Imogen, her mother, and I spent the day building raised beds for our vegetable garden. Not a lot of fun, but ultimately very satisfying.
Afterwards Luna and I took a walk and spotted TWO short-beaked echidnas on our place. Luna was rapt in her attention and sat still the whole two minutes or so we stopped to watch them. They seemed to be together so I suspect they were a female and her male suitor. It’s hard to describe what they look like in motion – sort of a cross between a sisal doormat and a chia pet ambling around looking for ants and other tasty arthropods. If we are very lucky the female will hang around and we’ll get to see her puggle (the name for a baby monotreme) in the Spring. How cool would that be?
Good morning, keres!
I had to look up the animal you saw.
Is this what you observed?
The solitary Short-beaked Echidna looks for a mate between May and September; the precise timing of the mating season varies with geographic location. Both males and females give off a strong odour during the mating season. During courtship — observed for the first time in 1989 — males locate and pursue females. Trains of up to ten males may follow a single female in a courtship ritual that may last for up to four weeks; the duration of the courtship period varies with location.[16] In cooler parts of their range, such as Tasmania, females may mate within a few hours of arousal from hibernation.
I guess you can feel spring coming soon. We felt like fall yesterday morning; blustery showers and low/mid 40s. It is dawn, and looks to be a cool, clear day here in the Berkshires.
Uh, no. That’s not exactly what we saw. But I’ve never seen two adults together so I suspect that there was some thoughts of hanky panky on at least one of their parts.
Here’s a photo of one that was ambling through our back yard a year or so ago.
They’re not uncommon where we live, but you still don’t actually see one very often – they’re painfully shy and amble off at the first hint of another creature.
Yep, we’re starting to get hints of Spring weather. Hence the work on the veggie garden. We also had a fellow with a small excavator working on trenches today for out rain-water system. So, I’ll be laying pipe this week in hopes of getting it finally set up – so that we have enough water for the garden this year. All the digging and planting is for naught if we don’t have enough water to keep the plants growing.
Actually, I was hoping for tomatoes from all that hard work – echidnas were serendipity.
The other “crop” from todays work was at least two hundred cockchafer grubs, which we turned up while tilling the soil. The ducks and chickens we thrilled with the feast.
We’ve been splitting and stacking a tree we cut up earlier this summer — leaving behind a worm buffet for the birds. Perhaps, birds will soon be evolving to see sweating humans as a food source. 😉
Cattle egrets now follow tractors instead of oxen and pelicans and seagulls follow fishing boats. Today, the up-turned dirt from the trencher was immediately pounced upon by the Fairy Wrens looking for little insects. And Imogen’s mom tells of a Australian Robin that used to sit on her garden fork while she worked the soil – darting off only long enough to nab whatever grub or worm she unearthed.
I’m pretty sure “sucker” is written on our foreheads in some sort of “ink” that’s only visible to critters, seeing as how we do all the work and then just let them steal the good things (like bugs and guts).
We didn’t get back from the airport until well after midnight so he only talked a little before crashing. He wants to do it again next summer, which is a good sign. And he also got pissed at some whiners who kept holding them back and he actually told them off, which is something that makes me very happy considering how quiet and shy he usually is. I’m thinking that I’ll be slowly finding out just how much, or if, he has grown.
Not enough for me to say the weather is <inice</i> — I don’t care how hot it’s been, weather doesn’t get to be nice until it’s in the low 80s at least.
I’m okay. I need to work on a paper for a while this morning just to try to get ahead for work this week, and all I reallly feel like doing is being lazy.
Good morning all. I need to change the filters on the water purifier and I suppose today would be as good as any to tackle it. Mrs. Dem is threatening to do it herself if I don’t and she is definitely not mechanically inclined.
This morning I was awakened by a screeching flock of Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos. Last time I saw the whole flock in the air at one time I counted eleven, which is a large group for them.
They spent half-an-hour or so tearing up the trees in search of tasty bits. Between their constant calling and the shreding of bark and branches they’re a very noisy bunch.
I only got this one photo that even half-way turned out. The sun was not yet up, and behind them to boot. Also, they fly off whenever they see you, so trying to get closer to them is a real bother.
