Please do feed the wildlife

Mr Bon and I were busy in the kitchen the other day, when I noticed this little chap peering at us through the window. He didn't seem to be too bothered by us peering back, either.

The first photo is the original - the second one I have altered a bit to make the critter clearer.

Nothing much else to report - I have been doing some re-organising in the bedroom cupboard which is entirely too satisfying for me, but not especially interesting for anybody else.

Finally some gardening!

The weather this weekend has been perfect for gardening - the wet weather has freshened up everything, but now it's dried out a bit and the sun is out. Lovely. I should warn that this will be a rather photo-heavy post!

Yesterday we had a lovely leisurely morning, to the point where we had to rush around a bit to make it to my family's lunch time Belly Rash (that's Rellie Bash, in normal speak), and then went straight from there to dog training. Tess did brilliantly this week, she's really making progress in her socialisation :)

Anyway, the main achievement of the weekend was the great Vegie Bed top-up - here are the before and after photos.

I would have liked to get it even fuller, but we ran out of ingredients! In order, we topped up with:

1. full bokashi bucket
2. compost
3. an old decaying straw bale
4. blood & bone & potash (your favourite and mine!)
5. sheep manure
6. chicken manure
7. worm castings (dug in a bit)
8. potting mix

I got it a bit backwards - I should have put the compost on last, with the worm castings and potting mix, but I thought it was going to be the limited ingredient so I put it on first in order to work out the ratios and such. As it turns out we used up all our sheep manure and potting mix, too. I watered the lot in with some kelp concentrate, just to boost all the liveliness.

The whole process was quite lovely - the existing soil was surprisingly dark and rich and lively looking, and we saw sooooooo many different critters! The photo above shows the bokashi against the existing soil, and below is the gecko we startled on the wheelbarrow. I also found a legless lizard in the bed, which I carefully moved into the other bed.

Next is our lovely homemade compost. I make compost quite slowly and unscientifically - usually my full bokashi buckets go straight into the compost tumbler, and I reckon the micro-organisms in there give the compost such a kick that it doesn't matter too much if you don't turn it enough, get the ingredient ratios wrong, or whatever. This particular load has had several buckets of bokashi added over the weeks. Mr Bon left some remnant compost in the tumbler for me to start the next load off - I might try to go a little quicker than usual this time so that I can use the compost to finish off the top of the vegie bed - the straw and manure will need some time to break down in any case.

And the next two photos show the tiny harvest from the bed before we cleared it all out. Mr Bon made up a jar of pesto from the basil, which really should have been pulled out weeks ago. I don't know if he has plans for the multitude of tiny capsicums :D

So that was a pretty good effort for us, especially considering we also went out for a lovely lunch and some casual antiques-browsing. Mr Bon also eyed off some handmade jarrah furniture as part of our future house plans research. Speaking of which I should really get cracking on printing out some more photos for our scrapbook...

The best thing about winter

It goes without saying that I still haven't managed to get much done in the garden - although I have medium-high hopes for tomorrow.

The thing I love about winter though, is no matter how badly you neglect the garden, life keeps ticking along. Birds show up, fungus appears, and of course, weeds are everywhere. This lovely toadstool came up from some lucerne mulch, and there are two more nearby.

We had an excellent day at dog training today, too - Tess socialised quite well during the lesson, and then she actually PLAYED in the pens afterwards! PLAYED!!! So happy with her progress these days.

The worker drones are breeding

I think if our new house is more impervious to critters, I will miss the feeling of living within a living eco-system.

I won't miss the mouse poop all over the kitchen, though.

Perhaps I could import some slugs for the bathroom :D

Very much tongue-in-cheek

On Friday I was catching up with the ever-growing list of blogs I subscribe to, and I'm afraid I may have had a bit of a giggle about several people enthusiastically describing the various ways in which they store cotton buds (or q-tips, in the American parlance).

It's not that I have anything against people who store their cotton buds in unusual ways, I just couldn't fathom how they could get excited enough to not only describe it in great detail, but also to actually use exclamation marks. And then I was just about to hop in the shower today, and a thought struck me... oh dear...

You'll notice I'm not going into detail, or using exclamation marks, but Mr Bon is nevertheless somewhat concerned about the state of my brain. Incidentally, it turned out to be a case of aesthetics over functionality - I realised halfway through my shower than the cotton buds are now subjected to an unacceptable level of humidity, so they've moved to a different shelf. They may yet be shoved back into their standard plastic packaging :D

Now, I've got a giant list of things to freecycle...

Life in the slow lane

So, I've been a little quiet on the blogging front lately. Initially it was just due to not having time and inspiration, and then it became a more conscious decision.

This time of year is always a bit MEH for me - I completely lose any gardening momentum I might have, because there's so little light available in the evenings after work. I've also got a killer to do list, mostly due to the fact that we're doing a bunch of things with regard to our demolish+build plan, and for the last little while I've been giving way too much energy to To Do list stress.

So starting from tonight, I'm cutting back on blogging a bit. Although I will still be spouting nonsense on Twitter! My intention is to slow down a bit, get back into the habit of meditating regularly, and reconnect to my inspiration and motivation.

Hopefully I will still be blogging when I manage to actually achieve something noteworthy :D I will just leave you all with a lovely highlights video of the excellent wedding Mr Bon and I attended on the weekend!

Birds, bees, and worms!

Oh yeh. This time I have to warn any sensitive souls out there - this post will contain photos of wiggly squiggly things. Do I have to put some spoiler space in so you have a change to read the warning before you get to the wiggly squigglies? I'm so lazy.. maybe a photo of Tess, those are always good :D

So, the wiggly squigglies. Today at work we did a castings harvest from our two worm farms, which is always good fun. We got quite an impressive amount of castings too, I haven't worked out what to do with my share yet. Look what we found in one of the castings trays:

Mating worms! I think. Those were the best photos I could get.

Not much else to report - still busy with banking and such. I blame this time of the year for the lack of interesting activity, there's just too little daylight left outside of working hours. I am hoping to do a sort of daylight-independent flurry of activity this weekend: a mess freecycling of surplus things. Not at all sure that the Freecyclers will want my junk, but it's worth a try.

Oh, and can I not convince anyone else to pass judgement on my oven? You were all completely useless with the sealing wax and battery flake problem :D