Boof is growing

Just thought that I would share a few more photos of Boof. He is now 13 weeks old. He is getting into a bit of "puppy trouble" doing things like digging holes, and taking the pot plants out of the pots so he can play with the pots, but how can you stay mad at this face?

Meet our new little man!

Well this is Boof, the newest addition to our family, we picked him up on Wednesday night. He is a Koolie x Rottweiler and believe it or not he is only 9 and a half weeks old.

Thursday morning saw him getting his first ever collar which he is not entirely impressed with, even after being de-fleed he is still occasionally scratching at it, but apart from that he seems to have accepted it.

Thursday afternoon was the trip to the vet for his shots and to get microchiped, the first injection wasnt too bad but the microchip one was a much bigger needle which hurt a bit more, but it was soon forgotten about. The vet couldnt believe how big he was for 9 1/2 weeks, if we didnt know his birth date he would have guessed that he was about 3 months old, so we may be in for a rather big boy once he is fully grown.

So far (touch wood) we have not had too many problems with him, he slept in the laundry for the first night and after that took some getting used to not dashing inside as soon as the backdoor was opened, each day (and night) he has cried less and less. He has taken really well to his makeshift kennel which is an old kitchen cupboard on its side, but if we are outside then he loves to sleep behind the table and chairs or sit on our feet.

He loves his toys as well as a bone we got from the butcher, we often hear him from inside "squeaking" one of his toys as he plays with it by himself.

In just the few days we have had him, he has learnt the "sit" comand, maybe a bit too well, trying to get him to walk on a leash he wil stop, sit and then just look at you, as if to say "see I'm a good boy, now I get a treat....dont I? I'm not going anywhere until I get a treat!" So we are slowly working on who is the boss with the treats, but I think we are getting there, The vet did warn us that he may be quite stuborn. He is slowly learning the "heal" command, well not exactly keeping at the heal, but at least walking with the lead on and not stopping and pulling the opposite way on the lead which is what he did at the vets, resulting in me walking into the vets with this 10kg+ puppy in my arms because I didnt want his first experience on a lead to be too traumatic, and we only had a few hours until the vets closed. Everyone "oowed" and "ahhed" over him and wanted to know what he was and how old he was, then all came to the same conclusion that he is going to be a big boy.

He has definately won a place in our hearts, and has done well to have won DP over only in a few minutes after arriving home. I know we are going to be in for many months of "Puppy Terror", we have already had our first attempt at the washing on the clothesline, which luckily was caught as he was doing it with a growling telling off (but it was a pair of jeans that were just so invitingly flapping around in the breeze!!! how could any puppy resist, especially just after a bath, I think we may have washed some of the nice calm puppy away) and one pot plant has been upended but I think the chooks might have had a bit of a helping hand in that one. But who could stay mad at this face.

Things have been so busy!!!

I cant believe it has been over a month ago since I last posted here, well I sort of can looking at everything that has been going on. Having sold DP's house in Adelaide, and all the cleaning before it was sold, and doing weekend courses in Adelaide has meant that this is the first weekend I will be home for the last 6ish weeks, so to celebrate this I have turned it into a "long" weekend by taking a couple of days annual leave. Hopefully get some sorting and tidying up done, we still have a few boxes of stuff that needs to find a home and also a couple of pieces of furniture to fit in. And I know there is quite a lot of stuff of mine that can be donated to the charity bins, mostly clothes that will never fit me again!!! Hmmm a cupboard with out boxes in it, ah space that I could use to store more "stuff", without clogging up the loungeroom, or the bedrooms. Maybe even just to see the kitchen table again. Well being on here is not getting anything done, so I will sign off for now and see what I can get done.

The cool weather has arrived

Well it seems that summer has packed her bags and left us for a few months, and the cooler weather has arrived. We are now getting lovely days for being out in the garden, which turns to chilly nights once the sun disappears, great for retiring inside for the night to a bowl of hot soup, or a nice roast, before snuggling under blankets on the couch for the evening.

