garden

What Plant Is This?

5 Comments Posted on October 10, 2016October 9, 2016 by Snoskred

This plant in the chook pen has grown as a surprise to us. The chooks have left it alone, which is strange. Most plants do not get past the seedling stage before a chook eats them.

We have absolutely no idea what it is.

Clearly it grew from seeds which likely arrived from a plant the chooks were fed. But they get so many treats, and I do not recognise this plant at all. Recently things with seeds that they have had include pumpkin, tomato, zucchini, cucumber, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and likely more treats I have completely forgotten about. If something is on special at Aldi and it is something they like and it is ok for them to eat it, chances are it will jump in the trolley.

I never see bees inside the chook pen, so I suspect this plant will not bear any fruit. Maybe it isn’t anything good – maybe it is just a weed and I should pull it out?

Over to you – Got any idea what this might be? ;)

garden

The Chicken Mind

11 Comments Posted on December 14, 2015December 13, 2015 by Snoskred

There are certain things you need to look out for when it comes to chickens. Terry from Henblog writes in her post diagnosing a sick chicken –

“The best advice that I can give anyone is this: know your animals. You should be so acquainted with their quirks and vocalizations, their greetings and their eating habits, that as soon as something is off, you know it.”

But sometimes, odd chicken behaviour has nothing to do with being sick, and everything to do with chickens getting an idea stuck in their mind. Broodiness is one such example. Above you see my two pekins in a broody mood.

The good thing about these broody hens – once I remove the eggs, pick them up and put them on the ground, they usually forget all about being broody and go right back to being normal chickens – until someone lays another egg.

There have been times when one of these two has an extended broodiness with and/or without eggs in the box. It can last a couple of weeks. I discourage it in hot weather, and I always kick the broody out when I go out to collect the eggs, so they can poop, eat, drink, etc. In super hot weather I try to go out every hour or so, to make sure everyone is doing ok.

You might recall the above photo from a Sunday Selections post – this is when Purple Comb got the idea in her head that she did not want to lay her eggs in the nesting box. This is not a new idea for her – she has done this for at least two weeks every year since we got her. One year she laid nearly 20 eggs in a hidden spot we did not find until we did some serious gardening. We still are not sure how long those eggs had been there!

Purple comb is not broody with these eggs – she simply lays them and gets on with her day. Once the egg is laid she rejoins the flock. When I go to collect it, she plays the “it wasn’t me, truly, I lay my eggs in the nesting box” game. Here she is, doing exactly that, while I tell her off, because I got dirty collecting her hidden egg!

She presently has three not laying box places where she will lay her egg – in that garden box, under the lemon tree in the garden, and she made a tiny little nest next to the gate leading out to their leaf pile. Before laying her daily egg, she roams separately from the flock – scratching around, hunting for that perfect item to take and add to her native nest(s).

Chickens are flock animals and when one removes themselves from the flock, that is sometimes cause for worry. In the case of Purple Comb, she has a purpose in her mind which is outweighing flock time. She wants to build the perfect native nest(s) for her eggs. Why she thinks a spot next to an old wooden gate and a drain cover is perfection, that is yet another mystery of the chicken mind.

Red Comb has been removing herself from the flock on super hot days, choosing a shady place to sit and dust bathe. She is not enjoying the hot weather. I make sure to give her cool treats and any day where the temperature reaches 30+, I put some cold water with ice spheres in it into the pen. Once I do that, she dust bathes near the cool water, and I see her drinking slightly more than usual. She will get a cold watermelon, tomato or blueberry treat.

She is still eating, still laying, still doing all the usual chook things. She just takes a break when she needs to. Once the heat of the day passes, she is back out roaming with the girls. I know her well enough to know that her hot day flock removal is not a huge cause for concern with her. She has never been quite the same since the hawk incident. She simply wants to be in the coolest spot possible when the heat is on.

I know Red Comb is still enjoying life and she still runs for her blueberry medals, even on a 40C (104F) day. In fact all I have to do is stand near the back door and there will be a chook frenzy, with all the girls running up to see if I am bringing them a treat. On hot days I only go to the back door if I am taking them something because I do not want them to get all excited without an actual reward.