To give you a sense of scale, they are about one-and-a-half times larger than the Sulfur-crested Cockatoos that people keep as pets – crest to the tip of their tail they are easily longer than my arm (and I have long arms). They are also known for their ornery disposition.
They are very handsome birds, and I wish I could get a photo one of these days that does them justice.
After watching them rip through the pine cones on our trees, it’s easy to understand why they’re not kept as pets – no cage could hold up long against the destructive force of their incredibly powerful bills.
Actually, it’s Monday afternoon, as is evidenced by the large dog outside the front door staring at the house in hopes that it will produce a person to take her for a walk – which, being that it’s Monday and Imogen is at work, means me.
My day was filled with alpaca wrangling – which is much harder than it sounds. Nina escaped today, twice. Which ultimately involved building a great deal of temporary fences to expand their pasture into an area that actually had grass in it.
Unfortunately, my first attempt at moving them into said area was thwarted by that trench we just had dug. The alpacas refused to cross this huge grand canyon of a trench (about a foot wide and two feet deep, which I easily step over and the ducks hop over). I had to herd them around the lower shed to get them around the trench. This apparently necessitated a detour around the lower paddock as well with alpacas going every which direction with Pacha’s last ditch attempt to double back only twarted by my well aimed cap hitting her squarely on her bum.
Actually, it hardly compares with what I’m reading in The Fatal Shore, which is about the convict founding of Australia. All sorts of torture, starvation, mass slaughter of the natives, cannibalism amongst escapees, etc. Not a light romp of a book, anyway, but very fascinating.
His metabolism is probably on overdrive — when we get home from a hiking trip, it takes our bodies several days to realize that we’re not out there doing something physical 8 hours a day.
They have this solo thing in the middle of the trip where they drop each person off at a different spot with barely enough food for 2 days. The boy ate all of his the first day and the second day he ate dandelion leaves, sage and blackberries. He stopped short of eating grubs but he thought about it.
Good thing you’re not Jewish — he’d never survive Yom Kippur (I’d have eaten a candy wrapper in the ladies room, except the all those neat-freaks at the synagogue meant it was way too clean). 😉
I know! I laughed when he told me he couldn’t go one day without eating. Half of the diets I’ve been on in the past 15 years were far less appealing (and filling) than dandelions and sage.
He doesn’t know how much he weighed when he left…but he looks skinnier to me…..and he was already scrawny. I have a feeling with all of the power eating he’s doing he’ll be back up to where he was in 3 days.
Just eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping. Sounds just like Family Man. If I hadn’t just woken up and wasn’t looking for something to eat, I would rebut that. ;P
Good morning all. Posting remotely from a windows 98 laptop. Decrepit and not reliable. Comfortable temps here in Bryce, surprisingly enough. No photos because of this ancient operating system. See you soon.
Don’t know how much you’re planning to do but the Peek-a-Boo Loop and Fairyland Loop trails are both fantastic and much less crowded than the Navajo and Queen’s Garden trails (though both those trails are crowded for very spectacular reasons).
Glad to hear the temps are good for ya’ll and I’m really looking forward to pictures.
Different Subject:
Has anyone had any trouble signing into their Gmail or Blogger accounts. I’m putting in my user name and password for both, but it won’t recognize them.
No rain for weeks. And barely any rain the entire summer. And we’re been in the 90s for several weeks. The ag folks are saying it will take the soil around 3 years to recover.
Sorry to hear that. We got a little more rain last night, but I doubt that we’ll get enough this Winter to make up for the deficit thus far. Still, we’ll obviously take what we can get.
During the recent extend dry spell, we lost about a half dozen trees good-sized trees. And, eucalyptus trees are very adapted to drought.
This is why we are spending so much money on setting up a proper rain-water harvesting system. We’ll easily have ten grand into the project by the time we’re done.
The trees here are as stressed as I’ve ever seen them. Lots of trees are already turning and some already have dead leaves. We’ve had dry summers before but I don’t remember any as bad as this. I can really empathize with your drought conditions.
It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what climate change has in store for Tasmania, as it’s the only part of Australia that isn’t mostly arid or sub-tropical. The rain pattern here has been a little rain spread somewhat evenly over the whole year. The prediction is actually for our more rain, but it being less spread out.
