Well, well, well - 3 holes in the ground

Having moved the timber around the paddock (and increased the size of my manly muscles) its time dig some holes. These three likely looking holes were a breeze. Digging in nice soft red top soil with a crow bar and shovel is easy peasy. These 3 posts will finish the front fence at the house paddock. A job that I started about 10 years ago and never got round to finishing. It will soon be off the bucket list.

                                                                   
Not so easy digging at La Studio. The site had already been excavated to a depth of about a metre, so I'm digging in subsoil. The fossilised velociraptor bones are pretty jarring when I hit them with the crow bar. There's only a dozen or so of these holes to dig, so I tell myself that they will all be finished by Christmas. In the hole is a very simple depth guide. I want to build a 40cm high wall so the holes need to be 40cm deep at least to take an 80cm post. Oh well, hopefully I will have a very manly 6 pack by the time all these holes get installed.

The Playlist this week

Sigur Ros - yes it's those crazy kids from Iceland. Bit hard to describe. The singer is a male - maybe they like their undies particularly tight in Iceland. Anyway, you can't say they aren't cool.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cZDhGK18zw&list=PL98EAEC14404263F4&index=9&feature=plpp_video

Client - still proving you don't need excessive talent to get onto the Princes' playlist. Thre hot chicks in tight red dresses with a great beat - does it for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQjWJeGCMI0

Santana - the air guitarists hero. Made an album of covers recently. Particularly good version of Why My Guitar Gently Weeps. Not sure about the film clip, but enjoy the sounds.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-5M1_DKvb0

Digging Holes

I'd rather be doing this

So the timbers all moved now comes the next bit of fun, fun, fun. I need to dig some nice big holes to install some posts. Installing timber posts is not a bit like facebook posts. Instead of a keyboard and monitor, you use a crow bar and shovel. And rather than exercising your fingers, you get to use all sorts of muscles - some you didn't even know you had till they start aching. But instead of the transient nature of facebook posts, your fence posts should last years and years.One thing you don't normally get with a fence post is likes or comments, but I may have a cunning plan to overcome this deficiency - stay tuned.

As for the picture, well the caption says it all. You too can be just like this. Give your responsible adult a good feed and a few glasses of a nice Shiraz and guide her to the comfy chair.

Whats on the Kindle - Cormac McCarthy

Hmmm, thought I'd have a break before finishing the Regeneration trilogy and turned to one of America's most respected authors. Well ....... it started off as a 3 guys out on a bar-be-que type story for the first third. As the likely lads cross from Texas to Mexico, one of them chats to the locals in Spanish (the book had no subtitles and I was too lazy to type it all into Google translate). It also takes a while to get used to the lack of punctuation, but it's no big deal.

From this ambling start comes the Cormac McCarthy touch of fairly nasty things happening to our heroes as they become victims of events. I found it a bit hard to believe when the main character - who appeared to be sparse in communication and language suddenly had a lengthy and lyrical philosophical epithany. 

I was pretty much over it by the end. Not a happy read - but it is Cormac McCarthy so it should get a quote:   “I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.” 

I think there's something in that for all of us .........

Easy way to move timber

Some of the timber moved to La Studio

So I bought a big pile of timber to do various jobs around the Paddock. I asked that delivery be as close as possible to La Studio. For the truck driver, this was about 50 meters uphill of the site. And, to be extra helpful, the timber was all stacked on top of each other with the bits I need first carefully located at the bottom of the pile.

So I thought about how to move all this timber. After thinking for a month or two, I noticed that not once piece of timber had moved. So I decided to pick it up one piece at a time, start at the start and end at the end. It was a slow process, but at least I had time to notice all the weeds that need pulling out around La Studio.

Oddly enough, I slept really well this morning. 

Snakes Alive!

Frank the Carpet Python

Crikey! It's warmed up and I can't seem to step outside without tripping over a snake. The main species we get here are whip, tree, black and carpet. Occasionally we get brown and tiger snakes but I don't hang around for a positive ID on those. Frank is our generic name for large Carpet Pythons that hang around the house. They are pretty harmless for humans but nice and deadly for rats and (unfortunately) chooks. I lost my last two chooks to a fat old python. They can also be a bit annoying around your pot plants.

Bloody Frank mucking up my Orchid

 Anyway, apart from chook loss, it's handy to have a Python hanging around to tidy up the rodent population in an Eco-friendly, no mess manner. Frank has had family at the house paddock and raised a lovely bunch of baby snakes in recent years - so I guess there must be more than one Frank living here. Not sure - they all look the same to me.

Wisteria

Every summer, when the Wisteria is growing 3 meters an hour, and when its roots go all the way under the cubby house and throw up shoots the other side I sit on the verandah and plan its total destruction as a menace. But then I know it will look like this for two weeks every spring and so it stays. If you're ever tempted to take one home to your paddock - be warned - it will never cease in its quest to dominate the entire paddock. My tip is to be brutal. Never encourage it with fertiliser and show it the secateurs every week. An occasional flogging may help.