The day she does not run up, excited to see me, that will be the day I know she has had enough and it is time for that dreaded journey to the vet. Until then, the blueberry medals and treats will be a daily event. Chooks are here for a good time, not a long time.

Purple Comb was eventually successful in hiding many eggs from me and she got another chook to join in. This is 5 days of 2 chooks laying their eggs in a hidden spot. This potplant was removed from the chook pen once I discovered this – it normally sat in an area I don’t always check, obviously! I only discovered it because I saw one of the chooks standing on the edge of the potplant.

I had noticed the drop in eggs and thought the heat plus mites and/or lice might be the reason. One of the broodies had a few red mites, I found. All the chooks got a dusting with the pest powder that evening, plus a dose of Ivermectin. The treatment is very effective, within 24 hours I checked the broody again and saw no sign of any pests. It was a few more days before I found these eggs.

It is a not so awesome fact of chicken life that chooks will experience these pests from time to time and it is always the first thing I look for when the eggs disappear. Usually dust bathing is enough to keep our girls pest free, except when they get broody because they do not spend time dust bathing. When it rains a lot, they also cannot dust bathe.

Mostly these things are carried by wild birds. While it might be an idea to discourage wild birds from hanging out in our yard, I also enjoy wild birds visiting. We have two bird baths which are quite the bird hangout on super hot days. Even if I took away the bird baths, the chicken wire on top of the coop does allow small birds to fly in, mostly pigeons but there is a willy wagtail who likes to fly in and eat spiders up high where the chooks can’t reach.

Chickens, country life, garden

Sunday Selections Week 49

15 Comments Posted on December 6, 2015December 7, 2015 by Snoskred

It is the first Sunday of the month, which means Garden Day here on the blog. It also means Berry Market Day, for those in Berry or perhaps Sydney who might want to drive down one Sunday. I myself have never been but I would like to go one time!

So how does the garden do? Obviously, the resilient and fantastic Portulaca are going great guns.

One of them decided to have an apricot and pink moment. I really love these plants. I bought some more this week, as well. Of those, I would like to mention this portulaca, which was found at Bunnings named “Christmas Colour” and was the expensive sun of $2.84. Your local Bunnings may have some, or none at all.

If you want to try Portulaca this is a cheap way to get a more advanced plant than the seedlings. Mine has pink and red flowers, I did not see any white there, though they may have had some.

The nasturtiums which were not fenced off, as expected, went a little bit downhill, while the fenced off one was quite happy. They are now both protected.

There have been a lot of leaves and bark falling from the trees – we did a big sweep up and rake last weekend, and the chook leaf pile has grown. The chooks are not so sure about this – firstly, it is very noisy, compared to their already well worked over by chooks pile. Secondly, it is a lot taller. I can always tell when they are brave enough to turn over the newer scary leaves. The noise travels.

The garden bed is a mixed result. The Brussels are taking off somewhat. The chard, not so much. The baby spinach did not do very well and I gave up and pulled it out. The chooks enjoyed it.

I suspected one of the reasons the plants were not taking off in this planter box was the location. There is a tree next to our property which means that spot is in shade from midday or so until mid-afternoon, then the shade kicks in from other trees, and this spot did not get as much sun as these plants would like.

I said to The Other Half – can you move the planter box? He said no, remember when we built it, I told you to pick the spot well because it would be too heavy to move later.

I said well, you really can’t go to Mars if you can’t move this planter box, with science. Pulleys and fulcrums and physics, and shiznit. I’m sure you can manage it, with science.

And manage it he did, with a sack truck and a crowbar. The Other Half can now go to Mars! We’ll see how it goes with more sun.

Finally an update on the Penstemon – ours is called Sour Grapes.

This plant baffled me for some time, growing taller and taller but no actual buds appearing.

Last week, they finally arrived. It was worth the wait.