Over the last couple of weekends I have acquired a 5000L rainwater tank, (thanks to Mr Rudds $900) which is residing next to the 5400L tank. The bigger one was overflowing, but not having a pump for it, it was very difficult to get the water to the veggie patch where I wanted it. Now there is a pump hooked up to it, which means I can water the veggie patch guilt-free more than once a week, and the bigger tank is now almost empty (that one is hooked up to the shed gutters, and is going to be used as a collection tank) with the water from that one being pumped into the other one.

So with raintanks, with rainwater in them, and a pump, and this cool weather I decided its time to get a move on getting the veggie patch producing some yummy vegetables. Hopefully those which I planted today will be ready in a couple of weeks to plant (to coincide with me taking a week off of work)

Heres what I have planted in seedling pots so far:

• 2 x Pak Choy
• 2 x Silverbeet
• 4 x Broccolli
• 4 x Cabbage (sugarloaf)
• 4 x Corn Salad

Hopefully they grow nice and stong and stay out of the way of "munchers"

I love our Gulf

Over the Easter long weekend we took the tinny out fishing, it was a wonderful day. We put the boat in at the boat ramp around 9am then headed down the Gulf for a bit, found a nice little spot and put our lines in, and for a change we started catching fish other than Shittys (trumpeters). Just after lunchtime, we decided to head back, seeing that we had caught more than enough fish for ourselves for the day

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10 Salmon trout, 7 Garfish, and 2 Mullet

Happy Birthday Spooki!!!!

I just reallised that tomorrow will be Spooki's 1st birthday. Seeing that I dont know when she was born (or hatched) I dont know her exact birthday but it will be one year since she joined our family, so I'm calling that a birthday.

Seeing that I am taking a couple of days off of work I'll be able to let her and Squeak be outside for the whole day, and I am hoping to find something special for her, although what ever I find will inevitably be for Squeak aswell, as they are both living in the same cage these days, they even eat out of the food bowl together without fighting, although this might be just because they're hungry.

Visitors

During the week we had a visit from these little guys, they are a White-browed Babbler, we heard them from inside and actually thought it was someones pet bird that had escaped because they had a quite peculiar whistle. Initially I thought they may belong to the Willie Wagtail family because they are similar in size and have the same sort of behaviour.

Looking for insects

And then hoping on their way

My Soapmaking blog

Hi guys, I just thought I would let you know that I have started up a new blog My Soapmaking Adventures which will look at my venture into making soap, the recipes I try, things that go right or wrong, and things that I'll look to improve.

I'll still continue to work on this one but I just thought it would be handy to have another to keep track of soap recipies that I have used and liked or what went wrong, especially seeing there is at least a 4 week wait for soap to cure properly before using it.

So if your interested in soapmaking pop over and say hi.

Just some garden pics

Ok well I am still impressed with the new camera. I havent got into playing with it properly yet, just on the auto settings with the two different lenses, and playing around with lighting and angles and that sort of thing

Pomegranate bush has quite a few pomegranates on it and is still continuing to flower

Here is a little pomegranate bush with a flower, amongst the agapanthus

Im not sure exactly what this plant is it might be a Gazinia. What ever it is it grows well here and has lovely bright cheery yellow flowers that brightens up the garden

Veggie garden update

Despite the hot weather we have been having, the garden is going pretty well. I had to decide, now that I have stopped going away so much with work and I am home more often and can put a bit more time into the garden, whether to plant a few more things in the garden, and know that I will have to water them during the summer or to wait until after summer when the weather was a bit kinder. Well my decision was to put more in and try to keep it alive, so far so good.

The capsicums are flowering and have fruit.

There is fruit setting on the burpless cucumbers.

