The Right Dog at the Right Time

It has been over four years since Roadie has been gone.  During those dogless years we tried a few times to get a new dog, but it never worked out, just never felt right.  I was too emotional and missing Roadie too much, or the dogs were lunatics, or I was dealing with a brand-new, newborn baby, or I was STILL missing Roadie too much, or we were having another baby or moving house. 
 

Four days ago our neighbour rocked up with a couple of mongrel pups in the backseat of her cigarette-smoke-filled-sedan...  on her way to the pound to have them euthanaised.   

“I heard you might be interested in a pup.” 

They were two females, with dappled black, blue and brown spots.  Covered in fleas, pot-bellied (so probably full of worms too), scrawny and filthy.  One lively, friendly little thing, one timid stand-off-ish.  According to the neighbour they were Smithfield Cattle-dog cross Maremmas.  The Maremma thing is doubtful, more likely Kelpie but whatever, they were mongrel cattle dog looking things – just my type. 

“What will daddy say if we keep one Sebastian?” 

I reached out and picked up the little timid one and there was no hesitation on my part - she was staying with us.   

So what did daddy say to my bouncing, joyful self on his arrival home from work?  

“Huh.  I guess it was inevitable.”  Is all.   (And he smiled wryly at his overly enthusiastic partner.) 

Polish Joe was more excited. (!) He had come up with a load of soil for us and I showed him what I’d done.  “Ahh so a good friend for Sebastian.  I bring you a cage.”  He was down the mountain and back up again in no time, with another load of soil and a cage for us to keep the pup in at night. 

I heard him from inside calling out to Sebastian.   

“Hey! Sebastian!    .... You got a new dog?!” 

“Yes.” 

“Whattaya call him?” 

“Spotty.” 

“Righto.” And he was off again roaring down the hill in his big truck. 

And there we were.  A dog family again.  And even though her name is awful  (chosen by Sebastian who WILL NOT let us change it), and even though she will never be as special to me as Roadie was, she’s a lovely little thing and beautiful with the kids and I think she’s going to be a bloody good dog. 

And so I piled the kids and the dog into the car for a trip to town.  We needed to buy dog food, worming treatment, flea-treatment, vaccinations, dog shampoo and a new collar!

Driveway Garden

I'm in the process of creating a garden at the end of our driveway (the house end)... Obviously I'm starting from scratch so there is a lot of prep work to do.... So:

·         Remove half a dozen barrow loads of rocks from the garden bed, check.

·         Remove about the same number of logs and fallen branches, check.

·         Remove grass and weeds, check.

·         Carry over a dozen loads of rocks back to the garden edge for construction of border/retaining wall, check.

·         Neaten up existing grass trees by removing dead fronds and trimming, check.

·         Build up soil with newspaper, compost, horse manure and more soil (to be dug up from elsewhere around the block - a tricky exercise because of the absolute saturation of rocks!), check.

·         Add plants (transplant natives from surrounding scrub and add new shrubs, herbs, ground covers etc), pending.

 

Ps –

That’s Grammy in the hat, she can’t resist a bit of hard labour!  Thank you Grammy!!!!

Sebastian is also at hand to help with rock transportation with his toy trucks and miniature wheelbarrow.  He’s also on the lookout for tiny toads.  He’s collected four of them from this garden and keeps them as pets.  He has them housed in a plastic toad habitat with soil and plants and ponds.  Benji and I are having to catch moths to feed them!  He loves them and is constantly plucking them up to play with and carry around!

Also I just have to mention all the lovely rain we’ve been getting. – wonderful news for our tank, our garden (to be) and the whole Scenic Rim area.  It is just so lush and green at the moment... and it makes the spider webs (we have plenty!!!!) look like they’ve been strung with jewels.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Red backed fairy wrens

I saw a heap of Red backed fairy wrens  Malurus melanocephalus melanocephalus  today, flitting in and around the grass trees.  They seemed to hang out in little trios - one red and black one (male) and two smaller brown ones (female).  They're just tiny!  Sebastian was excited to see them too.  I tried to get a photo, but with one arm holding Petra and the other holding just the point-and-shoot camera it didn't amount to much!

To see what they look like, take a look at a good photo by some guy called Martin Lofgren here.

Apparently they eat cicadas, YAY! Funnily enough the cicadas were a little less deafening this morning, coinciding with the first appearance of fairy wrens.

The Woodshed Floor

Slow and steady is the name of the game ...not usually my style, but I’m enjoying the hard physical labour of lifting and carting rocks and soil, the fact that I don’t need to be perfectly precise with my technique (I do however occasionally check my work with a spirit level), the fact that the end product is something we will need and use, and also the artistic element involved in aligning each stone. 