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Also Linking Up With

Sunday Snap @ JibberJabberUK

garden, Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

WW – Bee Hive

8 Comments Posted on November 11, 2015November 10, 2015 by Snoskred

blog housekeeping, garden, photography, Wordless Wednesday

The Pittosporum Hedge

11 Comments Posted on October 28, 2015October 27, 2015 by Snoskred

This hedge at my parents place is at least 6 feet tall and it has grown to that height very quickly. If you want a hedge super fast, I recommend Pittosporum.

It could be considered a little boring but unlike some of the other hedging plants used (eg. Jasmine, Lilly Pilly) most people are unlikely to be allergic to it. :)

family, garden

Sunday Selections Week 40

19 Comments Posted on October 4, 2015October 4, 2015 by Snoskred

I think for the foreseeable future, we will make the first Sunday of the month Garden Check In day. The Dianthus in our older planter pot from 2014 are flowering again.

About four weeks ago we did some new planting and two weeks ago I posted this update post.

The flyscreen wrapped garden box is doing very well. We’ve had a praying mantis which has been hanging out on top of it.

The sunflower seeds have turned into tiny plants.

The Nasturtiums are having a wonderful time in their new home. The chooks quite often stand on the hardware wire but they do not eat the plants. In a couple of weeks I will feel secure enough to take this ex-kitty door off.

As you can see, the jasmine has climbed high up the arch. It is smelling awesome!

Next time I will show you the progress of some new plants we have purchased, including my first ever succulent – Portulaca. Here they are as I was buying them in the garden centre.

And a close up of the Portulaca. There were 6 seedlings in here.

The chooks have been getting plenty of free ranging time, and Kitty Supervisor is on the job. I’ve kept that pot on the table for a couple of weeks to make sure the sunflowers get a decent start without a chook eating them incident, but that meant the cats could not eat the cat grass. It was good for the cat grass because they had been chowing down on it, and it needed a break from kitty teeth! ;)

Kitty Supervisor can watch them down here from a side window which is good, because they like to venture down here to some very old lawn clippings and leaves which were left here for a couple of years to turn into bug filled mulch – AKA happy meal time for chooks! There is a gate which shuts this area off if and when new clippings are left here – however that has not happened in some time, the bag catcher is broken.

Weekly Wrap Up –

Daylight Savings starts today here in Australia. Normally this is my favourite time of year because in previous years I have suffered from SAD – that is Seasonal Affective Disorder – however this past winter I did a lot better than usual. I’m crediting the evening candle show, an LED light changing shower head, and LED lights throughout the house for that improvement.

So today I am a little bit sad to be saying goodbye to 5-6 hours of candle time a day. I’ll still be burning candles of an evening and I think that is a long term change for the better for me, it will just be candles for a shorter amount of time each day, and more time outside in the evening for plant watering and chooky chores.

In scheduling news, I already have two posts scheduled for 2016. All my Wednesday posts are written for the rest of the year, and I am scheduled out to November for the other blog days. I like to write ahead, and sometimes posts come up that are time sensitive and the other not so time sensitive posts get pushed out further.

There Was An Incident –

Grumpy is extra grumpy this week. She did something to her eye – we are not sure what happened to start it off, but she was squinting a lot and somehow her bottom eyelid was turning in as a result. After making a vet appointment for Monday we were trying to get some photos to show the vet because we could fix the eyelid – turn it out the right way – and sometimes it would stay fixed for a decent length of time, so we could not guarantee it would happen when we were at the vets with Grumpy. Happy did a little photobomb.

I did manage to get a decent in focus shot which showed the vet everything she needed to see, plus after I showed her the photo the eyelid started to turn in while we were there. That was the last time it turned in and I hope it never happens again!

Ever since Grumpy had that terrible Kidney Shutdown of 2014, she has not been a fan of vets at all. The only person that can hold her when we are there now is The Other Half, and he is the only person who can hold her when she needs to be medicated – which she has needed twice a day this past week for a tablet and ointment in her eye.

We went back to the vet on Friday for another eye dye and blacklight look. It seems like progress has been made, not just on the eye front but also a trip where the only thing that happens is dye in her eye might help her a lot with her vet fears.

