aka R’acquel

The other day, my son reported that he had seen a yellow snake with brown spots. We’ve been on the alert because a friend spotted a brown snake in their backyard recently. After some researching on Google to try an identify what this snake could’ve been, my husband spotted the culprit who’s made it’s home beside Mitch’s workshed in the backyard.

It panned out to be a blue-tongued lizzard, but i’ve got to admit - this creature did freak me out a fair bit because it did look like a snake when his legs were being obscured by the leaves (erm - hence the ability to take a close-up shot after i knew that it definitely wasn’t a snake - despite my husband telling me, “IT’S NOT A SNAKE” - i didn’t believe Mitch until i could see this creature’s legs with my own eyes. Just put your fingers on the monitor to cover this creature’s legs in the photo and you’ll see what i mean). It’s tongue was a bright electric neon blue colour. I’ve never seen one this big before, about 7-8cm? diameter in the trunk of it’s body - quite a monster compared to the other’s i’ve seen in the bushtracks.

The wildlife is getting noticeably wilder here and i suspect that the large influx of high rainfall we had a few weeks ago has had something to do with it. Perhaps it’s also paired with the former tenant/owner’s last pesticidal treatment around the house wearing off as well. The school grounds are getting leeches. There’s more different spiecies of large ants scrawling about and heaps of spiders now - many are breeding & laying egg sacks everywhere. My husband spotted a red-back spider under the BBQ, another one near the water meter. They’re venom is poisonous so we need to be on guard. They don’t scare me as much as the funnel web spiders but i continue to be vigilent in the garden whilst mowing & cleaning up.

Here’s hoping that our new local lizzard has the time of it’s life by helping us to tackle the increase in creepy crawlies everywhere. I imagine that’s why he/she has arrived to our home, as it’s such a royal banquet over here atm.

We’re currently going though a heat-wave/dry-spell although we’re not feeling it that much over here in the mountains. The Leura Flies aren’t very psycho at the moment. I encountered one of them in the backyard today - so a storm is likely to be comming soon, but i think it’s going to be a few days. I guess i’ll know better when the flies start to get uber-psycho.

~

Hectic with work & managing my son’s needs at home & school. It’s going well, although my spirits are somewhat low & depressed today. I need to decompress from it all - hence taking the moment to time-out in blog-world but i’ll be booking myself into the gym to let it all rip tonight.

Read the rest of this entry »

See how busy we’ve been? Look at the state of the lawn in our backyard. Hubby has been so caught up with manufacturing his whistles that I ended up challenging my refusal to learn how to start up a lawn mower. I’m the one always cleaning the toilets in this house, because my husband doesn’t know how to use a toilet brush. The embarassment of owning weeds and scottish thistles gowing up to 1.5m high in the front lawn of this house, in a “Garden Village” for crying out loud, finally got the better of me.

The flies have been so psycho up this way, that i had to invent my new Woztraylian Bushwoman’s (Reverse Swagman’s) Hat for protection. The psycho flies were attacking my ears so badly, that i created some protective ear flaps out of sticky fly-catching paper. Instead of shooing flys away with a regular swaggie hat, i designed this one to attract and kill them.

The front lawn before i started to learn how to start the mower. Take note of how the quality of light in the sky begins to change with the next photo! It’s the early beginnings of a new afternoon storm approaching.

The front lawn after i learned that there’s no point in pulling the string thingie if you haven’t pushed the accelerator throttle down thingie first. The down side of finishing all the mowing, was that the sound of the motor was no longer drowning out the sound of the dying flies stuck around my ear flaps screaming “help me, help me, help me, help me!” in stereo! 555

It took me about 60 minutes to mow our lawn. This new hat of mine reduced the entire psycho fly population of Leura by close to 150 flies. That’s approximtely the equivalent of one psycho fly attacking your ears every 24 seconds. Can you see why i had to invent this hat now? I was hoping that i could send them a very strong message of “fuck off” - that maybe they could tell their friends to,

“Stay away from this woman’s ears! She’s dangerous!”

…but they seemed to be somewhat aloof to this.

It is no longer a myth for me that the sign of sticky psycho flies attacking your ears in Leura, now means that there is going to be a fierce storm that will be brewing in the afternoon. The more psycho & sticky the flies are, the more volatile the storm usually becomes.

Some shots of the orange hazed clouds post-storm. This is about the 4th time that i’ve seen this phenomena across the last 2 years. You can see more orange-sky phenomena photos from My First Storm Chase in Feb 2006.

