck brought their little family of six around as well last week to have a swim in the pond....so who says country life is dull and boring....

Storm Damage and Blue Things

On Saturday, 12th of November we had been listening to Thor, throwing His hammers around during most of the day....then around 4pm He let loose with the most horrendous storm I have ever experienced in the last 32 years I have lived here...

.The rain was in horizontal torrents and lashed the windows under the South facing verandahs which has never happened before....

When it finally abated and we were able to go outside to see what damage had occurred we found my beautiful, tall straight seedling tree, around 15 years old . had been twisted off about half way up and left a jagged stump as you can see in the next photo....the canopy fell on a bottle brush but I don't think that will be too damaged...

Walking further on the track we found the iconic Sugar Gum on the corner of the property, had been forced to relinquish a limb which fell on the boundary fence and tore out the strainer post holding up our newly installed gates....

We installed the gates only recently as our neighbour had intruders damage her shed as they tried to steal her ride on mower.... and a neighbour across the road had been broken into and most of their electronic gear stolen...so gates do stop yahoos from just taking a turn around our yard...

 On a happier note...  the photography group I have recently joined , was set a project to photograph something blue... well, my irises were in flower before the rain ruined them.. so here it is... a Blue Iris in all its glory....

Do remember to click on the photos to get a better look....

Haiku for Alexis

                                                         Green Goddess Lilly

                                                           Regally Flowering Once

                                                          Frogs Trumpet Their Joy 

Wild Game or Christmas dinner

Here is a total surprise from late this afternoon.

While I was sitting here at the dining room table with my laptop,late this afternoon, this amazing Guinea Fowl appeared in front of the window....it may have come from the Peacock farm but that however is about a kilometer and a half from here. Still they do have long legs I guess and can fly but only up to a roof top or in a tree where they are safe from foxes. A friend of mine from years ago used to artificially hatch their eggs as they are very poor parents. Then when they were a certain size he would sell them as pheasants....hence the idea of a Game Christmas dinner coming up.....

It was rather curious that the resident Magpies didn't put up a fuss at all, as usually they do and at anything strange, they protest very loudly. I do hope it stays around and befriends my chooks...

The irises have started to flower now and I quite like the white one with the yellow falls. the other ones are a lovely rich yellow and there is also a yellow one with white falls....

The garden has gone ballistic with all the rain we have had. Not that the rain has been heavy as the soil underneath is quite dry and I noticed today with the warmth the vegie patch looks like it will need a drink tomorrow

It is Bird week this week apparently and I have no bad bird stories other than that my chooks ,when I let them out for an extended scratch around , will come over to me and peck my shoes and legs of all things .....it keeps me moving I can tell you......

Best Twenty Eight Dollars I ever spent....

Earlier this year I had the good fortune to buy four Brown Chooks from a free- range farm in the hills of Willunga. They were 18 months old and apparently not good enough to be commercially viable in the egg laying department. I payed $28 for them and that is the best $28 I ever spent...

I picked them up in wine boxes and settled them into my chook run on fresh hay with a bowl of water and some pellets which are meant to give them all the nutrients they need.

The following morning , as a "thank you" they presented me with four eggs and wandered into the spacious yard where I had dropped a wheel barrow load of hay from a round bale that was still in the paddock close by.

They loved scratching around in it and it was a huge success with them and still is. The bale is nearly finished now but there is another one in the paddock which will be brought over with the tractor. They have laid a constant four eggs a day with occasionally only three.....right through the winter months. My friends love buying these happy eggs and so their feed bill is taken care of as well..

This photo on the left, shows the Tawny Frogmouth parents on the top limb with the two chicks below them. Again he was a long time sitting on the eggs, they seem to take four weeks to hatch. They stay on the nest for a week or so more and then suddenly the chicks fledge and  they are off into the wide world beyond the Ash tree where they were born.

You may have to click on the photo to see them more clearly...another successful spring..

Haiku for September II

                                                     Raven Robbing Nests

                                                      Hopefully the Noisy Miner's

                                                       Sadly the Blackbird's 

Haiku for September I

                                                 Wild Winds Wet the Rain

                                                  Animals Huddled for Warmth

                                                Books Beckon on the Sofa 

Haiku for August II

                                                         The World seems Chaos

                                                           War Roaring Floods Kill Destroy

                                                            Still the Setting Sun 

 

            In a way I ought not to explain the Haiku but it was inspired by seeing those roaring and huge 

            floods in Afghanistan and the total destruction Putin is causing by bombing Russia's neighbour

            We have had devastating floods in Queensland and NSW as well this year. 

Haiku for August

                                                 What Heartache is this

                                                 Crumbling Ruins on the Far Hill

                                                   Someone Dreamt here Once

 

Origami jumper construction

Here are the photos of what I did with the two lengths of knit-weaving after they were completed.

