Two to go.

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The third last shuttle launch. Wish i could see one of them go up. Had considered it in the last trip I did but, because the launch date is fluid, couldn't plan it in.

They are an amazing achievement.
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Lost in translation...

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The Chinese label reads "Farmer's Free Range Chicken."
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Do you know the way to tamarillo?

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Lurking to the left of the vegetable beds, is a largish Tree Tomato, or Tamarillo.

Feast or famine; they all look like they will ripen on the same afternoon.
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Take a truck load of inkjet cartridges...

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Here's what happens if you take a truck load of inkjet cartridges, melt them and extrude them.

You get eWood. (Yeah, I know, but I didn't name it.).

Cut to length and bolted together and you get raised garden beds. Easier to manage than the beds in the ground by all accounts. Warmer too, so the plants should grow better.

Six plots for winter: onions/garlic, broadbeans, cabbages (red, green, chinese), root vegetables, potatoes and green manure.

There are potatoes in the rubbish bin too. As they grow it will be filled with more soil. (Yes, it has drain holes.)

The other side of the vegetable garden looks like this:


Remnants of the old garden can be seen in the back corner (beetroots, silverbeet & bok choy); raspberries on the fence, and a lime that needs a serious trim back to the left. Lemon grass in the silver planter. Plan to have a number of other things in pots as well.
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Tanks? You're welcome.

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Just to show my absence from blogging was not all sitting around with my feet up. I have put in four water tanks. The one above, 2000 litres, sits snugly behind the Manchurian Pears. It is also linked to a tall narrow tank up the side of the house by a pipe under the house. The small tank doesn't hold much on its own but the two tanks equilibrate and it means I can harvest a good downpipe that is around there.


This one, 1000 litres, is in the front garden.

There is a fourth in the vegetable garden.

We are slowly moving to make things a little more sustainable.

Tomorrow I will show you how to build a vegetable garden out of ink-jet cartridges.
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Is it Spring? Really?

What to do?

If this post is too long, people wont read it.

If I split it into multiple posts, people will only read the last post.

Perhaps headings will help. Here are the topics I will cover:

Blogging
A Curate's Egg
Sex
Religion
Politics
J Cosmo Newbery


Blogging
Blogging is an odd past-time, largely driven by reciprocity. If another blogger visits, you feel compelled to visit them. It can become a chore. People can become miffed if you don't visit. Comments become perfunctory and pointless.

I lost count of the number of people 'squirted milk out their nose all over their computer screen'. Give me a break, people. You know you didn't. I know you didn't.

Blogs need a button where visitors can 'clock in' - "I came, I read, I nodded sagely but couldn't think of anything relevant to say so I left again. Keep up the good work".

A Curate's Egg
So why blog? I know some of the extended family read it but, not having blogs and not driven by the power of reciprocity, they never comment. But I know they visit. So, for them, it is a family update of sorts. One way but there, none the less. Sometimes it is useful to have on-line access to family stuff to show folks at work or elsewhere. That seems to be the only purpose of the A Curate's Egg blog.

My other blogs grew out of the thought that, if I try to cover everything in one blog, some folk my not like it. The popular wisdom is that you should avoid sex, religion and politics in polite company. The Curate is the front lounge room, the Curate is tea and sponge cakes.

Sex
This blog is just an assembly of nice photos, weird photos, strange contraptions and low grade erotica. As a few folk at work are finding me on-line, I will be cutting this blog adrift - there will be no links to it from here and it will not show up on my profile.

Religion
I am an atheist. This blog was largely for exploring the strange and largely foreign world of religion. I'm over that now. I may post occasionally. It, too, shall not be linked from here.

Politics
I lament the way the world is going and will continue to say so here. No-one reads it but I feel better having said it. Cheap therapy.

J Cosmo Newbery
An increasing number of people now know that I fathered all of J Cosmo Newbery's children. And vice versa. I created J Cosmo Newbery in the late 80's, when I was writing letters to companies during the evening and possibly initiating prosecutions against them during the day. Not a good combination, career-wise, so an alias was created.

J Cosmo Newbery has been my poetry outlet for the last few years. I sort of want to cut him free now. I will keep him as a character and will link to him from here but will not be putting in a reverse link from him to here. We may still comment on each other's blogs. Mr Newbery is more a Facebook person than I am, too. But neither of us Twitter.

That's it.

Sorry about the milk on your screen.

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No title will do.

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Need a break from blogging.
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Rovers ahead - an entry in the silly poetry competition.

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Percy, Sir Percy to some, has a poetry competition happening; a silly poetry competition.

See here.

In a cheese and onion sandwich induced delirium, I felt the need to enter.

Here is my my effort:

Beam, I've alley time.

Rovers ahead
Violins argue
Sioux garish wheat
Hand sowers renew
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Correction!

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There were hailstones as big as tennis balls on Saturday's hail storm.

Luckily God foot-faulted and served them into some other suburbs.
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A Yak, An Anchovy and A Rock

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My friend, mentor and neighbour, J Cosmo Newbery has entered a poem in a silly poetry competition.

If you have ever wondered, and who hasn't?, what would happen if you put a Yak, an Anchovy and a Rock in a railway carriage, then Mr Newbery reveals all here.
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Pull the other one.

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Was at a 21st birthday party last week and someone asked me if I had heard that aluminium can ring pulls have an appreciable amount of titanium in them and that it can be recovered to make prosthetic joints for orphans in third world countries? That these ring pulls are incredibly valuable and should be saved separately from the can?

No, I hadn't.

And, perhaps sadly, no they don't.

Snopes, ever my guardian from internet rumours, has an item on it here.

Why do people fall for these things when a few simple questions would show them to be false?

A few useful questions:

1. Is it mentioned on Snopes.com? Does what they say make sense? (Always my first question.)
2. Have you heard the story from a legitimate source or from your grandmother's neighbour's butcher's half uncle?
3. Are people stealing ring pulls from the shops because they are so valuable?
4. If the ring pull is so valuable, why do you only get 80¢/kg for the whole can? (= abt 1.6¢ a can)
5. For the technically minded: what purpose would titanium serve in a ring pull anyway?

*sigh*
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Hail Mother Nature!

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The photo, above, is of some of the remnants from our hail storm today. The bit of a green leaf, front right, is from a lime tree, to give you some size guide.

The things were the size of grapes (despite the media hype, I saw none the size of golf balls) and the noise inside the house was incredible.

Like being trapped in a popcorn maker.
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Screw loose.

Why is that, in the good ol' days of corked bottles of wine, you would open the bottle and then fill glasses as needed from the open bottle. No problems. You never put the cork back in the bottle.

Now, with the advent of the screw top wine bottle...why do we put the screw cap back on the bottle?

Hands up all of you who have gone to pour another glass of wine and not noticed that the screw cap was back on it? Doh!

Why do we do that?
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A transplant, briefly.

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Up in Sydney for a few days. I keep hoping I will find a hotel room that doesn't look like every other one worldwide. Pointless quest, I fear.

They make fun of Melbourne but this place is cold and wet! Mind you the aircon at work is set to sub-arctic for some reason.

And yes, I know, you poor folk in the top half of the world are considerably colder and wetter. But I feel like sooking, ok? (You know all about men with colds? Right. Same deal.)
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Who's a happy little cupcake, then?

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Truestarr has awarded me a prize!

Thank you. I am happy to accept and happy my meanderings bring pleasure.

Also happy that I am not obliged to list "14 things I wish I hadn't found in my refrigerator" as a consequence of getting the prize.

What? I do? Think blue-green and you are there.
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