Five years ago, and mere weeks before the first of the many lock downs due to the health subject which dares not be named, two 12 week old Kelpie dogs came into our lives. A local farmer was selling these two as the rejects from the litter. We bought them both. One had floppy ears, wonky eyes and an air of mischief, whilst the other was more traditional looking, but overly timid. Their personalities were hard wired at that time, and haven’t changed.
The much larger two year old Bull-Arab dog, Ollie, thought the pups were the best thing ever. He immediately took them under his wing acting as their protector and overall guide as how to be a proper member of the fluffy collective. The big dog was really gentle with them, even when the pin sharp puppy teeth gripped his jowls and hung off them with their full weight. Probably stretched his facial features, thus why he drools nowadays.
It’s hard to know where the five years since then have gone. The two Kelpie’s have all grown up, and they still love their big fluffy mascot, Ollie.
Part of the gentle art of learning with the two dogs, is making mistakes. A human in that pack merely hopes that the mistakes aren’t of the permanent variety. About three years ago, the two youngsters sampled some choice wombat or wallaby poop way down near to the forest edge. It had been a very wet year, and the weather had shifted from summer warmth to the more humid and cooler winter climate. Mushrooms were prolific. The marsupials have been on the continent so long that the fruiting fungi are a source of feed. Dogs and humans haven’t been on the land for all that long, and so all fungi should be treated with deep suspicion, mostly because they’re probably highly toxic and can be fatal if ingested.
Well, the hapless dogs should have known better, and they foolishly consumed the tainted poop. Hopes were dashed upon the shores of a harsh reality. Both canines had a really bad trip. Ruby, her of the floppy ears, ran off into the forest and headed about 500m downhill towards the beautiful fern lined creek. Fortunately, she barked the entire way, so we could at least follow her trail. Upon discovering the wonky brained dog in the creek, she was running backwards and forwards erratically between two rocks. It was all very unusual behaviour and was termed: Brain lock. Not sure whether that is proper scientific nomenclature. Who cares? A harsh command broke the spell, and woozily she was walked all the way back up hill again. Doesn’t seem to have been any permanent damage, and from that point onwards she at least avoids such tainted scat.
Dame Plum the Kelpie, well, she’s a touch more adventurous in her sampling of marsupial back-end wastes. Years ago, the dog began to randomly have seizures. The veterinarian advised us to keep a log of when, where and how long the seizures occurred. Based on the collected data, a pattern soon emerged. The episodes took place at the forest edge when mushroom season was at its peak.
Both dogs nowadays have curtailed freedoms. When near to the forest edge I keep them constantly on the move. They’re too busy running around to sample scats. All very sensible responses to the issue. However, it has been hard not to notice that the mushrooms were particularly prolific near to the old loggers mess. Hmm. The crusty brain kicked into gear, and it soon became obvious that with less mess comprising of old trees, stumps etc. on the ground in that area, there’d be less mushrooms. Fungi eats plant cellulose. It really is that simple.
So, three years ago, we began the slow process of cleaning up the mess of logs and stumps which the forestry dudes discarded at the conclusion of their salvage operations. At a guess, the saw log recovery work began soon after the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires. That would have only run for a few years afterwards as burnt hardwood logs are only good for milling purposes within about five years following on from a fire. Before that, the area had been logged between 1860 before ceasing around 1960, so that lot left some mess too.
It was a lot of mess to deal with, but that also originally kept the price for the property low. People may have been scared off seeing that horror show. Probably were. Unfortunately, we’re made of sterner stuff, or maybe we just had no idea and were naive? Dunno. Whatever. So yeah, three years ago, each winter season we began cutting up the logs, removing the many upside down discarded tree stumps, plus who can forget the ‘Meg’ enormously hard tree ends? What could be recovered for firewood was, whilst the rest was burnt off.
The job is mostly done now. The work was done in the winter months for very good reasons, and I for one am glad to have not been bitten during the process by an annoyed third-deadliest-on-the planet snake hiding in all that mess. They’re easily annoyed, those reptiles, possibly because they were until only recent times holding second place for that title. Some researcher upset the boat by discovering a slightly deadlier variety in a remote part of central Australia.
Snakes and rabbits go hand in hand down here, and there were also a goodly number of rabbit burrows which I’ve caved in and sealed over. All top stuff. Plus we recovered a huge quantity of rock for various projects. But more importantly, the area looks nice nowadays.