It’s been the coldest summer i’ve ever experienced in my life. I had to wear my winter coat a number of times during December(our summer here), and we’ve had to put the heaters on for some nights as well.

The dought has broken in many parts of oz with the La Nina weather pattern returning. Very high levels of rainfall have been having a significant impact on my plants.

Napoleon has never flowered for 2 years, just as my dwarf palm hasn’t given birth to a new stem either.

I’ve had this breed of succulent for close to 6 years. The first time i ever saw it flower was last year, where it had no more than 5 or 6 flowers. This time around - it’s a a full blown explosion!

This other succlent, has never looked so pregnant in my entire life of getting to know it over the years. The intensity of it’s colour has never been this saturated or explosive in it’s display. Old plants once deemed as potential dead - have been rising from the dead in my front lawn as well.

What has been the most striking across this summer, is the weather pattern of hot mornings with clear blue skies, that are consistently followed by the formation of electrically charged storms in the afternoon.

I’ve found it fascinating how the storms always form between 3-4pm on average so consistently. As for why i’ve been able to register such a time frame? It’s because these cloud formations start to occur when it’s time for me to pick my son up from school.

We had another hail storm the other day. My son never enjoys the thunderstorms because the electricity blackouts upset him a lot. It scares him. He thinks it’s going to be the end of the world (without electricity) and he’s also seeing the news reports of the climate getting worse, with many floodings and all sorts of other natural disasters revolving around the weather on TV.

I decided to try and divert his negative regard towards the weather into something positive. Here is part 1 of measuring the Leura “Floods” at the front of our house:

After the storm subsides, my son does a more accurate reading of the water level with his red K’nex stick.

For now - i must return back to life & work/work/work ~ and learn how to take more time to relax. It’s been good to be able to pull out my camera… but *sighs* ~ i have to get back to my work. Life’s great - but there’s a lot of amazing things in my life that i have to get back to achieving.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a big fan of the iris but i know my father is so he would have enjoyed the blooms in my front yard. There’s some kind of Iris Society here that i believe is dedicated to folks who have a specialist interest in this flower.

I don’t know wazzup with the white one flowering in the middle of this bush.

This is another isolated odd one that seems to feel out of place in the front yard too.

Read the rest of this entry »

An update on a former post relating to the attack of the monster dandelions, which have finally flowered. The flower does look a little different to the usual dandelion and so does it’s “puff ball”.

Some shots of the other ones that look more like dandelions with the single stalk stemming out of the rosette leafs.

When these are considered to be weeds, with their seeds being transported so much by the wind - it makes me wonder why they choose to be here. They frequently live within places where there is grass (”lawn”), but i’ve yet to see a single dandelion living inside the depths of the blue mountains bush in this lifetime.

Read the rest of this entry »

Giant dandelion weeds spotted today… I’ve never seen them grow so big as they have in this front yard. Here’s the regular average looking dandelion which has that rosette like leaf structure at the base.

This one over here is the “monster” one that was a shocking 110cm long. It was really confronting to spot it because of how fat the stalks were.

I’ve never seen such thick stems like this before. It’s like “Day of the Triffids Meets Rhubarb”. Quite scary looking for me, it reminds me of the horror in John Wyndham’s novel.

The branching system of another one. It’s going to take a shovel to dig this monster out.

I don’t think this is a regular dandelion as there’s numerous flowers branching out. I’ve had no success with identifying it online. The descriptions of hawkweed sound right, but no pictures of what their branches look like. Might have to wait until they actually flower to take close ups at a later time and see how they compare.

Some other strange weed spotted sprouting from the lawn today which had pretty looking flowers.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had a dream this morning of my front yard being swamped by iris flowers blooming out of everywhere. It was very funny to peer out of my window this morning as i got up to catch the very first one beginning to bud in real life!

It’s currently 21C, 6:23pm. Precisely the kind of day that your local supermarket check-out person is going to comment on how lovely the weather is. Yesterday was a bit similar, just a little cooler. A friend located in the Sydney area commenting on how the weather felt like summer.

We experienced early spring weather like this at the beginning of August. I do feel that the seasons have shifted forward by an entire month this year. Premature spring. The plants are showing it though it’s a pity i couldn’t keep track of the cherry blossoms in the neighbourhood last year with photos to see how it compares.

Nice to not have the heaters running for two nights in a row.

Sleep-wise, things are beginning to get on the mend. Greatly resolved by taking a heavier dose of Seroquel which has helped me to clock more hours of zz’s. I shall be more diligent with my regular dose - see if it will help to stave off the cyclical nature of this problem as it does feel like relapse is caused by not having enough. See how it goes. It’s getting under control, but something to bring up with the doctor if altered doses don’t stop the cyclical nature of relapse. While medication has been incredibly effective, checking into a sleep clinic to monitor what happens within the brain to pinpoint the physical problem is something i will be bringing up with the doc with my next appointment.