We’ll keep up the ointment for another 7 days then take her back again next Friday. This time Happy will go along for a check up as well. I fully anticipate that once the vet finds her melty spot, she will lie down on the table, purr a lot, and ask for belly rubs. :)

The Martian –

The Martian Official Website

We went to see The Martian this weekend. I’d started reading the book a few months ago. The book was something I knew The Other Half would deeply love, so I made him start reading it – and he finished it before I did! That is the fastest he has ever read a book in his lifetime.

I read the book again this week in preparation for seeing the movie and loved it just as much the second time. I was curious about a few things – would the movie begin with the same line as the book, which contains a pretty serious swear word? That would be fine in Australia but I really cannot see the US audience enjoying that. And how would they handle the night soil stuff?

The truth is, I suspect this might be the best space movie ever created, or at least a tie for first place with Apollo 13. Yes, there was some swearing. Yes, there was vacuum sealed poop. Yes, I did cringe at the whole poop thing being a germophobe, but I actually cringed more at Mark performing surgery on himself. There was nothing in the movie that I did not deeply enjoy. Matt Damon was brilliant as expected, so was everyone in it.

So if you have not read the book and you like science, space, Matt Damon, NASA and/or movies set in space, go and see the movie. If you like the movie, read the book. The movie runs for 2h20m, and it felt to me like it went for 30 minutes maximum. Sephyroth wrote about The Martian too. Beware though his post contains some spoilers if you have not seen it.

garden, Home, kitties, movies, Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

Sunday Selections Week 36

15 Comments Posted on September 6, 2015September 6, 2015 by Snoskred

I had zero plans to garden this year. Three Sydney Funnelwebs have been found on this property since Autumn. For those of you not familiar with this creature, it is extremely venomous and quite aggressive. Never fear, there are no spider images here. I would not do that to you! Arachnophobes know better than to post certain pics as a surprise to other people.

But then, I saw these gorgeous gloves at Aldi, and I re-thought my zero gardening plan. Maybe I would feel more comfortable wearing a pair of substantial gloves. We tried them on – The Other Half got large ones, my hands fit perfectly into medium.

My zero plans were quadrupled into “no *#@!&*%$ way am I gardening this year” when two absolute nitwits posted images on a local community group of Sydney Funnelwebs they had found out and about after the floods. UNSUBSCRIBE ME URGENTLY! I left both groups. Life is way too short for spider images on my Facebook feed. The damage was done, though. My skin crawled for an entire week. Not cool at all!

These people had put these creatures into plastic containers with sawdust, which implies keeping the creature long term. That freaks me out. Plus I feel like it is a bit cruel to the spiders. Not quite as cruel as what my chickens do to them which is dead them and eat them. But if they are found on my property, I’m backing the chickens 100% – dead them and eat them, girls!

Gardening this year was back on my agenda despite the images, because the chooks have been getting plenty of free range time and they have been spending a lot of it in the garden bed. I’ve compromised with a – sort of – gardening plan.

I decided to put some baby spinach, silverbeet, and brussel sprouts into the large planter box. I’m not sure how it will go because last year the kale was a massive failure in there – many moths laid eggs on it and they never grew the way they should have. I might end up screening this planter box in, if that happens again this year.

Into the large garden bed, I planted two Nasturtium plants. There is already one Nasturtium down the back and when the chooks are in the garden bed they mostly leave it alone. There are bugs to dig for, ain’t no chook got time to be eating plants! If I pull some out and throw it into the chook pen they gobble it up with great glee, because they have usually already eaten all the bugs in there before midday. I will buy any new varieties that I see of this plant because I love the flowers *and* humans and the chooks can eat it.

The chooks are on the lay again – on average I am getting 3-4 eggs a day. When I make my snacks, I sometimes mix a Manning Valley egg in with the girls small eggs, which are the largest ones they sell.

If I were *not* an Arachnophobe, I would post a picture of this little orb weaver which I see every single day when I check the chook coop for eggs. It has found a tiny home in a small screw hole on the chook pen and every day when the sun rises, it folds itself into this teeny spot.

I’m ok with certain kinds of spider making a home around the chook pen – they help with catching mosquitos and flies. Once I know where the web is, I am not likely to walk into it by mistake. The only thing that spider has to worry about is the chooks, who will eat any spider they see. Luckily they cannot reach where it is, nor could they see it unless he moved. It is well camouflaged. My little friend will find many tasty treats this spring and summer.

