The Porch Project

 

Porch is a rather pretentious word for the smallish, tiled concrete slab outside my front door. The grey tiles that covered it have been cracking for years.  It looked rather tired, dreary and run-down (perhaps in keeping with the rest of this little house, to be honest. Or its owner...). When I first had the thought to try my hand at mosaics, it was the “porch” I actually had in mind, but it sat in the too-hard basket for two or so years while I dithered and dallied and did Other Things.

After the success of the Snake Mozake earlier this year, I felt ready to give it a go. Also, I had a huge bag of cement that needed using before it turned into a Scummo*  

My front yard is very much a green space, filled with fairly overgrown shrubs – many of them native – doing their own thing. These days there’s nothing very ordered or manicured about it, although it was very neat when I bought it 9 years ago. There’s also a gorgeous flowering gum, beloved of fruit bats, birds and bees – that has been known to house the odd feather-tailed glider. It showers the “lawn” with enormous gumnuts that regularly try to kill the lawnmower. I wanted the porch mosaic to have a bit of that untamed bush greenery feel – to be an extension of my unruly garden.

So I pulled up the old tiles and chalked a design on the underlying  surface.

In many ways this project was harder than the snake – the overall area was a little larger; I had to use proper tiles rather than smashed crockery, which often has a bit of a curve on the surface; the old tiles, some of which I left on the slab, and some which I broke up and reused, were much thicker than the new tiles. Aaaaand - I had to trust, despite serious misgivings during the construction process, that the grouting would pull it all together and give the design some form. The mosquitoes and wasps were bloody annoying, and once again, my back and knees were crying for mercy after about 3 hours.

On the plus side, the site was less exposed to the midday sun than the cat palace.

I wanted to try and capture the feel of looking up through the trees to a light, bright morning sky. Something like this: 

Here’s what I ended up with after about 2 or 3 weeks… An Australian Bush Morning.  What d’you reckon? I like it!

There’s still a LOT of cement powder in that 20kg bag… whatever shall I do next?

 *big, heavy lump of uselessness. Pure coincidence that it's the same as the nickname I use for a certain Australian politician...

The "Snake Mozake"

Because cleaning all the gravel and digging up all the pavers during lockdown wasn't back-breaking enough... 

When I finished all the gravel work and looked at the cat palace I thought it was a bit bland...that big expanse of boring (but clean!) gravel and those plain, boring old pavers. The layout of those boring pavers, however, suggested one thing to me (especially living in Mallacoota, where such things abound!) - the wriggle of a snake across the ground - so the plot was hatched. 

I know! I'll make a mosaic of a snake! 

Look at the way those pavers wiggle -
it couldn't be anything else, could it?

I rather liked the idea of a giant Red-bellied Black snake. While the living version is highly venomous, folk wisdom suggests they are the "good guys" of the Mallacoota snake population. They're certainly preferable to brown snakes or tiger snakes, at least.

But back to the mosaic...

Apart from the heat and the flies and the ouchiness of the granite gravel, I didn't realise how hard on the body it would be. I've never made a mosaic before. I completely underestimated the amount of work it would entail. 

"Oh, it's just a few pavers", said I. Eight, to be exact. I discovered, during the clearing of the cat palace, that each paver weighed around 16kgs, so I decided to leave them in situ, and found myself  a piece of board and a foam kneeler to kneel on as I grovelled in the gravel at all sorts of weird angles.

 

Sooooo..... Eight 40 x 40cm pavers. Laid end to end that's 3.2m long, and 1.28 square metres. or, in the old currency, 13.7 square feet of back-breaking, knee-bruising, plate-smashing, tile-nipping hard labour.

I've smashed more plates than a guest at a Greek wedding. I've endured insect bites and arthritic aches, sunburn and broken fingernails. Oh, and twice I got so engrossed that I was almost late for work, and had to dash to the library, unshowered and with cement under my fingernails - but it's done and it was soooooo worth it! The Snake Mozake is now a beautiful colourful reality, and I love it!

Here's a closer look at each individual section

And - in case you're wondering about the cost of making this - 

Pavers: nothing - they were already there.

