Relocated a cactus today. The spiky plant had been growing in a pot, and needed to be moved. It was moved, carefully. The spikes on the thing are wicked sharp. But perhaps, they’re not sharp enough, because years ago a wallaby, wombat, or perhaps even a rat, had taken a nibble. Brave creature. After the nibble, one of long spiky stems had emulated this weird sort of S-shape, only to end up draped on the ground.
The twisted stem had to go. It was carefully removed using a shovel propelled by a foot. The emotional intensity of the moment of cutting was palpable – Sandra was urging me to be careful. I need to concentrate here! The weird spiky chunk was removed. Leather riggers gloves protected the hands. Now disconnected, the chunk was grabbed and chucked deep into a garden bed. There was a moment of quiet reflection: Hopefully this is not encountered at some future moment.
Ordinarily cacti plants don’t provoke an emotional response, unless of course you’ve inadvertently blundered into the spikes of terror. This one’s different though. There’s a certain sort of sentimental attachment to the plant. The previous owners of the first house we’d live together in, had abandoned it.
Imagine a sad looking cactus, planted out in the smallest of pink plastic pots. It was like a tiny little lost baby bird was asking us: Can you look after me, please? The pot was so small that when tipped on it’s side, the plant fell out. There was no soil, just a mass of roots.
In those days, you couldn’t ask the interweb search engines what to do when faced with a dire plant emergency. No. You had to figure out such things on your own. Neither of us knew anything about plants, but we got the general idea that maybe a larger pot and a bit of extra soil wouldn’t hurt. The facts suggested that plants need soil.
Nabbed a larger terracotta pot and a bag of compost at the nearest hardware store. Gingerly placed the plant in the larger pot. Added in the compost. Bam! How easy is this plant stuff? Ooo, thanks mate! Did you say something Sandra? No… Oh!
It was a strange house that one. The neighbours used to play really loud music. It was a bit annoying. But then the thought popped into my head: We can do that too! Turns out, that’s quite a confrontational approach. There were death threats and the police were involved. The neighbours moved out within the week. They had to. There was always this suspicion that they were fencing cars. But then it was the recession of the 1990’s and a dude’s gotta pay the bills, somehow.
The house was cheap, and in a suburb with heavy industry. Probably not the best choice. However, we were worried that Sandra was going to be made redundant from her job. It ended up being a race between the impending job loss, getting the bank to approve the loan, and finding someone to sell us a house. We made it, just. Those were tough times, loud music, and cacti.
Being cheap, the Californian bungalow was in poor condition. The bank put clauses on the loan contract telling us to fix the place up. It’s hard to tell whether we had more energy in those days, foolhardiness, or maybe even a bit of both? It took a few months of crawling around in mud under the house replacing the rotten timber footings with concrete. One timber stump holding up the corner of the house fell away at the slightest of pressure. The house then hung above the mud, above me, in the fresh air, politely deciding not to squash me.
Pre-interweb, there were books you know. In this case, the book was a how-to guide to constructing a house, with pictures and detailed drawings. Like gardening, possibly some experience helps with these sorts of matters, but there was none. The rear of the house was a mess. The thinking went: We got this! Off we went to a major timber supplier with some rough ideas. The guy was really lovely, or perhaps it was the recession and he needed to make some sales. Who cares? He patiently sat with us and said you need this timber for this, and that bit of timber for that, and you’ll be fine. The thought of getting permits for the work, was a totally unknown concept. And nobody even cared.
Out with the old rear of the house, and in with the new. It took a while to complete the project in between full time work, part time study, and life. And it was a good first attempt, but not my finest work, by a significant margin.
We had plans though. Late at night, we’d walk the dogs around the area just talking. The talk was big too, and it certainly didn’t wake anyone up! The area was quiet, you’d rarely encounter another person. Had a bit of a reputation, it did. A bloke at my workplace, used to work the bar at the local pub, and he said: “You don’t pick someone else’s fight there”. Sound advice. The area sure had some rough edges.
The thing with plans, is that sometimes they come to fruition. And what we lacked in skill, we made up for in ambition and energy. The house was sold, the ill economic winds caused house prices to drop, and we sure lost a lot of mad cash on that sale. Maturity is facing up to loss, and moving on. However, maybe we won. After all, despite all the hardships, the cactus continues to grow.
