@ Head : Life

Wild carrots

bill — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:01:19 GMT

I managed to spend an hour in the veggie patch this afternoon. Was pulling a lot of big weeds really easily after the rain, getting the beds ready for spring :)

And in amongst the weeds I found all these carrots which had self sown from my seed collecting last season:

And they taste great !!! :)

In the garden: Aug 2009

bill — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:35:07 GMT

The first signs of spring have sprung:

With the wild plums currently showing the most early blooms :

There’s not a lot happening in the veggie patch, just some carrots and silverbeet mainly. One of the climbers around the garden is also in bloom (you can see some silver beet that was used for seed behind it):

The wattles are in stunning bloom at present:

Blackwood beginning to bloom:

And of course the proteas are also beginning to add some colour

pink proteas:

honey proteas

young king proteas

Colds and Flu

bill — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:21:57 GMT

The last couple of weeks I’ve had what seems to be both a cold and the flu. In the process I learnt some things about them …

First off, they spread easily. We had a two weekend fire line leadership course, running from Friday after work till Sunday midday both weekends. On the first week there was one person with a cold, and another with what was probably the flu. By the following week another six members of the class of twenty three had signs of a cold or similar.

Me, I thought I had caught a cold the first week, and had the usual running nose symptoms etc. Then when I got back from the second weekend I got hit hard with a fever. That seemed to knock the cold symptoms away, but what I had left was the flu as characterised by strong fevers, complete lack of energy and muscle aches. In my particular case my thighs and calves were like they were burning really really hot. I now know first hand the difference between cold and flu ;)

After the first night of fever I thought I was pretty much right or at least getting better for the next couple of days only to be hit by fever again. Foolishly I though that was it and was out and about again the next day. That night the real fever hit and hit hard. My temp was at 40C for hours (I think that’s 104F in old talk). Probably the scary part of that was I wasn’t really sweating. The next day it was hovering more around 39, and at times some profuse sweating which at least meant things were still working ;) All up it knocked me out for the best part of three days. Btu I did learn about safe temperatures.

Above 40, it’s hospital time.
39 to 40: as long as it is fever it’s okay, just keep up fluids an try to reduce the temp a bit.
NOTE: if it is heat stroke this temp is too high and must be cooled.
38 to 39 fever. Normally nothing to worry about
37 to 38. slightly warm (above 37.5 is considered mild fever, but is more like flushed IMO)

So that’s been my fun for the last week or so. One cool thing was I upgraded my main machine from Vista x64 to Windows 7 x64 whilst I wasn’t doing anything (more on that later).

I’m still catching up with emails, may take me a day or two more yet.

Why Live Maps sucks compared to Google maps

bill — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 07:22:52 GMT

The user experience of Live Maps completely sucks compared to Google Maps. It’s that bad I really don’t think they even bother testing it.

Live Maps experience:

go to maps.live.com. Here it redirects to http://maps.live.com.au/? which seems to fail to properly load every single time. Instead you have to hit refresh.
the page loads with a script error :
Message: 'dapMgr' is undefined
Line: 480
Char: 9
Code: 0
URI: http://network.ninemsn.com.au/share/js/spac_adx.js
as I scroll to zoom, the zoom ignores where my mouse is, meaning I have to often drag the map to centre it before continuing zooming
once I have zoomed in, the map lacks allotment boundary details.
the “aerial” view seems a lot older and a lot less detail compared to google
there’s no context menu !! I can’t right click and add a pushpin or get directions form or to there, instead I have to type in an address (how utterly lame !!)
when I click on directions so as I can add an address, the map goes back to a view of Australia, meaning I lost all that zooming and scrolling I just did.
If I can’t specify an address I’m rooted (as opposed to being routed <g>). So I guess nearby addresses but then aren’t able to move them.
I can’t re-route directions, instead I have to try to add stops.
I can’t hide that directions pane

Google Maps experience:

No redirection. I get to choose if I use the .au one or not !!
Pages load first time without any script errors !! (OMG what were they thinking. How dare they actually test it !!)
As I zoom in, the zoom centres on my mouse and gives me a visual indication it is doing that. (a responsive UI. What the ???)
the maps show lots of details including allotment boundaries. Aerial view is really good.
I can right click. OMG, a “context menu” : this app must have been written in the last 15 years !
I can add pushpins for directions From here and directions To here
I can re-route the journey simply by dragging the route line. It seems these guys have heard of a mouse !!
I can hide the directions pane

That’s just a brief synopsis of the very obvious user experience. I found Live Maps totally useless for planning my afternoon’s bike ride. Seriously Microsoft if you are going to go to the bother and expense of licensing the maps and aerial images, of setting up servers etc, then you can at least try to compete. At present it’s just a pathetic waste of money. Say “yes you can” or go home.

In the garden: Mid April 2009

bill — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:43:22 GMT

Just a quick update. Lots of tomatoes at present. Picking a tray full every 3 days or so.

In the garden: March 2009

bill — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:43:22 GMT

It’s been a very strange season this year. A cold start, then some massive heat waves. autumn is shaping up to feel normal, and also lovely weather.

The hot spells brought some veggies season to an early end: in particular beans and peas. But the good news is I got plenty of seed from them:

That’s beetroot seed, garlic cloves, broad beans, carrot seed, bush beans and mixed snow pea seeds. I need not worry about the seed viability as many of them have self sown with nice crops of beans, broad beans, slenderette beans and carrots on the way. This adds to the wild lots of potatoes, silver beet, lettuce, beetroot and parsley.

The garden is remaining very self productive :)

Tomatoes are in main season now:

as well as the cherry tomatoes:

and Tom Thumb tomatoes:

And what would tomatoes bee without lots of basil :

I’m leaving a lot of the basil to go to seed this year as well. The bees are busy pollinating them at present. (see how many bees you can see in this photo :) )

And there’s cucumbers (almost finished for the year) and lots of sweet corn. I kept the early crop for seed as it was an older open pollinated variety with a rich flavour (like corn use to have) instead of these sweeter hybrids that are common these days. The zucchini as slowing down. The capsicums are just starting… only had three or four so far.

The pumpkins have gone crazy and are not only taking over half the veggie patch they are also climbing the fence and escaped onto the lawn. I grew some heirloom varieties this year along with the queesland blue that sprouted in the compost. I’m not sure what the name of this one is, but despite the strange outer appearance it’s a nice eating pumpkin:

Elsewhere in the orchard it’s the end of the apples and the beginning of the pears. Chestnuts still a month or more away. The apples and pears make lovely desert :)

Back from Alexandra

bill — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:08:08 GMT

Got back early Sunday morning from Alexandra complex. While there we stayed at what we dubbed the “Alexandra Hilton”

I think only half those tents were there when we first got there, but new ones were going up all the time. Inside the big white marquee are the same kind of tents again for those on night shift. Saw a lot of people from around here there: DSE, CFA, earth moving contractors and logging contractors all travelled there to help fight the fires. A lot of good people.

We were dispatched out along the Yarra Ranges: Buxton, Marysville and Narbethong. I had my camera but never got around to taking any photos other than at the staging ground. Most of you have probably seen enough of it on TV anyway. There are some images though that I wish I did take a picture of.

The first thing I noticed which you don’t see on the news is the places hit by fire where the houses did survive. Some seemingly miraculously on top of silver black hills where the trees were all just black poles.

In another site, the tops of mature gums were all blown out of them, snapped off about 10 or 15 meters from the ground. This was where two fire fronts had converged. It really looked like a bomb had gone off or a meteorite had hit the forest.

But probably the number one image I’ll remember and wish I had a camera on me at the moment was this: My team leader, who really did an amazing job (as did all my team), had been showing a 7 year old boy around the fire-truck. He was sitting in the drivers seat and hit the sirens. So big fireman Bill jumped in the passenger side and said “let’s go”. Quickly assured him we were playing, and I put my helmet on him. He grabbed the wheel with both hands and said “vrooom.. vrooom” and had a smile from ear to ear. Kids and fire-trucks hey ;)

The real challenges ahead are helping these communities rebuild. Donations are getting to them: we helped unload a couple of big trucks of food essentials, clothing and drinking water. It will take time to rebuild and lots of support. I’m confident the fires will be controlled; there’s some great crews and operators working on that from all over the world. The challenges of housing seem more daunting. We stayed in tents for a few days, but for some families all they have are tents for homes in other relief centres. There really is a mammoth task of rebuilding that lays ahead.