Cement: $30 - silly me, I bought a 20kg bag when 5kgs would've been plenty. Live and learn, (Not to worry though - now I have lots left over for any future projects - I have my eye on the front porch...

Grout: $22. I used just under 2 x 1kg boxes

Tiles: $12  The tile shop in Pambula sells small (95x95mm) tiles for mosaic artists @ $1 each. I used about a dozen

Plates: $20 old crockery from Vinnies, the Salvos and the Mallacoota op shop was $1-2 per plate, and I reckon I used about a dozen (and also scavenged a couple of old chipped ones from my kitchen cupboard.

Little round glass marbles - about $2 from the "bling" shop in Eden.

Total cost - somewhere around $85, and that includes plenty of leftover material, so you could probably knock at least $20 off the total.  Say, $65...

Doctor's bills and Painkillers: (just kidding!)

Time: About 35 hours, spread over a couple of weeks and with time off during a heatwave and wet weather.

Verdict: Challenging, fun, worth doing, will do again once I've recovered, ha ha ha! Oh, and I'm hoping it's the only Red-bellied black snake (Pseudechis porphyriacus) that I ever see in my cat palace!

What I Did During Lockdown

 It's tempting to say "2020 - what a WASTE of a year!"  but that would be very lazy thinking - not to mention completely untrue. 

That's what today's post is all about - I realise, looking back, that I can stop beating myself up over this "wasted" year - it hasn't been wasted at all, and I'm really amazed at what I've achieved. Instead of focussing on all the things I DIDN'T do - (I had no heart for painting or making a calendar this year, not knowing whether I'd ever recover the original outlay if lockdown went on and on and on) I've gone through the photos on my phone and looked at all the things I HAVE done. And I'm quite surprised!

Over the course of the 2 lockdowns this year I've:

Learned to give myself a passable home haircut - just don't look too closely!

Baked banana bread (hasn't everybody? Delicious, but I got over it pretty quickly - the old Covid waistline just keeps on keeping on, I'm afraid.)

Written and delivered an 11-part children's radio series (complete with weekly craft activities and a Facebook presence) called Elvis the Lockdown Dog. Nearly killed me, and I was pretty relieved to see the end of Lockdown #1, and to make sure Elvis "left the building".

Done "wildlife tours for myself" around my yard, photographing large and small visitors of all kinds.

Hung a screen door all by myself.

...and the biggie... weeded and re-landscaped a huge section of my yard totalling over 120 square metres. It could only have been done during lockdown. The thought of cleaning 120 square metres of gravel, armed only with a cheap peg basket and a couple of buckets, while "having a life", is a bit daunting, and should not be attempted by anybody intending to hang onto their sanity. Hot weather, wet weather and work gave me an excuse to stop now and then, and rest my shrieking muscles.

In reality, it was quite an hypnotic task. Gravel starts to "dance" in a sort of wave pattern as you shake it in your little improvised sieve, so you forget your aching back and the trickles of sweat that drip from the tip of your nose and chin. I listened to podcasts as I shovelled and sieved and cleaned and/or replaced the weed-mat as well. Anyway - enough talk - the before and after photos speak for themselves.

First - the Tibbs Memorial Garden (I had help from Tibbs the Literary Chicken for this one, so it's only fair, after her demise during lockdown, that she is memorialised in the space she helped create.

 

Next - the gravel patch between the woodshed (far end of Tibbs Memorial Garden), washing line and the cat palace.

And finally, the most difficult bit - the cat palace itself, where the weed-infested pavers had to be dug out, piled up and subsequently relaid. Of course, I ran out of gravel after having pinched it for Tibbs' garden -  and couldn't get the matching river gravel, so had to resort to granite chips. Harder on the cats' paws, not to mention a different colour (vive la difference???) so I've created a little cat-friendly network of stepping stones as well by relocating those 16kg pavers. Ugh, my hands are trashed, not to mention my shoulders.

I will never ever EVER attempt to do such a thing again - but I'm really glad I did it just this once.