As you’d imagine, with ten inches of rain over the past few weeks, the air was humid. Most mornings, thick fog pooled over the valley below the mountain range.
When the sun shone, the combination of strong sunlight and high humidity was a knock out. Ollie the Bull Arab (Australian pig hunting dog) who is ordinarily indefatigable, struggled in the conditions.
Spare a moments thought for Sandra and I during such conditions. Resting at our ease in the summer sun, does not get projects done. No! Horror of horrors, we had to get up at the break of day and attend to the long list of farm projects. Correcting the abysmal rock wall in the courtyard behind the house was one of those projects. In our defence, the rock wall was constructed maybe a decade ago, and it was not our finest effort.
We excavated and cleared away all of the soil and clay from around a very large Moby (body) rock in the courtyard. Hosing down the Moby rock with water cleaned it up nicely.
It was a strange project because it gained its own momentum and took its own direction. The work was begun with little idea as to how it would end up. It took a day of digging to expose the huge rock (which we knew was there). The top soil from the steep garden bed was excellent quality, so that was relocated to another garden bed. Perhaps the beginning of a future project?
The underlying clay was used as backfill on the low gradient path project which runs on the underside of the chicken enclosure.
In order to clear the soil and clay from around the large Moby rock, we had to cut back a substantial quantity of vegetation. All of the organic matter was chucked onto a new and developing garden bed. The soil critters will break it down into rich soil in very little time.
At some point in the future, we may have enough excess organic matter to develop a compost heap, but right now that isn’t the case. A close up of the excavations show just how much material was removed.
The excavated site in the above image now required a very large rock wall in order to hold the soil in place thus preventing it washing down the hill on the first heavy rain. Peak rocks is real man. There are no easy rocks to be had within any reasonable distance of the house. However, there are boulders we can drill and split, so that’s how we avoid peak rocks, for now. And this week, we had just the right boulder in mind to supply rocks for this wall.
The garden bed there is so steep, that another layer of rocks will have to be added to the new wall in the above image, but that is a job for the future. There was even one spare large rock left over from the work. The spare rock was added to the low gradient path project.
It wasn’t all rocks and excavations this week. An issue with the chickens had been annoying me for quite a while. Chickens are very particular as to where they wish to lay eggs. After almost fourteen years of keeping and observing chickens, it became clear as to what they wanted. Getting the free time to enact their wishes was a whole different story.
The chickens were nesting in the opened bags of sugar cane mulch. The stuff is meant to be used for providing clean bedding, not for broody and laying chickens. In the above image, you can see that with four broody chickens taking up the parking space, another chicken decided to simply lay an egg on the floor of the hen house. Nice.
With a few free hours to spare, I decided to see what scrap timber there was, and then make a more appropriate nesting box that the chickens would want to use.
It’s good to have access to scrap materials, and the new and improved chicken laying box hopefully works better than the previous arrangements. When I rearranged the hen house, the chickens cracked the sads. It was mayhem. However, by the early evening, the chickens had sorted out their issues and were enjoying the facilities.
The design had to take into account a lot of considerations. A standard sized bale of sugar cane mulch can easily fit under the new nesting box. Also the dimensions of the box were such that the birds on the upper level are unable to poop on their friends below. I’m sure the cheeky scamps above enjoy that particular moment far more than would their compatriots below!
In other farm news, the recently planted tall tree fern has seriously enjoyed the recent bout of rain. The tall fern sits at the bottom of a drainage basin, so the plant received a lot of water over the past few weeks.
We grow a lot of thornless blackberry varieties and they are used to produce a very tasty jam. The yummy berries are only a week or two from harvest.
Raspberries are continuing to amaze. Most days we’re harvesting a good supply of the tasty berries. They’re cooked up into the best tasting jam of the lot.
Kiwi fruit are an excellent winter fruit harvest. Many of the flowers have been pollinated, and are now showing fruit. The extended period of rain messed around with the pollination (the insects didn’t want to venture out in the rain), and as a result I believe fruit set is about half of what it was last year.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 8am is 20’C (68’F). So far this year there has been 975.8mm (38.4 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 972.4mm (38.3 inches)