I sewed part of them together and  marked where the neckline needed to go with a contrasting thread. Then took it into the Studio and did a zig-zag stitch just outside of the contrasting thread. That was repeated so as to make sure that when the inside area was cut away the knitting would not unravel. this was done yesterday.

This morning I hung the knitted strips onto the needles of the machine, the wrong side facing out. Then carefully pushed each needle through the cloth ( 144 needles in all). Carefully knitted each needle back so as to have the loops on the needles and the garment hanging down. Knitted 12 rows on Tension dial 7 then did one row on Tension dial 10 and another 12 rows on TD 7. Carefully picked up all the loops which were created when I first hung the garment and hand knitted those back one by one. Did one row with the carriage and cast off around the pegs.

 You can see by the above photo that it makes a neat neckline hiding all the cut bits of thread when the circle was cut out. 

On the left is the Origami folded garment which now needs to be hand stitched together.

I have spent about 20 hours , designing, swatching, knit-weaving,doing the neckline and hand sewing.....so at $30/hour that would come to $600 plus the handspun Merino/silk yarn and other yarns...

The garment is for sale at $700.00 and please don't rush me....Hahahahahaha

Origami and Knit-Weaving

It has taken a while for me to get  my enthusiasm back for knit-weaving. I do enjoy it, as it is a very straight forward process on the knitting machine I use. Doing the origami garments is excellent for using up oddments of yarn in the weaving in process.

I had to refer to my notes of years ago when I taught this method at the South Australian Machine Knitting camp at Melrose. Putting in the neckline is the most difficult part as it has to be a cut-and-sew job which can be very tricky if you have cut the knitted piece and find it is in the wrong position...

I will show the finished garment later in the week after having sewn it together and put in the neck opening.

My sister Jo, came to stay over the Easter break and we decided , that rather than drive anywhere, we would have our picnic in what we call "The Hundred Acre Wood" which is about fifty yards from the kitchen. Not only did we enjoy our picnic but were able to drink a bottle of Pinot Gris and not have to worry about breathalisers ....we had a lovely rest in the Studio afterwards, listening to Vivaldi's cello concertos...five of them....

 The Autumn light in the morning can be very lovely at the moment, it is my favourite time of the year...cool days and crispy mornings...

The vines are all colouring now and no doubt the wine is fermenting nicely in the winery vats....it will be interesting what the winemakers think of this vintage....

Let certain overseas countries drink Aqua Pura......

Haiku VII

                                                 We are Here on Earth 

                                                   To Hug each Other with Care

                                                    The Rose has Sharp Thorns 

Meeting the new Girls

Let me introduce Betty, Maud, Esme and Henny-Penny,... the latest guests to stay in Tineke's Chook yard. They are free range Hy-line hens, cast-for-age at eighteen months....I picked them up late yesterday afternoon from a place not far from here but along an amazing road , high in the hills south of Willunga. I will want to explore those roads now through those steep hills as the views are amazing.The little female family has settled in already and produced two eggs for my breakfast....They are wonderful calm birds and it is a joy to have them..

The photo on the right shows the empty cocoon of a large moth and I will endeavour to look up what it is called. There are a lot of them this year and it amazes me how something so soft can wriggle itself out of the heavy, hard clay... we have had very little rain to make it easy for them...perhaps they are a metaphor for us when we live in such interesting times.....

Haiku VI

                                                     The Thrush sings Courage

                                                    Into Morning Hesitations

                                                    Kookaburras Laugh

Haiku V

 

                

                                                                Autumn vines greet Dawn

                                                                Loudly Lorikeets Waken

                                                                Silent Eucalypts

Haiku IV

                                                     Noisy Miners Strike

                                                      Small Soft Lorikeet Stone Dead

                                                        The Wind Shakes Green Reeds 

Haiku III

                                                         Assertive Wagtail

                                                        Twitters on the Birdbath Edge

                                                        Who is Listening?

 

 

        I am adding this little bit of information for those of you who have been trying to comment on the blogs, dear friends... even I can no longer comment as the cursor will not engage for me. It has been possible to comment under Anomymous but even that is no longer possible for me...so I apologize for this and if any one of you know how to get back to being able to comment ...please let me know...yours frustrated, Tineke

Haiku II

                                                         Candelabra Lilies

                                                          Their brilliant Blooms in a whirl

                                                            Dervishes in hot Pink 

Haiku Once again

                                                    Bold Paintbrush Lilies

                                                    Announce Cool Autumn Mornings

                                                    Soft Cushions for Frogs

Joys of Aproaching Autumn& Weird Fungi

It was quite a jolt the other morning, to see that the white Amaryllis Belladonna lilies had suddenly appeared, just like that...no fanfare or drumbeats from the Earth, there they are in all their white beauty....it made me stop and almost dissolve in tears with such gloriousness to see so early in the morning.... they are commonly known as Naked Ladies as the bulb throws up these impressive blooms before there is a leaf to be seen, hence the surprise to see them as heralds of the coming Autumn. I wonder if our Northern Hemisphere cousins have that same reaction of delight when their first crocus appears to herald their Spring...

