More on Non Weeding

A small load of rough mulch

My name's Prince and I use herbicide. It has been 4 days since I last sprayed. 
Some people around here consider that herbicide use is very, very bad. I do offer to stop using if they will come over and weed for me, but so far nobody has taken me up on that. Herbicides help me transform an area from weeds to garden with a view that eventually I won't be reliant on them. To help reduce my spraying I use mulch. Most afternoons, I prune around the house paddock and fill up the little trailer with cuttings. 

Rough mulch added to rainforest area

 These get dumped around rainforest trees. In a year or two, I will have a canopy to shade the ground and the vast bulk of weeds will stop coming through. The mulch will have rotted to improve the soil. The area will maintain itself with a minimal amount of hand weeding. 

Native Violets - great for keeping out weeds

Great if you're growing rainforest, but even small areas can be grown out to be weed free. The aim is to not garden on the basis of perpetual herbicide use, but to use herbicides sparingly as an aid to getting your paddock in order - then stop using.

If only it didn't taste so good with coke.

Volunteering - still

Christmas Morning 2005

So, the Maleny Neighbourhood Centre asked me to locate any images I could find on CD's and hard drives and organise them neatly in a file on the server. Who said volunteering wasn't fun?? At the same time, I've dug out a digital camera and its various components which had been carefully hidden in a wide range of cupboards to get it into a workable proposition. Anyway, while going through their photo's, I found one of this rather dashing looking Paddock Worker cooking eggs for the mob on Christmas morning 2005. The MNC started a tradition of providing a free Christmas breakky quite a few years ago. I've missed a couple, but wherever possible, I like to go and cook a couple of hundred eggs before wandering home for a beer in the paddock. Just noticed that: The shirt was a gift from Best Mate, the apron was a gift from Big Sis, the hat was loned to me by one of the mob .... do I ever buy clothing apparel and accessories? Perhaps not. 

Wahoo it's raining

It's been particularly dry the last few weeks which is great for Paddock Workers AND Responsible Adults. Paddock Workers get to pull out weeds and Responsible Adults can work on their tan - a real win/win situation. But even the Responsible Adult started commenting on the lack of green in the grass so I commenced on the secret Paddock Workers rain dancing.

Your starting point is car washing. Usually you only have to wash one car and the rain will come. This time, we had our Youngest wash both our cars, and his, then get his BFF around to wash his car too. None of those worked. So I said in a loud voice that I was going to mow and actually mowed all paddocks. Still no rain. Then I started digging holes to cement posts - didn't do it. Finally I made arrangements to borrow the Good Mates trailer so I could get some sand, gravel and cement. THAT did the trick. It's raining and I can't mix concrete in the rain. Wahoo!!!
I'm taking the Responsible Adult out for breakfast (and perhaps dropping into Bunnings while we're out)

On the Kindle - Ghost Road

So, I've come to the final of the Regeneration trilogy and Booker winning novel 'The Ghost Road'. It ends badly. But it wasn't a surprise - even a comedy like Blackadder finished badly when it portrayed the trenches in WW1. The book continues the exploration of sex/death/class in an era when European humans were ruled by obvious dickheads. Not totally certain things have changed that much - the dickheads continue to rule because stupidity is contagious. So, like its predecessors in the trilogy - not a cheery tale - graphic descriptions of the horrors at war - graphic descriptions of boy/boy sex - a gripping read, but point yourself towards a light comedy afterwards. Here's the quote:

 "Ghosts everywhere. Even the living were only ghosts in the making. You learned to ration your commitment to them."

Visitng the Markets

Every few months, I wander down to the Caboolture Markets. Best time to get there is about dawn. By breakfast time, it is hot and crowded. There certainly is plenty of stuff to buy there, but I go for the plants. Veg seedlings, trees, shrubs, flowers - whatever. Not everything is cheap, but there are plenty of bargains if you look closely. It's also a good place to buy fruit and veg, old tools that are still better than new tools. Bits of hardware and so on. What would sell like hot cakes is paddock slaves to plant all the things I bought, but nobody seems to have thought of that yet.

Repotting the Birds Nest Fern

We've had this little beauty for a long, long time. A large Birds Nest Fern should probably be repotted every 4 or 5 years. The new foliage grows on top of the old, so it starts to climb out of your container. After pulling it out of the old container, feel free to hack away at the bottom, cutting away the old dead stuff. An old bread knife is handy. You may also notice that my new basket has an extra liner - one size smaller than the basket - for a bit of added protection at the bottom.

 And there you go. A nice new bed for wandering carpet pythons.

Free plants

When we moved to the paddock, someone gave me a Clivia. It looked a bit like this.

After a few years, it looked like this. So I started to dig up the new ones and move them around. Now we have about 100.

 If only I could find a lipstick to match.