Our great southern migration

  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...

  I had forgotten this children's song but once I saw the start, the lyrics came back. Since the reference may be too old for many of you, it talks about spring and, most importantly, how the prettiest tree has the prettiest nest on the prettiest branch you ever did see.  And the Green Grass Grew all around. Our green grass is visible but only just. We have had very little rain and El Nino may make it a real struggle for green. However, the birds are still joining up and making nests.This little brown thornbill is attempting to wrangle a cobweb into nest material. Sticky business! We have nesting pairs of a variety of birds. It seems our little scarlet robins found another location and ditto for the satin bowerbirds (at least so far). We definitely have nesting magpies and nesting wedge-tailed eagles         The others are joined but we haven't found their particular nests yet. Our pair of king parrots is hanging around the backyard And the juvenile crimso...

  This post will be mostly about our farm birds but also a bit about those idioms. It also rings true right now as I am starting a site visit for veterinary school accreditation. That is definitely part of the gate keeping process!  Gatekeepers have various repercussions, depending on the topic, but are generally considered to be a person or thing that controls access. This could be access to a place, a person, a resource or information. In that line, most of our birds are not truly gate keepers. The jacky-winters on the gate above are not restricting anyone. They are part of the robin family and seem very peaceable. Ditto for this scarlet robin female: However, the magpies below are a bit more threatening. If we go back to the social psychology roots of the term, Kurt Lewin used it study how social groups filter and manage choices. These three are definitely a social group.  As we head into spring in the southern hemisphere, we are now down to two magpies. Our best guess...

  Image from Bateman's Bay Boat Association We didn't take the camera and I honestly didn't even think of taking photos. We did spend time here (Hanging Rock boat ramp) though! We bought a tinnie off the previous owners when we bought this place. It came with a motor, trailer and old life-jackets and all. The motor is rated to go above 10 knots. In NSW, if you run your motor boat over 10 knots, you need a captains license.  So we did this thing and took a course to get our licenses. We spent Sunday learning the rules of the water in NSW (apparently there are no rules in the Northern Territory), trying out our driving skills and taking a quiz about the rules and right of ways. We both passed. The morning on the water was lovely. Our instructor was relaxed and knew just when we needed a bit more direction. We practiced figure 8s to retrieve our "man overboard" and tried going different speeds to get a feel of safe /not safe.  Loads of fun.  Our instructor ran two gr...