It is the same time of the year for both of us...we have had a reasonably cool summer so far with not much rain in our area but it almost feels like autumn already...

Now this morning, when filling the birdbath, I saw this black blob under the Holm Oak and thought at first our neighbour's dog had left yet another visiting card....when I went to remove it, I suddenly found instead of a dog turd, a black fungus...where do these things suddenly appear from? I have never seen one in our garden. Then wondered was it edible? Sadly no, it is Daldinia concentrica and grows on dead wood...yet my Holm Oak is very much alive...The edible black fungus is Aricularia polytricha and used a lot in Chinese cooking..

 Quite a few years ago I had the white fungus appear in the garden in front of the kitchen window.It looked like dog vomit ...but no, this too is a fungus and so we have had quite a variety of fungi in various places, one that looked like a gone -to -seed- cauliflower..

I wonder if the opening rains this year will bring a great crop of the small, delectable field mushrooms, they too, appear quietly and are always most welcome....

Remembering Birthdays....

                                 Snowy Mountains wombats in the wild live from 5 to 14 years.....

                                  Today would have been my son Gregory's 59th birthday......

                                    He made it just past his 17th birthday and lived life to the full....

                                    The wombat was sent to a sanctuary and became aggressive 

                                   to the point where he bit a tourist in the leg...and guess what happened....

Toad of Toad Hall

We are having El Nino or Nina weather pattern this summer and this means some of  Australia suddenly gets more rain than it bargains for....

So last week here in Willunga we had over an inch of rain which is very welcome in our southern dry climate... but not so good in other parts of the state which received inches in hours which washed away large sections of roads and railway tracks.

The rain here though, made the bark of the eucalypts bring out these wonderful colours...

click on the photo to get a better look....

The next day I found this poor little green parrot dead, in front of the Studio window.We have had an influx of those and also the Rainbow Lorrikeets which chatter and screech away in the tops of the tree.

Yesterday when Kym was digging over some of the vegie beds, getting them ready for Autumn plantings, he dug up what he thought was an old potato...He was about to take it to where he had deposited some stray onions from another bed,when the potato tried to hop off...

So here we have Toad of Toad Hall, stripped of his flamboyant costumes and naked as the day he was born-.....

 It is of course, a Burrowing Frog and the first one I have seen here in the thirty odd years we have lived in this place. I did have the Burrowing Frog at my Watervale cottage back in the late eighties, but those were more brown and darkly spotted. I could not find an image on Google the same as this frog so cannot give its proper name sadly.... we buried him back in his little bed and hope he does a lot of good in the garden.....we need all the help we can get...

What is Life?

                                     What is Life but a series of stripping down.......

                                                                                    "Currango"

                                                                                    Snowy Mountains 1969

What is Love?

                                   "  To love is the ability to bear Life's cruelties with equanimity"

                                           

                                                                                         Egbertine Ordelman-Hazel

Sugar Gum or Eucalyptus cladocalyx and the inability to reply to comments on Blogs

Firstly I would like to apologize to those of my readers who have left comments on my blogs, for not acknowledging them. For some reason the cursor will not engage in the reply box and I find that very frustrating as I have no idea why that has suddenly happened.

I just thought you may be interested in the huge Gum tree at my front gate which I mentioned in my last blog. Fortunately it is on my neighbour's property.  Eucalyptus cladocalyx can grow to great heights and very often has three, four or more layers of canopy. They are very easy to coppice when young and this was done quite a bit on farms in the early days as the wood is excellent fire wood.It is also a beautiful wood to make into furniture.

One evening in August in 2020, there was an enormous thunderclap which was a total surprise as there was no lightening or  rain or rough weather of any kind. It was quite dark so I didn't go out to see what had actually happened.

The following morning I thought to just check what might have happened and found the big Gum tree had dropped a huge limb on my neighbour's shed causing extensive damage as you can see by the photos I took. The noise had been caused by the limb falling on the shed roof and reverberating like a thunderclap.

It took my neighbour quite some months to have his shed repaired.

Being a South Australian and from an old Willunga family , he ought to have known not to build a shed under a Gum tree as they are notorious for dropping their limbs without a moments notice.

The poor tree is no longer the handsome specimen that it was. It would not surprise me if the tree is well over a hundred years old....there was a whole line of them before these paddocks were divided up and sold in the early eighties...

 Some men cleared the wood away very quickly as it would make excellent fire wood which is now at a premium price....