Hence our need to catch and store large quantities whenever the getting is good. Still, we’re only trying to catch and store enough water for our household use (we already reuse bath water in the laundry and the veggie garden), the animals, a small veggie garden, and maybe a small orchard. There’s no way we can water the bush – it will live or die on whatever rainfall it gets.
Now, for a completely different topic. I know that some of you were wondering, given their very similar descriptions, how (when you got to Australia) you would tell apart the Little Pied Cormorant and the Black-face Cormorant. The Black-faced Cormorant has black all the way down to it’s eyes. The Little Pied Cormorant has white above the eyes. Unfortunately, they rarely pose together to give you a sense of the size difference.
Also official: the hottest and driest August in NC. Only 1/4 inch of rain for the entire month and temps right around 100 for the past 3 weeks. It’s amazing to me, Andi, that you are so dry and Cleveland is having the wettest August on record.
It’s been raining here since early Sunday. I got desperate to get out of the house yesterday and did a 4-mile walk in it, and was thinking of all of you with the drought for most of the last mile…as in, “Why can’t we send this to the people who need it?”
I feel like a mushroom, and it’s not supposed to clear up until Thursday. I wonder how camp is going for CBtE in this.
Ah, much better now.
I’ll be the first to write on the walls!
Yup, we’re on dial-up in Lenox.
I sympathize immensely with Andi and others who have to deal with it all the time.
Hi everyone. It’s Sunday evening here.
Imogen, her mother, and I spent the day building raised beds for our vegetable garden. Not a lot of fun, but ultimately very satisfying.
Afterwards Luna and I took a walk and spotted TWO short-beaked echidnas on our place. Luna was rapt in her attention and sat still the whole two minutes or so we stopped to watch them. They seemed to be together so I suspect they were a female and her male suitor. It’s hard to describe what they look like in motion – sort of a cross between a sisal doormat and a chia pet ambling around looking for ants and other tasty arthropods. If we are very lucky the female will hang around and we’ll get to see her puggle (the name for a baby monotreme) in the Spring. How cool would that be?
Good morning, keres!
I had to look up the animal you saw.
Is this what you observed?
(From wikipedia
I guess you can feel spring coming soon. We felt like fall yesterday morning; blustery showers and low/mid 40s. It is dawn, and looks to be a cool, clear day here in the Berkshires.
Uh, no. That’s not exactly what we saw. But I’ve never seen two adults together so I suspect that there was some thoughts of hanky panky on at least one of their parts.
Here’s a photo of one that was ambling through our back yard a year or so ago.
They’re not uncommon where we live, but you still don’t actually see one very often – they’re painfully shy and amble off at the first hint of another creature.
Yep, we’re starting to get hints of Spring weather. Hence the work on the veggie garden. We also had a fellow with a small excavator working on trenches today for out rain-water system. So, I’ll be laying pipe this week in hopes of getting it finally set up – so that we have enough water for the garden this year. All the digging and planting is for naught if we don’t have enough water to keep the plants growing.
That’s an interesting prickly looking critter, keres. It appears when they have a serious relationship, they must consummate it very carefully;-)
The echidna watching sounds like a nice payoff for all that hard work.
It was lovely here yesterday — low 80s, no humidity, cool breeze. Unfortunately, we’ll be back in the 90s by Monday.
Actually, I was hoping for tomatoes from all that hard work – echidnas were serendipity.
The other “crop” from todays work was at least two hundred cockchafer grubs, which we turned up while tilling the soil. The ducks and chickens we thrilled with the feast.
We’ve been splitting and stacking a tree we cut up earlier this summer — leaving behind a worm buffet for the birds. Perhaps, birds will soon be evolving to see sweating humans as a food source. 😉
They already have.
Cattle egrets now follow tractors instead of oxen and pelicans and seagulls follow fishing boats. Today, the up-turned dirt from the trencher was immediately pounced upon by the Fairy Wrens looking for little insects. And Imogen’s mom tells of a Australian Robin that used to sit on her garden fork while she worked the soil – darting off only long enough to nab whatever grub or worm she unearthed.