If I see one of those scary aggressive venomous creatures, I’m probably going to want to be on the next flight to Antarctica. I’m certainly not going to be putting it into a plastic container, nor will I be trying to kill it myself, and there will be a lot of screaming.. You’ll hear it, wherever you are.. :)

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Weekly Wrap Up –

Loads of goings on here at home, but nothing especially exciting that has not already been turned into a future blog post. My readers who have zero interest in Mr Robot can skip this next bit because it is a Mr Robot Finale Festival! ;)

The Mr Robot finale was awesome in some ways, but also slightly disappointing in some ways. I think the extra week of waiting meant that my expectations were very high..

Alan Sepinwall said “What a fascinating, off-kilter, 100% “Mr. Robot” way to end this season” and on reflection I have to agree with that concept. I have not re-watched it yet purely because I did not feel ready to – I’m letting it sink in first. One thing I do know, that scene in Times Square was an enormous explosion of colour in a usually quite muted show colour palette.

I’ve collected up a roundup of interviews and linkage for you. SPOILER ALERT – there are spoilers in these interviews. You do not want to click unless you have seen the entire 10 episodes of Mr Robot.

Interviews with Rami Malek

‘Mr. Robot’ Star Rami Malek on the ‘Emotional’ Season Finale (SPOILERS)
Rami Malek of USA’s ‘Mr. Robot’ | ‘The Andy Greenwald Podcast’ – This interview is older but was deeply excellent. Grantland has a lot of Mr Robot content – Grantland – Mr Robot
Rami & Twin Sami on Jimmy Kimmel – Having a twin is a great way to figure out what you would look like with a beard and a different hairstyle.

Interviews with Christian Slater –

Christian Slater weighs in on Mr. Robot twist and season finale
Mr. Robot Speaks: Christian Slater on ‘Mr. Robot’s’ Shocking, Roanoke-Delayed Finale and Season 2

Interview with BD Wong –

BD Wong on Why Mr. Robot’s Portrayal of a Transgender Character Is Radical

Interviews with Sam Esmail –

Sam Esmail Joins Andy Greenwald To Discuss ‘Mr. Robot’ First Season This is an hour long video interview – it was brilliant
Mr. Robot’s creator ‘did everything in my power’ to telegraph the big twist
Mr. Robot finale: Creator Sam Esmail answers burning questions
‘Mr. Robot’ Boss Talks Finale and Season 2: Elliot “Is Past the Point of No Return”
Mr. Robot Creator Sam Esmail on His Plans for Season Two and What the Show Is Really All About
‘Mr. Robot’ Finale: Series Creator On White Rose, The Wellicks & Elliot’s Memory Dump In Season 2
So… what did you think? – Sam Esmail asked what people thought over on Reddit and he also replied to a few of the comments.

Opinion re the finale –

How the Mr. Robot Finale Tumbled Backward into Its Most Piercing Social Message Yet
How Mr. Robot Killed the Centerpiece of Prestige Television: Capitalism
How Mr. Robot Became One of TV’s Most Visually Striking Shows
Mr. Robot had a perfect season on Rotten Tomatoes

About the mail program Elliot uses –

‘Mr. Robot’: How A New Product Feature Was Incorporated By ProtonMail After Discussions With The Producers

Over To You –

Anything interesting happening in your world? :)

Chickens, garden, Happy Snoskred, Mr Robot, Sunday Selections, weekly wrap up

Irritatory & Quick Update

11 Comments Posted on February 4, 2015June 1, 2015 by Snoskred

School

This week I went to orientation for the course I am starting next week..

Deities, pretty please, I beg you, give me patience and strength, or else I will not make it through this course without deading people.

Within moments of arriving at the orientation meeting point, there were 3 people who right away showed me exactly who they were, and they are not people I want to know or be involved with. Obviously they all knew each other, and they started right away talking about how little work they thought they could get away with doing, and how this course would be such a bludge festival for them, and what would be the earliest moment they could sneak away for a cigarette.