Something a little unusual is that a patch of what I thought was corn is actually millet, which really doesn't cook up much like corn at all but the cockatiels are not complaining, they love it when I put a millet spray in their cage, they are straight at it pulling it apart, picking the seeds apart. So shortly I will be picking the seed heads off and drying then for use later, saves buying them from the supermarket for them. This is the same spot that I tried to grow corn last year, so I thought that was what was coming up, some seeds that hadn't sprouted last year, but I had forgotten that I had thrown the cockatiels left over seed out there a couple of times. I had thought that the toppies (crested pigeon) that come in each afternoon would have eaten it, but they must have missed a bit, including the sunflower which is providing a nice bit of shade for one of the cucumber plant and a rogue pumpkin plant, which I gave up on last year because it was only producing male flowers.

The Moon and Stars watermelon I planted a while ago (the start of December), no flowers yet but it is growing well.

Visitors to the garden

In the garden we regularly have many visitors of the animal kind, mostly birds and lizards, so I thought I would share a couple of photos with you.

Here is a little skink, I haven't been able to get many photos of these guys because they scuttle around the place so quickly, and as soon as you get close enough to take a photo they've disappeared into a crack somewhere.

This is a rather large Bearded Dragon, these are quite common but this is only the second time I have seen one around the yard since moving here.

And here is one of the few resident Magpies, I love hearing their warbles, it would have to be one of my favourite sounds.

My New Toy!!

As a present to myself (well deserved I think, considering the work I have been doing out bush for the last 6 months) I bought myself a new camera.

But not just a new camera, a Canon EOS 1000D, SLR, with twin lens kit. I am very impressed with it, I haven't played with it too much yet but on the auto settings it takes very nice photos without too much effort at all. The colours come out lovely, just like what you see, even in sunsets. So I just thought I would share with you some photos I have been taking with my new camera.

Spooki sitting on the arm of the couch


At Miranda


The almond tree with Lucerne


MIL's garden

It could have ended in disaster

On Saturday, it was a normal day, head out in the morning to do shopping that needs to get done before the shops close at midday, then spend the rest of the day around home.

While having lunch and watching some (taped) telly in the afternoon, I heard the Cockatiels playing with their toys in their cages, rattling bells, and chewing things, only one of them sounded like they were doing something different to the usual. When I checked on them, there was Squeak with toy in beak walking up and down his perch, I thought he was just being a bit more aggressive with it than usual until I realised he had it stuck!!!

So with both hands in the cage one trying to hold him still and stop him from trying to fly around the cage and the other trying to undo the clasp to take the toy out of the cage, then came the task of trying to hold him still, work out what had happened and how to get him free. It tuns out that the little dangly bit in the bell has a split in the side of the hole at the top which allows it to fit into the bell bit itself. Squeak had found this little split and worked it open with his beak trying to dis-attach it from the main bit of the bell, but in doing so it got stuck on his bottom beak so it ended up looking like he had a pierced beak (with some very funky jewelry). With him and the toy out of the cage I held him against my chest and tried to pull the piece off of his beak but it had a tight grip, and I was really quite scared of hurting him even more. I knew all that had to be done was to make the split in the metal bigger so his beak could slide out but with one hand full with a panicking bird I just didn't have enough hands.

After a few stressful minutes for everyone DP came to the rescue with a little multi tool thing and with pliers twisted the little piece of metal to open up the split and allow it to come off his beak. Free of the beak jewelry, Squeak was not too happy with the whole ordeal and proceeded to bite me, which I was actually happy about, because it meant that his beak still worked, and he hadn't done too much damage, probably the only time he wasn't told off for being aggressive and biting!!

So after that we had cuddles and kept an eye on him. He was a bit sleepy, which was understandable after that bit of stress, and kept sticking his tongue out the side of his beak like he had bitten it and it now hurt (like us humans would do running our tongue against our teeth). Back in his cage I gave him a millet spray to make sure he could eat OK and he was straight into it, so I was a little less worried about him. Now he seems fine, whistling his own combination of whistles, doing his "hops" around the cage, and squeaking back at us, when we call to them.

We have now taken the little dangly bits out of the bells, they are only a simple cut out shape and made of fairly soft metal (Spooki had already opened one of them up and removed it from the toy, but she is much stronger, and seems to destroy everything) and who know what would have happened if we weren't at home when it happened.