I’m pretty sure “sucker” is written on our foreheads in some sort of “ink” that’s only visible to critters, seeing as how we do all the work and then just let them steal the good things (like bugs and guts).
Years of having dogs around has convinced me that the “sucker” is written in bright neon in a sign that stretches miles above the house.
God you guys….I’m really embarrassed to report my morning squirrel and bird sightings anymore. What a sheltered little life….
Morning, keres and Andi and ID and ask and everyone else. The boy made it home from his 3 week adventure…dirty, tired, taller.
Well? How did like it? Was he way far away from the fires? Did he take pictures? 🙂
We didn’t get back from the airport until well after midnight so he only talked a little before crashing. He wants to do it again next summer, which is a good sign. And he also got pissed at some whiners who kept holding them back and he actually told them off, which is something that makes me very happy considering how quiet and shy he usually is. I’m thinking that I’ll be slowly finding out just how much, or if, he has grown.
Wow. Where does he want to go next summer?
I think you’ll be seeing more changes over the next few months, too.
I’m wondering how CBtE is doing at sailing camp…he comes home Wednesday.
I can’t believe the summer’s almost over.
Good morning keres, ask and Andi.
It should be nice here today also.
Morning, FM!
Are you having a busy weekend?
Yep it has been extremely busy for me, and I don’t like it! 🙂
How are things with you and curly? Enjoying the weather?
We got quite a bit done yesterday, so we may go for a hike today. A cool 45 now, but a sunny 70 in the forecast.
I figure we should be getting the 70s weather around mid Oct. A hike sounds like fun, but I think I would prefer a good sit. 🙂
Hi FM. Are you going to be below 90?
Nope, our high today is 97. Things are starting to cool down. 🙂
Not enough for me to say the weather is <inice</i> — I don’t care how hot it’s been, weather doesn’t get to be nice until it’s in the low 80s at least.
They had in the local paper we hit 110 without the heat index last week. I’m looking forward to days in the 50-60 range.
Ya’ll got any special plans today?
I’m not inclined to consider splitting and stacking wood special — so, nope.
Are you relative-free this weekend?
Nope! 🙁
Had some relatives get in yesterday. Thus the reason I was so busy, grocery shopping.
But my two youngest nieces are staying at my sister’s house this weekend, and I’ve got to get over there today to take some pictures.
Sorry about that.
Well you go take those pictures (that actually sounds like fun) and I’m going to get started on my non-special day.
See ya.
or did I miss everybody again?
Good morning CG.
I’m in and out trying to fix the newest thing that has broken in the house.
How are you doing today?
I’m okay. I need to work on a paper for a while this morning just to try to get ahead for work this week, and all I reallly feel like doing is being lazy.
What broke?
Good morning, CG!
We’re off for a hike in a few.
That sounds fun, especially with the cooler weather we’re having.
Good morning all. I need to change the filters on the water purifier and I suppose today would be as good as any to tackle it. Mrs. Dem is threatening to do it herself if I don’t and she is definitely not mechanically inclined.
Hello from Monday morning.
This morning I was awakened by a screeching flock of Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoos. Last time I saw the whole flock in the air at one time I counted eleven, which is a large group for them.
They spent half-an-hour or so tearing up the trees in search of tasty bits. Between their constant calling and the shreding of bark and branches they’re a very noisy bunch.
I only got this one photo that even half-way turned out. The sun was not yet up, and behind them to boot. Also, they fly off whenever they see you, so trying to get closer to them is a real bother.
To give you a sense of scale, they are about one-and-a-half times larger than the Sulfur-crested Cockatoos that people keep as pets – crest to the tip of their tail they are easily longer than my arm (and I have long arms). They are also known for their ornery disposition.
Wow, what a handsome bird!
They are very handsome birds, and I wish I could get a photo one of these days that does them justice.
After watching them rip through the pine cones on our trees, it’s easy to understand why they’re not kept as pets – no cage could hold up long against the destructive force of their incredibly powerful bills.
Also, they’re very, very LOUD.
The birds around your place are so exotic and wild. I love the little wrens and titmice and towhees around here, but they’re nothing like yours.