ROLL EYES NOW.

But it turns out, these three *are* special snowflakes who have done a previous course with this teacher, and a lot of the work they did for their previous course will be accepted for this course, so my earnest hope is that they are rarely in our presence. Please let this be so!

Within moments of sitting down for our orientation, these three were chit chatting amongst themselves, totally ignoring the teacher and the rest of us. It did not take long for them to earn my death stare, nor the death stare of the other *adults* who will be taking this class and who actually wanted to hear what the teacher had to say without the distraction of their special snowflake conversations..

The teacher actually sent them away halfway through the orientation saying they did not need to stay and immediately the atmosphere improved. I found quite a few people I felt drawn to and will like to know more about. That is a good sign for me.

Anyway, we’ll have to see how the special snowflake situation goes. Fingers crossed they will disappear into the bludgeosphere, leaving the rest of us to work together, because I found them extremely irritatory – that is one of my special made up words. It feels exactly how it sounds.

Yes, I know, I am meant to tolerate, etc, yada yada, blah blah, whatevs. But I actually want to do this course and enjoy the work involved with it and anyone who is not there to do exactly that should get the heck out of my way, STAT!

Blog Theme Update

I still had a couple of things I want to fix around here, most important being the ability for people to subscribe to comments which seemed to have vanished with the theme upgrade – You should now see checkboxes and the options Notify me of new comments via email & Notify me of new posts via email at the very bottom of the comment box.

Sadly to get that back, we’ve had to lose my gorgeous blue comment box. It turns out WordPress Jetpack now pulls the comment box from wordpress.com and we have zero control over the CSS, apparently, so we couldn’t get the notify me stuff to be in white.

With that said, if you comment a lot on wordpress blogs you probably want to get yourself a wordpress.com or gravatar account because that gives you notifications when someone replies to your comment automatically. It is free to make an account, and it means you won’t have to type all the stuff into the box each time you comment. :)

Blogging Update

Over here at Life In The Country I have scheduled posts for Mon-Wed-Fri up till the end of February. I’m hoping to have scheduled posts set up till the end of March by the end of this week because once I start school I am not sure how much time I’ll have.

If you see something on Tues-Thur-Sat-Sun – you know those posts are add ins – generally I try not to do that and instead push out a scheduled post, which I have done with this post.

I’ve decided for now not to return Shoe Sunday or start a new blogging series as my plate may be pretty full these first 6 months. A huge thank you to those who did participate in Shoe Sunday and maybe June will see it return.

Rewatch Breaking Bad

The Rewatch Breaking Bad blog is nearly at the end of season 3 – just two more episodes – then it swings into season 4 which was by far my favourite season on the show, closely followed by the almost perfect season 5.

If you have never seen the show I do highly recommend it for a lot of reasons, in particular the amazing performances of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul.

I have cut back the posting schedule to once a week on Sundays. I already have 8 pre-written and scheduled posts over there and by the end of this week I’d like to make that 12 or even 16 which would nearly take me up to the end of the course. Those posts are a fair bit of work, involving taking screenshots for each episode – those posts take time and effort I might not be able to spare as often while I’m at school.

There is more but I am going to warn you – it talks about spiders – there are no images, I would never do that to you – and if you don’t want to *read* about spiders either, please don’t click through. I won’t inflict them on you as a surprise. My arachnophobia is presently at an all time high, with good reason.

Continue reading →

blog housekeeping, garden, Shoe Linkup, spider

The Escape Chicken.

1 Comment Posted on October 9, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

After the big rains we had here a little while ago, the drainage tunnel stole a lot of dirt along with the water, making some almost gaps in the ground near the fence. So, we made plans to build a retaining wall and next to it lay some gravel and leave a drainage channel for those wet times. This is a job we needed to be do at some point.

Rosie looking oh so innocent.

For over a week, every day I would discover Rosie on the outside of the pen, trying desperately to get back inside with the flock. She is the tiniest chicken ever. I thought she was sneaking out as a surprise to herself by accident under the fence by digging out the dirt and making holes, right where we had been planning to build our retaining wall. So this job got moved to the top of the to do list.

