Our great southern migration

  Our first lambs! One white, one not so white. With the floppy ears, the white one more resembles a pup or a calf. Neither resemble Dad. Or Mom, for that matter.  Our second set of lambs arrived before I finished the post. Dora had bright white twins that look just like her It was cool and misty last night but the first set were full of milk and totally relaxed  this morning. The other 3 ewes still have big bellies. But, for that matter, so does the ram. The ram ("Pauncho") is hanging out with Dubya, for now. The two seem to have bonded.  Pauncho even found some special shade on a very hot day Dubya was actually calling to the ram when we were in their paddock the other day. Friendship does not include sharing grain but sharing hay is okay.  Love has been in the air all around. The blue-tongue lizard found a fellow- for a short while at least. Apparently the males are a love 'em and leave 'em type. The lizard is on her own for the 4-5 months before she gives bi...

Back to ornithology lessons as we have a hiatus in new types of activity this week. The main excitement was the RFS (fire service) community event this morning. The big kids played with the fake fire and smoke machines while waiting for the little kids to show up: So many of the Australian birds are identified by eye color; this correlates with a variety of interesting colors.  This  deranged-looking thornbill above is a Barrabaroo resident. We do have at least three types of thornbills; the red eye marks this one as a brown thornbill vs a striated thornbill. These little birds dart around quickly and typically travel in small flocks. Their high level of activity makes it a challenge to get an in-focus photo. I don't think we have buff rumped thornbills here - the light blue eye is just strange. This pied currawong is posing in the formal garden - until he wasn't. Currawongs are often the last to sing in the evening and the first to start up in the morning. They have a lovely ...

  We now have a roof sprinkler system! And two fire hose set ups (as above). This is a short video of the system in action If a fire is approaching, we turn on the system to wet things down around the house. We use the firehoses in other areas. If the fire gets closer, we turn on the sprinklers and hunker down inside. It should be able to run for over an hour if needed.  We put the sprinklers on the house and on the shed. Having the concrete walkway 360 degrees should also help.  The process involved connecting the cement tank to the roof top system We lost a few agapanthus (yay!) and surfaced quite a few rocks (boo). We have both started collecting rocks so we can eventually mow without injury. The agapanthus is moving to the burn pile.  We have also been spending some time killing invasive weeds. The experts recommend getting certain weeds now when they are easy to spot and are sensitive to the weed killers. This is one we are targeting now: Paterson's curse is con...