Sometimes it makes me wonder how we get so much stuff done around here. And I ain’t alone there. People over the years have regularly expressed the same astonishment. Once long ago, a local described Sandra and I as the hardest working people they knew of. It’s hard to tell whether such words were a compliment. They may have been. The answer though is really quite simple, we’re just two super organised and motivated individuals. However, very occasionally things with planning the work activities go completely wrong, like with the recent innovative: ‘one list to rule them all’ incident.
Hard work is no stranger to me. As a kid living in a single parent household back in the early 1980’s, I attended a high school for disadvantaged children from years seven and eight. Ignoring the before and after school newspaper rounds, it was otherwise two years of indolence and enjoyment. Alas, academically speaking during that time, I sank beneath the comparative educational waves.
My grandfather took a harsher view upon the entire matter, then stumped the mad cash to send me to a more English than the English grammar school. Upon entry there in year nine, it was discovered that his misgivings were indeed correct, and I’d tested my way into the lowest quartile academically. It was an impressive achievement. Go me!
Having no other valid options, and sensing the aroma of opportunity, I applied myself academically, whilst still working the before school newspaper rounds. The afternoon newspapers by then had faded into obscurity. A young bloke has to have mad cash to spend on the arcade game machines, and there was no such thing as indolent pocket money. Far out, free hand-outs, what an outlandish idea! By year twelve I was back to the status of an A grade student. Not the best in school mind you, but good enough to be satisfied with the results.
To give you an idea of what that effort took, in those years, school nights inevitably involved about three hours of homework, every night. They drilled you, that’s what the tuition fees go toward. Additionally, two nights per week involved a few hours of training for school sports. Then on a Saturday morning, you’d compete against other public schools. Saturday afternoon was more homework. The educational facility greedily ate your entire life, but it also trained a person as to how to navigate our work centric civilisation, if that person was self motivated.
And let’s not forget that I had witnessed enough complicated familial situations, to have long become wary of overly optimistic futures. Let’s just say that I was self motivated from an early age.
Sandra had a different educational experience, and instead attended a government high school. Unlike the relentless drilling I received, hers was a more indolent time. Yet like me, she also worked jobs delivering newspapers, but had also cornered the more lucrative weekend evening babysitting market. We were both mercenary young things and equally self motivated for much the same reasons, thus probably why we hit it off so well and understood each other.
The ace up her sleeve though, is that she scores really well in aptitude testing. In the past, it’s scored her some very interesting jobs. Anyway, some abstract things I struggle with, are comparatively a breeze for Sandra. It’s all a big mystery to me, much like how advanced mathematics is an arcane and esoteric art to my brain.
It comes in handy though. Back in 2010, we built the house here, mostly using our own labour. The only time I can ever recall being stressed out by that work, was the time when we were outside the supplier for sheet steel. An order had to be put in for all of the various shapes and lengths of the flashings used for the crazy flame retardant roof design. From hindsight, the roof design of this house is unnecessarily complicated and it is not a mistake I would repeat. Whilst sitting in the car outside the supplier I had the awful realisation that I was totally unprepared to place the order, because I hadn’t had enough time to think it all through. That’s when my brain went into the rarely seen meltdown mode. As you’d imagine, it wasn’t pretty.
Fortunately for me at that moment, Sandra took over and resolved the detailed requirements for the order. It was a three dimensional problem with overlapping components where no two flashings were the same size and shape. Months later after all of steel materials were installed on the house and there was no wastage, or shortage for that matter, the hard question was put: “How the f$%k did you do that?” To this day, despite explanations, it’s still a mystery.
Whatever, we’re both super organised people. Fleeting ideas get captured on paper and discussed, some are even implemented. There’s rarely a dull moment around here. A few years ago I discovered an obscure reference to Sandra’s personalty type appreciating lists. Right, that made sense. And when I thought about it, there were a few paper lists of ideas literally sitting on the kitchen island bench. I’m certain there was a system to the lists, I’m just probably not smart enough to appreciate it.
A discussion regarding these list ensued recently. The idea was raised to let’s use the lists to guide the activities around the farm for the week in advance. A good idea. The so called ‘one list to rule them all’, sprang into being from that discussion. There were a lot of activities that week, and the list idea was a helpful guide so that needful things weren’t neglected. This all occurred a few weeks ago when we were dismantling the rusty steel shed.
So during that week the work around here took it’s natural course. The list guided the activities. However, the rabbits became a sudden nuisance, and that required an enormous amount of additional effort which we hadn’t planned for. So, by the end of the week, the realisation had sunk in that we hadn’t taken a single day off work to rest. None! By that stage, we were both a bit edgy, and possibly even a touch snippy. The list had been achieved, but nobody in the house was happy with the outcome.
Turns out, it’s not a bad idea that if you intend to set goals, you need to ensure that they’re both realistic and achievable. And whilst we can work hard, that’s not sustainable seven days per week. Nope. The ‘one list to rule them all’ is still there guiding our work now, but in a modified format which no longer includes aspirational goals. And the household collectively breathed a sigh of relief.
A very large tropical storm brought outside work to a standstill on Thursday through Saturday. Over 50mm (2 inches) of rain fell, and it was just way too wet to work outdoors on those days. Never fear dear reader, I was able to work in the machinery shed making two timber water pump frames.
The timber frames sit on thick treated pine sleepers and are made out of whatever scrap materials we had to hand. With a powerful electric table saw, you can mill larger timber pieces down into the size and shape that you require. There was even enough time to connect up all of the various plumbing and electrical components (although I forgot to take a photograph of that work).
In another week or so, the frames will be clad in corrugated steel sheeting for weather protection. Then they’ll be connected up to the 12V DC power and tested. The water pumps may be small, but they can both push 20L/min (or 5.5gallons/min) each and will easily power a strong bushfire sprinkler and garden taps.
Prior to the forecast heavy rainfall and storm, we spent a day of work splitting and hauling firewood back up the hill. The large pile of firewood on the house contour is now pretty much complete. When the new firewood shed is built, we’ll move all of that firewood pile, into the new shed.
The next phase of the firewood job will be to fill up the existing firewood shed. And some of that days firewood haul went into the shed.
On Saturday we travelled to a nearby fern specialist nursery. It’s a lovely place to visit, and we’ve been purchasing from them for at least a quarter of a century. In 2022, they supplied us with the six foot tall tree fern which sits in the drainage basin at the front of the house. Now the weather is warming, the big tree fern is beginning to produce new fronds.
During the visit to the nursery, we purchased an additional dozen smaller ferns for a garden bed which runs beneath the low gradient path.
In breaking produce news, the soil around the potato vines continues to be hilled up. One of the fastest growing vines now resembles a minor volcano. Where it will end, who knows?
The asparagus spears in the three raised beds are growing faster than we can consume them, and we eat a lot of asparagus. I don’t actually mind letting some of the spears turn into the ferny foliage, because it allows the plant to store some energy in the root system.
The sensitive person knows not to count their apricot and almond crops in this cold marginal mountainous environment, until they’re eating the fruit that is! But both crops have now survived a light snowfall, freezing overnight weather, and heavy rainfall – and they’re still on the tree. It’s a good sign, but still… In previous years anyone one of those weather events would have lost the crops, but somehow not this year!
The many varieties of pears and apples look at this early stage of the season as if they’ll do well. Fingers crossed. Growing fruit is not an activity for the anxiety riddled.
This weeks video is about breathing exercises and the benefits of using your nose for that activity:
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 19’C (66’F). So far for last year there has been 776.8mm (30.6 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 720.6mm (28.4 inches)