Ready to Move In

Painted the chook house during the week so already to move the chooks in. I figured a bright orange roof would make them happy so the should lay lots of eggs.

Goodbye Cubby House - Hello Chook Mansion

 

The old chook house is barely holding together, so Lachlan and Bill ( working as the trade assistant)  have been converting the kids old cubby house into the chook house. The weekend before last, Lachlan and Bill cut off the legs and filled in the ends, this weekend Lachlan has cut the corrugated iron and screwed it onto the roof. Not far off being able to have the chooks move in- need to paint the roof and put in some perches and it will be ready to go. The hardest part will be trying to convince the chooks to move in!

 

Poppies Finally Bloom

 

I planted some poppies earlier in the year, the looked okay and then they started to die off and I thought that was the end of it and we were not going to get any poppies. In the last week or so we finally got a few that have managed to bloom. Maybe I should have just totally neglected them and they would have popped up everywhere. In France we saw them in all sorts of rocky hard places!

 

Jack Has a Sore Cruciate Ligament

It looks like Jack has partially torn his cruciate ligament, and he is supposed to be on rest for two weeks while he is on anti inflammatory tablets. Trying to explain to him he cannot go for walks is not working too well. We tried taking him out on the back of the bike, which was okay till he jumped out even though he was strapped in- he probably fully tore it doing that! Tonight we tried taking him for a walk in a back pack, he seemed pretty comfortable with that, so will see how plan B goes!

Michael and the Uku-ladies!

Last night at church we had a talent night, someone had the bright idea ( not me that is for sure!) that we should put a ukulele band together. Kylie - girl on the left had just brought a ukulele around the same time as me, and it turns out Michael and Emma both had ukuleles so we had a band. I had just finished my 6 week ukulele course so I was now the expert (ha, ha) so for a number of Tuesdays we got together and I taught them what I had learnt. Fortunately they were excellent students, it helped that they were much more musical than I  and they could sing, so we had a band. We practiced our three songs- Bye, Bye Love, Sloop John B and You Are My Sunshine, and we managed to sound like we knew what we were doing on the night. No-one booed, they all clapped ( that was one of the rules) and we had a fun time. Good thing we didn't get a standing ovation and a call for an encore as we only had the three songs we could play!

Bee Careful Collecting the Mail at Our House!

 

I was complaining to Bill on Friday that I hadn't collected the mail as there were too many bees hanging around the letterbox, I had gotten it Thursday and there had also been lots of bees hanging around then. He decided he would get the mail but came back complaining that I should have warned him about all the bees- it turns out overnight we had a small swarm of bees take up residence in our mail box- no wonder the postie did not deliver on Friday!

We rang up a bee keeper and he came around Saturday afternoon to collect the bees- it was rather tricky being in the letter box. He had his bee suit there but didn't bother using it or using gloves, he said the bees were pretty passive as they were full of honey. He just put his hand straight in the letter box, used a scrapper to put them into a takeaway container and then put them into the hive. He put a whole lot in the hive and then we just had to sit and watch for a bit, he thought he had gotten the queen bee in the hive, but turns out she probably wasn't as they started flying back out and back in the letterbox. He finally got her in the hive box and then they all stayed put. He left the hive there till about 8pm and came back and got it and took away the bees! We had a fascinating afternoon watching our letterbox and learning all about bees and honey. He was saying last year he probably only got 2 call outs for bees, this year he has had about 30! We gave him a couple of dozen eggs for his trouble, and our bees- he was most grateful, so is going to ring me when he starts extracting honey this year and we can go around and watch that and get some honey!

Picnic at the Carillion

 

Monday was a public holiday so we had a picnic at the Carillion with Pam, Bindi and Simon and the kids and another family. It was a lovely spot and we had a very pleasant time!

National Botanic Gardens

 

Last weekend while mum was visiting we headed out to the National Botanic Gardens, it was a very windy afternoon but was actually quite sheltered at the gardens. It was a great time to go as there were so many flowers out in bloom. Afterwards we took a quick trip into the city and had afternoon tea at Dobinsons and sampled another one of their yummy tarts!