The house is in excellent order, well organised. The weekend was a refreshing time to take up on high quality rest & relaxation.

I’ve acquired extra graphic design work with website maintenance which has added to an already heavy workload. I’ll have to be careful to take my time with it and not allow it to dominate with the 3-4 other streams of focus that require my time & skill to complete.

Figured it was worth timing-out via blog to signify - 6:35pm - TIME for work to STOP and TIME for me to head off into the kitchen to cook up a nourishing slow-cooked meal for my family.

Probably best to leave things with the client and have her call me as it suits her rather than follow up work like this after 7pm. 95% of my design breifings are managed effectively over the phone. This job is begining to sound like a trip into Sydney for a face-2-face meeting might need to be implemented if the nature of the task continues to “grow” in demand. Here’s hoping it can get clarified over the next phone conversation after we both get a good night of SLEEP. *lol*

Anywayz, off to the kitchen - the family’s stomach beckons with my brother-in-law being an extra addition to the family tonight, hence - another mouth to feed. Oh well, at least the compliments of thanks for my cooking will be doubled-up. *lol*

Read the rest of this entry »

Life’s been sending me so many signals of “Stop!” “Not Now!” & “slow right down!” with this house move. Phone calls engaged, road blocks, no car spaces in car parks, a blocked back door that wouldn’t open, the big & boisterours barking dogs sensing a stranger arriving at the new property, a car which has been parked so close to our driveway that it not only makes it difficult to drive in & reverse, but i couldn’t put the garbage bin outside our house either! Had to put it several metres away from the driveway! The 55m lens doesn’t do it justice. *lol*

Gah! I hope i can get past that on the day of the big move… which was initially planned for Saturday, but now shifted to Sunday - beause the trucking company called an hour ago to say “we can’t do it for fri/sat”. Another road block? *lol*

Upside is with the moving date changed, we can attend another person’s housewarming party on the Saturday, where kids are welcome so it’ll be a good opportunity for my son to meet other kids. =D …and we could possibly find another extra strong back for the Sudnay move too. Who knows. I can’t wait to get out of here now!

I’ve been feeling sensitive about the bad feeling vibes i’ve been getting, as though it’s a bad omen - but in another way, it’s as though there are external forces demanding that i must endure a course of internal shifting in preparation for big changes around the corner.

I began digging around in my front yard, to rescue treasured tulips bulbs, but couldn’t find many. The daffodil bulbs were saying,

“Please don’t uproot me, i want to carry out the rest of my destiny of turning into a perpetual weed here please …and besides - it’ll save you from all the hard work it’ll take to replant us guyz at the new place anywayz, so yeah - take it easy!”

A great reminder to myself that i should never expend the amount of effort & money that i did in trying to maintain this current garden and that such energy should return solely to my pot plants that i do “own”!

I guess this was the ultimate signal which told me to stop my efforts in the garden today. Check out this hibernating little bugger that i dug up in a place where i would never think that a possible funnel web could live! For those who don’t know what a funnel web is - they’re very poisonous & deadly Aussie spiders. While the venom is really poisonous, you will be ok if you can get to a hospital. It’s quite funny how a funnel web entering our house after a big storm last year made the humble huntsman spider look very cute in comparison afterwards! *lol*

I didn’t have the balls to check out it’s ass and back legs to confirm it, so while it could be a trapdoor - i was in no mood to muck around with it because we do have many funnel webs living in the backyard! It was very sleepy, so it didn’t move much when i tried to flick it away with the shovel and deciding to kill it during the process. Phew! *lol*

So for now - i’m taking things easy. Life’s telling me to slow down and enjoy the now, so that’s what i’m going to do!

Though i’d indulge the reason for why i’ve never been able to venture out into the backyard to hang out the laundry here and why I’ve had to use a clothes horse instead!

Alright - lets start walking down the stairs and dare to walk over all that ivy and the millions of pine needles that have made the dirt really soft & squishy!

Lots of funnel webs living under this area, so it was really freaky for me to walk across it without any gum boots on!

A momentary shot of some of the back yard

And here we are at the redundant washing line, slowly being burried by pine needles so you can’t lift it up. It’s quite dirty and not a good idea to leave the laundry out at night, as you don’t know what creatures will want to crawl into the clothes to make a new home for themselves! *lol*

Read the rest of this entry »