Poor kitty

A very sad thing happened on the way to work this morning. I was a bit late leaving home (due to having lain in bed for a good 10-15 mins listening to Paul get ready as I was too lazy to get up ... and it was cold :-) ). Anyway so I had to run half the way to the train to make sure I didn't miss it as the next one didn't go till 25 mins later. Half way down our street I glanced onto the side of the road and there was a poor dead kitty cat :-( Someone had killed it with their car :-( So sad!! Poor kitty kitty. At least they put it on the side of the road though as some people just leave them. So Paul rang up the council this morning and they are going to go out and pick it up and return it to its owner (cats are microchipped here).

I don't think I want a kitty cat anymore - they get run over to much! I'm definitely keen to get a doggy though. If anyone wants to build me a fence then feel free as we can't get a dog until we get a higher fence at the front and on one side and that is way down the list of priorities at the moment. The top of the list at the moment is:
Paint the house (getting quotes at the moment - ouch!!)
Re stain the deck
Finish off the vege garden
Buy another citris tree for the gap
Buy a workshop/shed
Redo the manky bathroom
Fence the front of the section

And way more importantly we have to sort out our stuff that is stored at the Browns as my 2 years is up now!

Trying the email thing

Right so I haven't been very good at updating my blog recently. I heard from Marea ages ago that you could update your blog by emailing it. I thought that sounded pretty cool and would a good way to update my blog on the fly without having to log onto blogger - something that isn't a good idea in a lot of places :-) So here is my first attempt :-)

Just to see what it looks like if you include pictures I am including a picture in this email too.

Our resident possum

It appears we have a possum that has taken quite a liking to our house :-) I was telling Ben about it when he was here visiting recently and went outside to show it where it likes to hang out. And can you believe it the possum was currently "at home". It hangs out in the guttering under and overhang. Paul is very naughty and likes to feed it apples! Ben thought that possum was pretty cool and managed to get a couple of pretty cool pictures of the possum :-)

The vege garden

Right so our vege garden has come a long way since we planted out the seeds on Easter Sunday. It's very exciting seeing it all growing :-) I've never really grown anything before so this is a first for me :-)

Here are a few photos that I have taken recently.

A long time between posts

Well it's been a very long time since I've posted on this blog. It's not because I haven't been up to anything interesting, quite the opposite, I just am useless sometimes. Sorry :-(

I will try to add in some posts with what I have been up to recently. But this is just a shorter one for now to (a) break the bad habit and (b) let you know I'm still alive :-)

So Paul and I are currently printing out our thank you cards for the wedding. Being that it's almost 6 months since the wedding these are long overdue. Unfortunately me losing my job didn't help on that front at all as money was very tight for a while. But a couple of weeks ago Paul and I finally were able to afford a new printer - yay :-) It is an HP Photosmart C5380 All-in-One, so it is a printer, scanner, copier. So far we are pretty happy with it. I scanned in a few of the wedding photos that aren't in the wedding album and reprinted them on 6x4 photo paper and the quality was really good. Phew :-) Now I just need to order some reprints of all the photos in the wedding album from the photographer, and then I can scan in all those photos too.

Anyway so here is a photo of our new printer :-)

The Buffalo Theory

I got this in a email today - it amused me so I thought I'd share it with you all.

The Buffalo Theory

'Well ya see, it's like this ... a herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.'

Soil arrives for the vege garden

Today we had the soil for our vege garden delivered. We have really awful soil in Brisbane and half our section has clay for soil - not the best for growing awesome veges! So we bought 4 cubic metres of premium garden soil for .... $68 a cubic metre plus $30 delivery. Expensive it may be but totally worth it! So I've included some photos of the days efforts! And what an effort it was!!

Paul getting started on moving the soil to into the garden beds on the other side of the water tank

The empty garden beds ready for soil

And we finally made a dent in the pile. Paul was digging and I was spreading it in the beds. We shared moving the wheel barrow loads from one location to the other.

Whoops - the tree got stuck in the truck as he lowered the back. So as he drove out he took part of the tree with him. But it was ok after Paul gave all the ripped branches a trim.

Paul finishing off the final 2 boards for the garden beds

Another one of Paul's master pieces. We finally realised that gravity wasn't going to be enough to get water out of our tank. So we bought an automatic water pump for $150 from Bunnings (yay for Bunnings). Then he bought a bunch of boy toys (tools, piping, "elbows" etc etc) and set up a tap linked to the tank via the pump (the pump is situated just under the house). Very clever!!

The first two beds are filled - now we need to clear the junk out of the 3rd bed.

All the dirt has been moved to the garden beds - now it's clean up time. Stink! And guess who got to clean up! Good husband!! Well trained!!
Since we're still in a drought we still have fairly tight water restrictions. So Paul was using the tank water to clean the drive way.

Almost done! Just cleaning the wheel barrow.

All done!
We need to wait for the soil to settle in the first 2 beds for a few weeks. So the extra soil is stored in the 3rd bed. Eventually we will clear the grass out of the paths between the garden beds and put in some stone paths :-) But that's for another day.

We had a little extra soil so we put some around our citrus trees as they have pretty bad soil around them - the guy who planted them had NO idea! He planted 2 of the trees straight into clay! We also gave 2 wheel barrow loads to Maureen across the road. She's really lovely :-) She popped her head across while we were moving the dirt and offered us some of her tools. So we borrowed her wheel barrow so both of us could move the soil and got it done much quicker. She also gave us some of her old garden tools to keep - nice aye! Her husband died a couple of months ago which was really sad, so her heavy garden work is done by others who have their own tools.

By the end of the day I was so knackered! It has been a long time since I didn't something so hard! I put in my fair share of digging etc - I even went solo for a while when Paul's mum rang up for a chat :-) I am not looking forward to waking up tomorrow and feeling some new muscles that haven't been used for a while - ha ha!

The next task is the best one! Now we get to plan what we're going to plant :-) Since it's heading towards winter we are a little restricted - but there is still lots we can plant. I can't wait!! I just need to get a job now so we can afford to continue our projects.