Mind you, it will be good to be getting on to other projects now. Quietly speaking, the effort has been physically challenging at times, whilst pushing many of the machines to their limits. The chainsaw in particular has just destroyed so many bars and chains over the years on this job – the timber being super dirty. The other day, the folks I purchase the machinery consumables from, phoned me up to ask if I wanted a trade account with them. Clearly this work has not been cheap, although I doubt we’ve spent over a thousand dollars on such stuff during the three years, but it would probably be very close to that number. A bloke with an excavator would have done the work much faster, but the cost would have been way higher. And during wet times, like after this weeks very stormy weather, an excavator wouldn’t have had any traction in that area. Best to do the work slowly, and clean up afterwards.
And the dogs, well, they’re doing fine and (touch wood) have not had any further strangeness since we comprehended the root cause of the mischief. Yup, mushrooms, best not to mess around with.
This week’s video is a montage of photos from the clean-up work over the past three years:
The only dry days this week were Monday and Sunday, and those were spent on cleaning up the loggers mess. A massive, but flat old log was cut up and burnt off. The timber was quite dirty which has been the case in this particular area, and so has required lots of chainsaw sharpening.
The bonfire was put out by the heavy rain from Tuesday morning onwards. But before then, it mostly burnt through all of the logs and stumps.
At the opposite end of the week, Sunday, I tackled another upside down tree stump. This one was weird because a large and very much alive tree, had wrapped it’s root systems around the stump. The best I could achieve was cutting off all of the extraneous stump arms and making it less noticeable. Looks like one of those creepy Aliens from the film franchise of the same name…
A large pile of loggers mess now awaits to be burned off. It was as much as I could do today to wind up the clean-up project. It’s not perfect, but it’s a damn sight better than it was.
The rest of the week was really wet and cold. A big storm swept up from that frozen continent of Antarctica and dumped a lot of rain. Heavy rainfall is a good time to head outdoors and check how the water and drainage systems are working. That was when I discovered that an overflow on one of the massive house water tanks was leaking. Water was sliding down the side of the tank where it flowed into the ground.
Just one of the water tanks weighs in when full at 25,000kg / 55,000 pound. It’s a plastic behemoth, and there are two of them there! When the plumbers installed the water pipes and power connection for the pump many long years ago, they excavated the trench along the downhill side of one of the water tanks. A better idea would have been to dig outwards from the tank, but that didn’t happen. And of course, with a deep trench along the downhill side of a full tank, the soil subsided. Since then the tank has been slightly off vertical and now leans downhill. It has survived a 5.9 earthquake unscathed, so it’s probably stable, maybe. But it’s not ideal either and reduces room for future unexpected issues.
Unfortunately, the leaking water just happened to be oozing down the tank side and entering the ground at the most downhill point. Again, not a great situation and nobody ever wants to see or experience such a large mass rolling down the hill.
The connection was sub-optimal, to put it mildly. The outlet ring wasn’t installed flat against the surface of the tank, and silicone sealant was used to fill the gap. This wondrous product does not adhere to Polyurethane. Not much sticks to that plastic. The best thing to do in this instance (in between breaks in the rain) was to remove the tank fitting and pipe.
Unfortunately, the overflow pipe for some weird reason, was angled uphill, and this artificially increased the amount of water held inside both tanks (they’re linked). So when I removed the fitting, I reckon about 2,000L / 500 gallons of cold water (it’s winter here), immediately gushed out. In between watching the water tank to see if it shifted position or increased it’s lean, I rapidly dug trenches to get rid of all that water as quickly as possible. A tense moment for sure!
The weather Gods must have smiled upon me for the rain held off for a while. Blue skies even provided some nice sunshine. Whilst up on a ladder, I cleaned off any old silicone sealant from the plastic tank surface using a sharp wood chisel.
A new fitting was then installed flush which sat flush with the tank surface. A pipe was connected up, and then the rain began again. Talk about just in time.
And whilst out in the rain observing the fix another leak was found further down the hill. An o-ring on an inspection cap in the pipe had failed. Water was again oozing out. This time it was less problematic because the cap could be replaced in mere moments. The new variety of caps have a better o-ring seal design than this much older one.
No wonder the large house overflow water tank had been slow to re-fill. Oh well. A lot of vegetation had grown in that area, so the plan is to remove the lot and put in a proper path. If things can be observed, failures will be corrected in a more timely fashion in future.
On Saturday morning we received a light dusting of snow. The storm was very brief and soon over. Still, it looked nice.
The heavy rains this week have brought the ferns to life:
The very first fruit tree has blossomed for the spring. The Plumcott (Plum-Apricot hybrid) flowers so early each year, that it has never before produced any fruit. Usually a late frost, or a lack of pollinators seals that fate. The tree is too large to relocate.
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 10’C (50’F). So far for this year there has been 547.2mm (21.5 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 481.4mm (18.9 inches)