Fires update: Thank you :)

bill — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:48:01 GMT

When I got home last night I had a heap of emails and messenger notes from family, friends and colleagues expressing concerned over the fires. Thank you ! I did try to reply to everyone, but I was tired and was busy washing down the dust.

Where we are, we were very lucky in that the closest fire was in Weerite, between Colac and Warrnambool, SW Victoria, on the map below. It’s denoted with a red star which means contained; red dots are the fires that are controlled, and flames are those that are going.

On the Saturday we were gathered at the station in readiness for any fires. We sharpened the chainsaw; I had only given it a quick sharpen after I blunted it at a shed fire a few weeks earlier, and it needed a good clean. We ate lunch and waited. The Weerite fire started (from a downed power line) and our slip on unit with a crew of two was dispatched. We joked, as you do, and waited and watched. We’d go outside and look over to the west and watch the smoke as the Weerite fire grew. Our truck was kept in the station in preparedness should the fire or another start in the Otways. The real concern was if the Weerite fire spotted ahead with the strong winds, which were driving from the NW. That would have set the Otways alight which have huge fuel loads, then with the forecast SW change it would have ripped right along the coast and ranges. Fortunately that didn’t happen. The SW change came early.

The Weerite fire jumped the highway, and by mid afternoon the fire was about 1000 hectares. The crews did a great job to pull the fire up. So good in fact a couple of hours after the change came through, our tanker was stepped up to Colac then dispatched to the fires in the east of the state (Warragul). They worked right through the night and were bussed back to home the next day, leaving our tanker behind for other crews to operate. Our tanker returned last night.

I got the joy of doing some mopup/blackening out at Weerite yesterday. I say “joy” both sarcastically and truly. It’s volcanic plains out there, so lots of rocks. The soil is semi peat and burns, so putting out the perimeter is a slow dusty dirty job. But it was great to get out and actually do something. The spirits of those working was high, every-one wanted to put in, and do the best they could. Commitment to the job was unwavering. I heard one conversation with one of the staging folks as a member from my brigade asked if he had had any rest yet, to which he replied he had gone home the night before but kept waking every 15 minutes or so as he would think of things to do, so he’d get up and write them down. And given the limited resources they did a great job. We also must have done a great job, because just an hour or so ago a message came across my pager saying they no longer require crews for the Weerite fire. Hopefully that means soon it will be upgraded to one of those red dots on the map instead of a star. I guess soon after that talk of relief crews for the guys who must be doing it so hard in the East of the state.

Although these are terrible times, the spirit and commitment, the wanting to help each other … it’s through adversity we get to see the best of human nature. Like yesterday while we were having lunch we were told someone was giving stress massages in the fire shed if anyone needed. That’s pretty unusual for a fire line, and a few guys rushed for the door. It’s a pity it wasn’t a the end of the day whilst I was having a beer, but I think that nice that people want to help however they can. I read some lovely news today how our blood bank (which is always all un paid donors here) was over whelmed with the number of donations as people responded to the call for donations to help the victims of the fires.

A lot of business and the community have also made a lot of donations to he red cross appeal:
http://www.redcross.org.au/vic/services_emergencyservices_victorian-bushfires-appeal-2009.htm

a time to cry …

bill — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:19:59 GMT

If you haven’t seen the news, we’ve had the worst weekend in history here. Highest ever recorded temperatures (>46C or 115F)combined with winds averaging over 90 km/hr in places and gusting higher created massive fire storms, killing many (over 85 found so far), destroying almost a thousand houses, and lots of damage. The human losses tears can only start to express.