My progress is also limited by Petra’s sleeping habits and Sebastian’s tolerance.  I am only able to work while Petra sleeps and while Sebastian is enjoying playing Construction Sites with me.  He likes to bring loads of soil from my sand pile with his Tonka Truck for placement between the stones.  Occasionally I find he has done some stone placement of his own.  He’ll never know I remove and replace most (all) of his efforts.

So life on Mt French is good.  We work, eat, swim and dream of how it will all come together some day.  I suspect it will be an ongoing works for a loooong time, if not forever, but any feelings of apprehension about moving here have dissolved into the past.  It just feels right... and I can’t help but notice echoes of our time in El Valero in these warm and woozy summer days.

A long list of projects.

 

With Christmas and New Year over, it’s time to get to work. I have a never-ending monologue running through my mind of all the jobs and projects we have to do around the block.  It’s exciting because I just can’t stand being idle. I think we have many decades’ worth of work to do and I just wake up so pumped and ready for action.  My leather gloves are my new best friends.

 

At the moment we have the following projects on the go:

1. Thistle removal. 

One of the consequences of having trucks and foreign soil brought onto our property is the introduction of weeds.  We have a few types of weeds now, but I’ve been focusing on thistles.  These little bastards look pretty close up, but are NASTY!  They even spike you through leather gloves.  And those lovely, fine, feathery, flower fluff things which, as kids, we loved to catch as they floated on the breeze (We called Santa Clauses and made Christmas wishes on them!!!) are actually dried out thistle florets – a means of seed dispersal for this shitty, bloody weed! 

2. Non-chemical weed destruction. 

The builders, quite naughtily, left a big sheet of black plastic behind after they left. We have however put it to good use. We’re using it to cover up pulled-up weeds in order to kill the little buggers.

3. Bike track/ wheel barrow construction. 

 Moving weeds and rocks (see later) and things around the block is a lot easier since I created what will become part of our mountain biking trail network. Eventually we want to link this up to the track down to Roadie’s Rest (currently under construction also) and the boundary lines and various other trails across the block.

4. Construction of the wood shed.

Firstly I started collecting nice flat stones, then we marked out what will be the shed floor... then levelled it... and started work on the retaining wall... eventually we’ll pave the whole floor with the flat stones... Luckily (?) we have thousands and thousands and thousands of stones all over the property!

5. Whipper-snippering the cleared zone around the house to stop it from growing back up into bush again. (This is really important for bushfire control.)

 

 

 

6. Pruning eucalypts.

In the cleared zone a heap of baby gum trees have sprouted.I don’t want to get rid of them all but we can’t allow them to grow up into massive trees, again for bushfire control. So we’ll see how we go with just trying to keep them small and shrubby by pruning them. It might not work – but it’s worth a crack for now.

 

...And that is just some of the jobs we have on the go... I’d be here all night if made a complete list!

Christmas 2014 - What a cracker!

We have said for a long time that the first Christmas we are in our new house we’ll host the family do.  So we had less than a fortnight to prepare for the arrival of our families!  No problem!!!  Ahhhh!!!!  Actually, to be honest turned out not to be a problem at all... in fact it turned out to be a bloody ripper. 

This year marked the start of what I hope will become a tradition: The Uniting of the Clans.  We had Grammy, Nonna, Poppy, the Gurney-Calle-Akers Clan (Kristen, Bianca, Eva), the Calle-Service Clan (Benji, Gemma, Sebastian, Petra), the Calle-Davies Clan (Gillian and Richard) and the Davies Clan (Jane, John and Tim). 

It turned out to be a magical mix!  For a group of in-laws and out-laws (lame pun) I just can’t believe what a gorgeous time we spent together.

I decided to theme Christmas lunch – with so many people bringing a plate I thought it would be a way for the flavours to mesh in together.  So, having seen a Lebanese Christmas spread in Feast magazine that looked pretty tasty, suggested we go with Lebanese this year.  As it turned out we all sort of bastardised the theme and there were Turkish, Moroccan, Israeli, Lebanese and Greek dishes... but the general gist was Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/Arabesque and the food was absolutely delicious!   

So Christmas lunch, which turned out to be linner (yes Kristen! If you call the meal between breakfast and lunch brunch, then I am sure linner is the correct term for the meal between lunch and dinner) was created in a flurry of communal cooking and food preparation with everyone crowded around the kitchen island bench... and even some on the floor.  The result:  My ideal Christmas with everyone all in together, jostling for that last spare lemon, sharing recipes, tasting each other’s dishes, sharing (or fighting over!) the sharpest knife and chatting and laughing all the while.

And then we had board games (more laughing and paying out than actual playing I think!), muso jam sessions (ditto the laughing etc), rock-throwing competitions, bushwalking, swimming/kayaking at Lake Moogerah and even a synchronised swimming spectacular in the plunge pool!  I can’t stop buzzing at how everything went off so well.  Happy days.