At least, that is how we thought she was getting out. It turns out, from observing the goings on as we built the wall, that she was deliberately sneaking out. She had found a patch of chicken wire that was not staple-gunned down. She was able to jump up onto the fence and then sneak out via pushing the wire away from the fence. All we had to do to prevent that was staple-gun the wire down, which we did.

What is the most crazy about this escape chicken – the moment she got out, she was desperately trying to get back in with the other girls. She did not enjoy being outside with all that grass to scratch and eat if the other girls could not be with her. This job could likely have remained on the to-do list for another month or so without any issue, if we’d just discovered her escape route earlier. It is done now, and I have to say it is pretty awesome. :) There are 2/3 more sleeper dug into the ground and covered by gravel that you can’t see in these pics.

Twas a long weekend, so on Friday afternoon I said to the other half, let us go to the hardware store now and avoid the rush. Which we did. And we got sleepers to build another planter box as well as the retaining wall, the gravel to go alongside, some potting mix, and some new plants for the garden which I intended to weed a very large patch of.

So I did weed, and then it looked like this –

I planted some silverbeet seedlings which the chicken love and I am not adverse to myself.

In the new planter box, we will be having a Kale moment. Tuscan Kale, which is a somewhat new format of kale to me, as well as some regular kale. The chickens *love* Kale. :)

Before I let you go, you ought to go and read this post. Everything I Know, I Learned from Cows.

Chickens, garden

Weekend Jobs, Bits and Bobs..

2 Comments Posted on September 20, 2014May 31, 2015 by Snoskred

Our new over the door coat racks – $9 from Kmart.

It is the weekend again here at Chez Snoskred. Yesterday I went and had a CT pulmonary angiogram, which I had been putting off for 4 months! and a shedload of blood tests that involved 15 or so vials of blood. The girl forgot a vial, so I had to go back for an extra needle stick, which I did with extremely good grace considering I hate needles more than anything. So 3 needles total, yesterday. NOES.

Candle Lanterns $7 at Kmart

When she called me, I was at Kmart, where I picked up these cute candle lanterns. Little Kitty has learned to jump, and this means a sad goodbye to my present candle burners. I can’t be certain that she won’t stick her face too near or even in the flame and burn all her whiskers off in the process. I got a perfect ceramic pineapple without any chips for my mother for her birthday as well- I wanted one for me too, but I couldn’t find a perfect one without chips for me. Sorry no pineapple pic, it has been wrapped already.

Yesterday I wrote a list of things I wanted us to do this weekend. Several of them involved a trip to Kmart. The other half checked the calender and realised it is the first weekend of the school holidays, so we ended up going to Kmart last night around 9:30pm because ours is 24/7. It was wonderfully peaceful.

I was actually mid-another-job – laminating Hawaii calender pages to hang on the back of the toilet door – when I ran out of A4 laminator sleeves. I figured we might as well pick some up while at Kmart, also too. Then I came home and completed the laminator job, while listening to the Breaking Bad Insider Podcast on my iPhone.

The other things on the list involved a phone call to the local Chinese to make a dinner appointment for tonight, which has been completed this morning. And a trip to Bunnings – a hardware and garden store for those not in Australia – to buy sand for the chook pen.

Of course a trip to Bunnings never means just getting the thing you went for. The other half has been planning a special planter box for a while, and this weekend he is building it.

I found a gorgeous climbing jasmine, a sieve for the chook pen because the kitty litter scoop is not very efficient for chook poop, and a new bucket to store the chook poop in because all the old lids had broken.

I was quite tempted by these colourful Mr Men items – Mr Men Garden Gnomes, and Mr Men on a stick.

When I mentioned the Mr Men on a stick to The Other Half, who was busy wrangling the trolley and he did not spot them, he was very concerned at that concept, because his mind put the stick, well, guess where. But I showed him the picture and he was quite relieved to see the stick was not near to the Mr Man at all.

So now, off to do chores and jobs of work. Tomorrow, my first official shoes post. It is a good one, I think. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and consider making a shoes post of your own to link up. :)

Happy weekend all!

Chickens, garden, shopping, yay