There’s lots of press coverage at : http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/bushfires/

When nature throws it’s fury at us, sadly there often is little we can do; instead we have to wait till after and focus on the rebuilding

In the garden: January 2009 update.

bill — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:42:49 GMT

Last week I posted my “In the garden” post for January: that was before the heat wave came and hit. Since then we had record high temperatures for here, up to 45 C (113 F). We had three days in a row of above 43 C temperatures (above 110 F), and the night time temperatures were about the usual daytime max ! Lots of the state faced power blackouts, as the demand for cooling sky rocketed. The damage done to crops was significant. a lot of grape harvests are ruined; for some wineries there will be no 2009 vintage. (a good time to stock up on 2008’s)

Here a lot of my plums shrivelled under the heat and apples suffered severe sunburn. On the positive side of that, nashi and the apples look like they will all come in earlier this year. I was eating some of the nashi yesterday.. they’re small, but beginning to ripen. The apples probably needed some thinning anyway, so although there’s a lot of damage, I’m hopefully there’ll still be some quality harvest from them.

The veggie patch weathered a bit better. There’s some damage to the male kiwi fruit, but it is still healthy. the early crop of snow peas has dried up, but that’s good as I was about to leave what was there for seed anyway. I had to pick a lot of beans as they had grown too rapidly, and I harvested half of the broad beans yesterday as well. The broad beans were still good, but some of the pods had suffered from the heat. And the zucchini of course decided it was time to make baseball bat sized fruit overnight <g> The good from this was I dug up some of the potatoes as well, and there was plenty of veggies from the harvest for the locals :) Other plants like the cucumbers seem to have thrived from the heat and I hope to harvest the first cucumbers within days. Prior to his heat wave it had been on the cold side, and crops like the cucumbers weren’t doing much. I guess that’s a positive of diversity.

The heat also made some animals slower, so easier to take photos of. Like the yellow tailed black cockatoos I posted pictures of the other day. I also managed to get some photos of some butterflies :

The common brown butterfly (well more orange than brown if you ask me <g>),
Heteronympha merope merope:

And the cabbage white butterfly :

Yellow Tailed Black Cockatoos

bill — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:34:08 GMT

I’ve been wanting to get some photos of these magnificent birds for some time now. I think the recent heat wave made them less likely to fly off. These guys come and eat/shred the dead protea flowers, which really does me a great service. I don’t need to prune the plants and they make fantastic mulch for them .

This is the male:

He seemed to be standing watch while the female was busy eating/shredding. The female doesn’t have the pink/red ring around the eye, and the beak is a gray instead of black:

As I got closer the male let out a warning cry (mp3 from Birds in Backyards):

Magnificent birds to watch fly. Huge, with a seemingly slow wing beat, yet I’ve seen them dart through the trees in the forest at incredible speeds.

One Sentence

bill — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:58:37 GMT

Came across this site today:

http://www.onesentence.org/

Enjoy :)

Centaurium sp.

bill — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:28:16 GMT

That pink flowered weed I posted yesterday is likely to be a member of the Centaurium genus.

I’m guessing at Centaurium pulchellum. (Century).

“pulchellum” coming from the Latin word pulchellus meaning beautiful

Centarium is said to be from Greek mythology:

The lore associated with centaury is that it was used by the famous centaur, Chiron, to heal himself from an arrow laced with the poison of the hydra. Chiron is notable to herbalists as he was known in Greek mythology for his knowledge of herbs. The genus was even referred to as Chironia.

In medieval times it was mixed into incense to increase psychic awareness and altered states of consciousness. It was also burned on its own and the smoke was said to repel snakes from an area.

Excerpt from : http://www.bastyr.edu/academic/botmed/centaurium_erythraea.asp

Still a weed of course ;)

a note on content:

bill — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:51:27 GMT

I got this note from Julie I liked so much I just had to share :

Pretty flowers...good

Screaming bunnies...bad

:-)

Mixo

bill — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:24:01 GMT

WARNING: If you’re feeling squeamish, please don’t read any further.

Most of you have probably heard of the film “The Rabbit Proof” fence. The fence is a striking symbology of the mistakes we’ve made, and the often flawed later attempts to address those mistakes. I’m not going to talk about the actual subject of that film, the stolen generations, that’s way to massive mistake for me to give justice to. But I did want to give you some insight into rabbits in Australia.