You ever get turned around on the times. I thought it was Monday morning. Sheesh.
Back to nap time.
Actually, it’s Monday afternoon, as is evidenced by the large dog outside the front door staring at the house in hopes that it will produce a person to take her for a walk – which, being that it’s Monday and Imogen is at work, means me.
It’s already 76°, I just want to go back to bed, there are no flocks of gorgeous cockatoos.
Hey SN, I’m glad Nature Boy is home, safe, sound, and dirty (my motto for kids from my days as a camp counselor: dirty feet are good feet).
Morning Andi.
My day was filled with alpaca wrangling – which is much harder than it sounds. Nina escaped today, twice. Which ultimately involved building a great deal of temporary fences to expand their pasture into an area that actually had grass in it.
Unfortunately, my first attempt at moving them into said area was thwarted by that trench we just had dug. The alpacas refused to cross this huge grand canyon of a trench (about a foot wide and two feet deep, which I easily step over and the ducks hop over). I had to herd them around the lower shed to get them around the trench. This apparently necessitated a detour around the lower paddock as well with alpacas going every which direction with Pacha’s last ditch attempt to double back only twarted by my well aimed cap hitting her squarely on her bum.
If only there were pictures.
Inti eating his breakfast (pre-my-wrangling, post-Imogen’s [she lured Nina back with a bucket of food and then fed them all]).
Great picture. I watched Giddy eat a chipmunk yesterday; seeing Inti eat is much nicer.
Mmmmm. Chipmunk al fresco.
She was certainly enjoying herself — I found the sound of crunching bones a little offputting.
Luna finds things to eat on our walk – I try not to notice unless it seems sizable or especially crunchy.
I’m not sure which of our local critters caches bits for later, but we (as in Luna) has found quite a few buried bird parts recently.
Why are we having this conversation?
Thankfully (or not) my Hopeful doesn’t eat dead critters, she merely rolls around in them.
That pic of Inti is adorable.
Luna does that too.
Inti is adorable, especially when his top-knot is a still bit damp with dew and he looks like a boy who tried to wet comb his hair down.
To give you something to dream about tonight. 🙂
Ahhh.
Actually, it hardly compares with what I’m reading in The Fatal Shore, which is about the convict founding of Australia. All sorts of torture, starvation, mass slaughter of the natives, cannibalism amongst escapees, etc. Not a light romp of a book, anyway, but very fascinating.
Ah, I love a little light reading.
Yep, all 603 pages of it. I find it’s good reading in the tub, with a glass of red.
I’m about a third of the way and a bottle into it.;)
Yeah but that’s stuff you’ve never seen, unlike seeing dogs chomping on small animals.
Speaking of chomping, Giddy is “chomping on the bit” to go walking so it’s time to go.
Pleasant dreams. 😛
What a face!
I can’t believe how much he’s eating. Just eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping. Sounds just like Family Man.
His metabolism is probably on overdrive — when we get home from a hiking trip, it takes our bodies several days to realize that we’re not out there doing something physical 8 hours a day.
They have this solo thing in the middle of the trip where they drop each person off at a different spot with barely enough food for 2 days. The boy ate all of his the first day and the second day he ate dandelion leaves, sage and blackberries. He stopped short of eating grubs but he thought about it.
Good thing you’re not Jewish — he’d never survive Yom Kippur (I’d have eaten a candy wrapper in the ladies room, except the all those neat-freaks at the synagogue meant it was way too clean). 😉
I know! I laughed when he told me he couldn’t go one day without eating. Half of the diets I’ve been on in the past 15 years were far less appealing (and filling) than dandelions and sage.
That’s probably why I’ve never gone on a diet.
Time for my morning walk. See ya.
Has he lost weight? CBtE came back 15 lbs lighter, but he was chunky to begin with.
Glad he didn’t get desperate enough to wat the grubs…blech.
He doesn’t know how much he weighed when he left…but he looks skinnier to me…..and he was already scrawny. I have a feeling with all of the power eating he’s doing he’ll be back up to where he was in 3 days.
