Category: Earth versus World

The Other Walk

When I was out the other day, after I had sat down in the civilized new-ness of the one year old addition to the village and found it too structured for my mood, I walked into the old section.

This village started in the the 1980s with a field of little villas surrounding a community facility. About half the villas remain along with the old communal areas.

So I crossed the vacant block along the concrete path. Weed central but with more flowers than the sculptural resort style gardens in the newer sections …

There’s even a lone fungal fruiting body. Further on, as I come into the streets, the vacancies and their bewildered gardens become obvious. (A pun there)

Can barely see the villas for the overgrown gardens. A riot of flowers though. More varieties of hibiscus that I’ve seen in one small area.

There are some beautiful trees and shrubs, five to ten metres tall. I can’t imagine they’ll be kept when the building program continues.

Finally, in a derelict corner I see a clump of fungi. I had been wondering whether these gardens were maintained by the establishment or cultivated by the residents themselves. The fungi speak for the latter.

Three, possibly four species I make that. What do you think, mycophiles?

Fish Pond is Leaking!

Hoping to stop a flood

This morning early, everything OK, fed the fish and they loved their new food. Probably hungry.

Little time later, an hour, noticed water level descending quite fast from yesterday when I replaced about 3 litres.

Checked around. Oh no!

A lot of water creeping over the tiles to the balcony drop off.

Seepage not only from underneath … but also from the side! Ceramic side! Meant to be water-proof!

Every time I dried it off, couple of minutes later it’s wet again. Condensation? I don’t know how that works.

But started bailing into hopefully still waterproof plastic crate.

Transferred two fish so far …

Wildlife: Butterfly 1

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)

Underside …

A Sunday Celebration …

Weekends are for celebrations, right?

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.

Park to the east …

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.

WiFi Connected …

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.