Rabbits were first introduced into Australia with the first fleet, but the main outbreak is attributed to a farmer who introduced 24 rabbits in the mid 19th century, claiming they could do little harm . He even had his workers dig holes for them. Well they bred like rabbits. The population grew exponentially, causing severe environmental damage, loss of habitat, severe soil erosion, and economical impact on farms. At the start of the 20th century, the rabbit proof fence was an example of the structures the government put in place, with best of intentions, but failing to really understand the issues they were dealing with. It was of course a failure. By the mid 20th century, a hundred years after that two dozen were introduced, the population was estimated at being over half a billion rabbits !!

Mid 20th century saw the introduction of biological weapons. “Mixo” or myxomatosis was introduced and wiped out large number of the rabbit population. A mosquito transmitted disease, rabbits develop tumours and can often be seen wandering around during the day with eyes scabbed over. It takes weeks for the animals to die. It seems incredibly cruel. Yesterday I saw a rabbit with mixo, eyes scabbed over, but it was still grazing, so was early stages I’d say. It’s really hard to know what to do. I’m conflicted between knowing how bad these pests can be and doing what I would think is the humane thing. Putting the animal out of it’s misery stops it spreading the disease to it’s brood, which eventually will just lead to an even bigger problem. I tend to let the un-natural nature take it’s course.

Last night I heard some rabbits scream. If you’ve never heard a rabbit squeal, it’s a terrible sound. I doubt that was the virus, more likely to be some other introduced animal, dog, cat or fox finding easy prey. I was trying to explain this to a friend, hence this blog post. The terrible truth is when you see that little bunny rabbit hopping around the fields during the day, don’t look to close, because it will likely reveal a horrible disease, the compounding of human mistakes. We do have other biological controls these days which are somewhat limited in their spread, but from all accounts are a lot less cruel.

For more on rabbits in Australia see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia

In the garden : late Jan 2009

bill — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:22:35 GMT

The weather forecast for the next few days is record highs, so I took the opportunity to take a few snaps now before the heat wave sets in. Some of the predictions are for a one in a hundred year heat wave .

Remember the strawflowers from a couple of months ago ?

Well two months later they look all sun bleached:

yet there are still new flowers coming on.

There’s this little weed that’s growing around the place too. Note sure what it is, but it puts on a nice touch of color:

Some of the climbers I planted around the veggie patch are in flower too:

In the veggie patch there’s lots of strawberries or was until I got there :)

there’s still an an abundance of snow peas, sugar snaps and beans.

The corn has shot up this last few week, and now has set fruit

The cherry tomatoes are giving me a few fruit each day. The main crop is still a ways off, although that might change with this heat wave. You can see all the strings are out for them to grow up on:

Lots of wild lettuce in the garden :

And this lettuce I let go to flower/seed again.
I don’t recall seeing these lavender coloured flowers like this on them before:

There’s broad beans ready for harvest, and some I’ll keep for seed, and more unplanned rows of broad beans where they have self seeded from the crop I turned in:

The pumpkins are growing wild at present, spreading all over the place.
I keep moving runners back to try to keep them mainly on the one bed.
These pumpkins were wild from the compost:

They have set fruit already:

The zucchini have hit their growth spurt phase too:

The first crop of potatoes is dying down to reveal more peas and wild lettuce:

There’s some good “spuds” coming from them.

And in the orchard there’s different plums that are ripe (and delicious :) )

Looking for a new job ?

bill — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:25:06 GMT

Queensland tourism has a six month position open:

The Island Caretaker will need to post a weekly blog, photo diaries and create video updates to let the world know about the unique experiences available on the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. There will also be some interviews with members of the media. The contract involves spending six months on Hamilton Island, one of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef. The Island Caretaker will also travel to other islands and enjoy activities such as sailing, kayaking, snorkelling, diving, picnics, bushwalking and more.