Just eating and sleeping, eating and sleeping. Sounds just like Family Man. If I hadn’t just woken up and wasn’t looking for something to eat, I would rebut that. ;P
Good morning all. Posting remotely from a windows 98 laptop. Decrepit and not reliable. Comfortable temps here in Bryce, surprisingly enough. No photos because of this ancient operating system. See you soon.
Happy hiking!
Don’t know how much you’re planning to do but the Peek-a-Boo Loop and Fairyland Loop trails are both fantastic and much less crowded than the Navajo and Queen’s Garden trails (though both those trails are crowded for very spectacular reasons).
Good morning Boran, Mrs. Boran and Boran2Boy.
Glad to hear the temps are good for ya’ll and I’m really looking forward to pictures.
Different Subject:
Has anyone had any trouble signing into their Gmail or Blogger accounts. I’m putting in my user name and password for both, but it won’t recognize them.
Gmail is working fine for me.
Blogger and wordpress do that to me all the time. I think they hate me. :/
But my gmail works fine.
God didn’t make little green apples and it don’t rain in Indianapolis* in the summertime.
* and it especially doesn’t rain 50 miles south in Brown County
I’m sorry, obviously I haven’t been keeping up. Does this mean it is or isn’t raining where you are?
No rain for weeks. And barely any rain the entire summer. And we’re been in the 90s for several weeks. The ag folks are saying it will take the soil around 3 years to recover.
Sorry to hear that. We got a little more rain last night, but I doubt that we’ll get enough this Winter to make up for the deficit thus far. Still, we’ll obviously take what we can get.
During the recent extend dry spell, we lost about a half dozen trees good-sized trees. And, eucalyptus trees are very adapted to drought.
This is why we are spending so much money on setting up a proper rain-water harvesting system. We’ll easily have ten grand into the project by the time we’re done.
The trees here are as stressed as I’ve ever seen them. Lots of trees are already turning and some already have dead leaves. We’ve had dry summers before but I don’t remember any as bad as this. I can really empathize with your drought conditions.
It will be interesting, to say the least, to see what climate change has in store for Tasmania, as it’s the only part of Australia that isn’t mostly arid or sub-tropical. The rain pattern here has been a little rain spread somewhat evenly over the whole year. The prediction is actually for our more rain, but it being less spread out.
Hence our need to catch and store large quantities whenever the getting is good. Still, we’re only trying to catch and store enough water for our household use (we already reuse bath water in the laundry and the veggie garden), the animals, a small veggie garden, and maybe a small orchard. There’s no way we can water the bush – it will live or die on whatever rainfall it gets.
I’d like to see the system you’re designing — maybe you could post pictures of it at various stages in its development.
Sure, I could even include diagrams!
Now, for a completely different topic. I know that some of you were wondering, given their very similar descriptions, how (when you got to Australia) you would tell apart the Little Pied Cormorant and the Black-face Cormorant. The Black-faced Cormorant has black all the way down to it’s eyes. The Little Pied Cormorant has white above the eyes. Unfortunately, they rarely pose together to give you a sense of the size difference.
A female Tasmanian Magpie, Gymnorhina tibicen hypoleuca.
Her mate.
Diagrams would be kewl.
You know I woke up this morning wondering about this exact thing. How amazing you should bring the birds up. 😉
Wow, I had no idea it took that long to recover from a bad summer.
It really shocked me when I heard it too. I wonder if it’s because the length of the drought drops the water table.
Also official: the hottest and driest August in NC. Only 1/4 inch of rain for the entire month and temps right around 100 for the past 3 weeks. It’s amazing to me, Andi, that you are so dry and Cleveland is having the wettest August on record.
It’s been raining here since early Sunday. I got desperate to get out of the house yesterday and did a 4-mile walk in it, and was thinking of all of you with the drought for most of the last mile…as in, “Why can’t we send this to the people who need it?”
I feel like a mushroom, and it’s not supposed to clear up until Thursday. I wonder how camp is going for CBtE in this.
OT, but I think we need a new cafe.
I think northerneastern Indiana is getting a lot of precip too but rest of the state is having moderate to severe drought.
It’s getting so bad here that with the water restrictions, the rich folks have to fill their koi ponds with evian.
That won’t ever be a happen here — because our idea of luxury water is when the water utility cancels the boil alert.