My region SEQ (South East Queensland) is doing a backyard wildlife count. Everyone joining counts and records the wildlife they see in a five kilometer diameter circle of where they are living.
Which is extremely lucky because I suspect that ‘my backyard’ is regularly sprayed with insecticides. I’ve only been here for five minutes … have to see how it all works first. But, so, there are quite a few parks in the 5 kilomter circle.
Found this in the garage. Dead. It’s an Evening Brown (Melanitis leda)
Whatever day of the week they fall, there’s no time between going to work—adult ‘kids’, —going to school and daycare—grandkids—and me unpacking, to celebrate birthdays.
So about 11.15 I get a text. “We’re on our way.”
About fifteen minutes later all four of them tramp in carrying stuff. H with small sealed plastic bag with water in it. A mystery.
L with a small bag of a granular substance. Huh? K with a small plastic bottle and my white bucket. I didn’t even see these to begin with.
Because then B came in with a ceramic plant pot that had the drainage hole epoxied over.
Ahh! The key to it all.
Assembling it all, water was fetched, de-chlorinated, granular pebbles poured and laid and sculpted by H and L, B fetched ‘the swamp’ from the carpark—a crate of water plants I’d asked him to keep for me—and we transferred the plants from it into their new home.
Last, the fish!
Pacific Blue Eyes, H proudly told me.
Back in the days that I had a bathtub frog pond I’d yearned for Pacific Blue Eyes. I must’ve talked them up, because both B and H remembered, they are the fish that eat mosquito larva, but do not eat frog spawn.
Back then, Cyclone Yaasi took out the Townsville breeding facility that supplied petshops.
So, finally, Pacific Blue Eyes. Though I will need to run to the shops later to fetch fish flake as no mosquitos and no larva.
The section of park to the east of the place where I live doesn’t have a name but is part of the Bulimba Creek Catchment.
Took a walk in there yesterday. Interesting. The recent floods left piles of wood round the base of surviving trees and a sea of ground hugging greenery.
Bulimba Creek under there somewhere
I saw two lomandra plants and the eucalypts in the distance look healthy.
All else is exotic.
Ironically, native street trees are doing very well.
Flowering acacia (maybe) with a blue quandong behind it.
Snail eating dead fish … even a snail like me can get connected back into the web of life …
So yeah, I’m back online, I’m happy to say. Hotspotting is great if WiFi is impossible due to your geographical position, but it is limiting. For instance anytime I tried to share a post from WordPress to a FaceBook page or to any other platform, for example, I got the We-Are-Having-Trouble-Finding-This-Site screen.
The provider is Connected Australia (www.connectedoz.com.au) and the connection was all done by email and someone talking me through the process on the mobile. The quickest and easiest of the organizational processes I still have to achieve.
Next are a few changes of my address. That should also be as easy as eating pie. Yesterday I was an hour at it trying to convince the MyGov website that yes, I’ve moved house. The good thing about that effort is that my details for Medicare, the ATO and Centrelink were also automatically updated.
I could ask why not the rest of the government institutions connected to the MyGov site. Have to do them by hand, apparently. There’s no logic in that.
One thing AI could be used for is to ferret out such stupidities and correct them. I’d love the government to outlay a few dollars to do a content-defrag in their bureaucracy.
Up to yesterday I lived in a medium-sized all-ages complex with 90 separate households. At least 20 young children, 5 infants, and numerous teenagers whom I mostly didn’t see. A handful of elders.
Lived there for three years through recovery from chemo, through the latter part of Covid restrictions, walking and exploring nearby parks. Stone’s Corner was almost next door. I walked East Ekebin Park. Moorhen Flats. Bentley’s. The Common. Bowie’s Flat Park and all the little green places in between.
Lived there through the extreme disappointment that chemo didn’t also fix my myalgic encephalomyelitis, and so two years after the end of the chemo, my ME flared. A disease that once you have it you will always have it. Can be kept semi-controlled only by extreme pacing, strict dieting, a shoal of supplements and not catching any viruses. Continuing to live the Covid life, in other words.
Lived there getting more and more involved in Lego. thebrickarchitect.com ; AFOL. MOC. brickresales.com.au ; bricklink.com ; rebrickable.com ; all became part of my language. I packed a large stack of boxes, two wide four high, with the whole of Reet’s Brick Town in there, plus all the remaining parts and separate builds. Lol, a lot of rebuilding to be done later, I suspect. Bosley & Co will be busy for months on the repairs.
The place between, as I mentioned yesterday, is Isla House. A compact room, with a large communal living space at the back of the house, kitchen dining facilities, and garden strip alongside the outdoor areas. Pity that the weather is still so hot. Summers are spinning out. I’m very tempted to go out and get some cuttings for my new place. I wonder if figs will grow from cuttings?
Below a pane in the bathroom for my frosted glass collection, looking out on the perimeter fence and the garden section.
I’ve been haunting the tadpole pond for weeks now. Every morning I sit on it in my favorite spot. As the palm fronds have become more pliable through soaking in the water, I’ve been able to wedge a couple of the leaflets aside. To see better.
I stare at the water, at the little blobs wriggling in a ceaseless dance from the top of the water to take a breath, and down again to the bottom of the pond where to hide in the muck down there.
Every so often, I admit, I forget that I’m sitting there merely to look. To study. To enjoy. I stick my paw in. Did you know that I’m right-pawed? Bet you didn’t know cats have a dominant front paw? Hope you were distracted and didn’t see me hook out a slow swimmer? I’ve caught quite a few already. They make a tasty little snack. I guess that egret knows what is what, after all.
But seriously, I’m helping to freshen up the gene pool. I’m helping to breed faster frog tadpoles. The pernickety old woman caught me at it. Was she upset? Ropeable, is the word. Like smoke came out of her ears. She’s banished me.
I’m at a loss what to do now. The deck is so boring when you know there’s all that activity going on in the pond. I should just run over there when she isn’t looking, hop up onto the coaming and pretend to be a statue.
Obviously that didn’t work. The pernickety old woman carried me back to the house and shut me in the sun-room while she’s gone to meet friends. Even lounging illegally on the red chair gives me no satisfaction.
I know that when she comes home and sees me on it, she’ll lift me up and drape a towel over the seat. She says it’s so I don’t shed black and white hairs over the furniture.
I don’t believe her. I think she does it to get a cranky look on my face that she’ll take a photo of. She doesn’t have a proper cranky expression yet in her collection, she says. I might’ve mentioned that couple in Japan who said cats can pull 257 different faces? The pernickety old woman and her friends are collecting cat expressions.
Rita de Heer 