So if you want to get paid $150K to bum around on Hamilton Island for six months and blog about it, check out the job ad at : http://www.islandreefjob.com

Sweet summertime ...

bill — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:59:49 GMT

In the Garden: Jan 2009

bill — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:08:56 GMT

T’is the month of snow-peas !! :)

The different varieties have different colour flowers (much like last month’s potatoes :)

Not sure which is which, but I think that deep pink one is “Mammoth”. At least judging by the size of the snow peas it has :

Most never make it inside, so nice to eat them straight away !

And the sugar snaps are providing plenty of pods now too:

The sugar snaps were all sown from seed I harvested last season. Lots of plants, and lots more seed still in stock. Where I planted them between the potatoes has worked really well. As the potatoes are dying back, the peas are popping through with plenty to harvest :

The zucchini have got their first baby fruit on them :

And the pumpkin also have their first flowers :

These pumpkin were “wild” ones that survived my compost bin. They sprouted around the orange trees I planted, so I transplanted them to the veggie patch. They’re doing way better than any I actually tried to sow !!

And I had my first cherry tomato the other day. December has been mild, but soon… soon :

and with promises of more :

The main season tomatoes are still very young :

Bush beans are lovely and tender crisp at present. These were hit hard by slugs when young, but a couple of nights of slug squashing saw them through :

My sweet corn that also got hit really hard by slugs is now recovering:

I planted a second lot of sweet corn, just in case the first didn’t recover:

That’s climbing beans growing inside the corn rows. It will be interesting to see how that turns out. I’m hoping the beans won’t be too vigorous for the corn.

And the strawberries are in flower too. The birds or something is beating me to most of them, so I might need to get the nets out.

The weather: December was mild and with a couple of good rains. That’s slowed the garden down a lot, but that’s a small price to pay for the rains :) As I write this the weather is about 25 C, which would normally be considered mild for this time of year, but given the really mild conditions it feels kind of hot.

In the Garden : Dec 2008

bill — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:37:22 GMT

fan tailed cuckoo

Rain, rain, glorious rain !!!!

It’s been raining for about 24 hours now. Nothing really heavy, not more than say half an inch in an hour, rather it’s been a good soaking rain. I can’t remember the last time it rained as good as this :) I think we got a good couple of inches all up so far, with more forecast for the next week. October was terribly dry, only half an inch when usually we get more than three, so this rain is most welcome.

Typically (or is that historically ?), here we get most of our rain in winter (temperate climate), with August being the wettest averaging a about three and a half to four inches, or 9 cm in modern talk. (I’d use mm but that sounds too precise ;)) And it slowly decreases, October usually above 7 cm, December down to about 4 to 5 cm, and the driest being Feb at about 3 to 4 cm. Our summer rains though can be more intense, as is highlighted by the difference between the mean and median for Feb, being 35 mm and 23 mm respectively. (knew you geeks would like that bit of details <g>)

So on to the garden. Well it’s raining and I don’t want to get my camera wet, so just a few photos from the camera’s SD card over the last month:

A heron on the pond:

In the veggie patch the tomatoes are growing well. There’s broad beans ready to eat and more on the way, and soon there’ll be other beans and snow peas. Self sown lettuce are still popping up all over the place. Many of the climbing plants are doing really (maybe some photos next month) I just love the different ways they climb.

I got a few new potatoes the other way while pulling out some that had self sown from that crop I didn’t dig up properly many many years ago. This year I also planted more potatoes: the first in many years. There’s the usual white potatoes that have white flowers:

And then there’s these other ones I planted that have violet flowers :

I was quite amazed by the colour of those flowers. They’d make a really nice border plant in any garden bed.

Oh, if you look carefully, you can see a snow pea plant leaning over and touching the flower at the front. I planted snow peas between two rows of potatoes and they’re all looking really happy :)

Had my first cherry for the season the other day. It will still be a few more weeks till they come in. The plums are looking promising again too:

Elsewhere in the garden the roos are keeping busy mowing the lawn (kind-of). A buck roo came in and was all feisty the other week:

When they stand up like that, it’s often territorial. Always best to stand back a bit ;)

This little fella (below) is not a kangaroo, rather he is a wallaby:

Much smaller in size, usually darker coloured, and like this one have distinct facial markings.