The rehabilitation of about 50m of weed-infested gravel driveway should be the next project, but at the moment I'm a bit over gravel. Maybe I'll try my hand at mosaic, and give those pavers a pop of colour...

Pollywobble has given my work in the cat palace her stamp of approval. Basil, of course, is being his usual curmudgeonly self, and declined to comment.

EVENING UPDATE: BASIL RELENTS, GIVES GRUDGING APPROVAL. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Stand down, Tofu - your services are no longer required

 Tibbs has left the building.

My life as a chicken-substitute is over. No more chooking in the woodshed on cold days with Tibbs the Literary Chicken, who liked anything by Ernest Henningway, but was particularly fond of The Crows of Kilimanjaro and A Farewell to Farms.

I’m heartbroken.

As a tribute to my little feathered friend, who was helped from this world by the vet today, let me show you the last garden project that we worked on together.

Before the new fence was built last year, there was a dead space along one side of the house, bounded by a gate and the woodshed and populated by a couple of straggly dead trees. some rocks and hundreds of fleabane weeds. My spare room looked out upon a brand new 6-foot fence and a bleak and cheerless wasteland, so Tibbs and I decided to revamp it a bit.

So.... first of all we dug out the rocks (and ate worms).

Step Two: we pulled out the remaining weeds and patchy grass (and ate more worms)

Tibbs posing: “All my own work”. What? No it wasn’t! (although she DID eat all the worms.)

She temporarily lost interest when I put down weedmat, but was happy when I got the gravel down. 

She was even happier to see the birdbath and rocks appear, some potted plants, and the new coat of paint that transformed the woodshed. 

In the photo below she is inspecting the new space - admittedly, still a work in progress, but vastly improved - and giving it her seal of approval.

On Sunday she started making strange noises now and then, a bit like a sneeze. This morning she had her beak open to breathe, was wheezing, and wouldn’t come out of the nest box.

Coincidentally, the wonderful vet from Orbost was making a house call to vaccinate the cats today, so I asked him to take a look at Tibbs while he was here. I told him about her recent oviduct infection, and my home vetting treatment – and he said I’d absolutely done the right thing. What was ailing her today was a respiratory infection of some sort – and with the recent outbreak of Avian Flu near Bairnsdale, he thought it prudent to euthanase her, notify the Ag dept and take her remains for testing. I cried buckets, sniffling inside my mask and thanking her for her company and her great help in the garden. I stroked her feathers as her eyes slowly closed and her consciousness ebbed away. 

Poor Tiblet the Giblet doesn’t even get to rest in the chook cemetery, here at home with her old buddies. Sigh. She always was the Outsider of the flock. I think it's appropriate, then, to rename her final project the Tibbs Memorial Garden.

Bye, my Tibby, and thank you for everything you taught me about digging in the dirt, enjoying simple things like a little sit in the woodshed - and the joy of hanging out in the yard with a feathery friend.

Just call me Tofu

The formidable Sybil

One half of the dynamic duo, (my pair of Kikuyu-pulling garden patrol buddies), is no more. Boss chook Sybil departed this life last Friday, leaving Tibbs, her partner in crime, all alone in the world.

Feisty Sybil (named for Sybil Fawlty, in case you were wondering), with the top part of her beak shorter than the bottom, had a sort of bulldog look to her that went well with her bossy personality. She sometimes mounted the other chooks, just to let them know who was boss, and once she even attempted to crow.

One by one her loyal subjects dropped off the perch until only Tibbs, the outsider – the Omega chook – was left to keep her company.

When I discovered the dearly-departed Sybil and prepared her for interment in the chook cemetery, Tibbs came up close, uttering quiet respectful clucks and chitters that brought me undone. I didn’t think she cared, but if a chook has ever looked concerned, it was bottom-of-the-pecking-order Tibbs.

Chooks are sociable creatures who enjoy the company of their own kind, and don’t take kindly to being alone, so I made the decision to rehome her as soon as possible (after determining her good health). The last thing I need is a psychotic chicken who’s been driven mad by loneliness. I think my chook-keeping days are at an end.

Until such time as she is rehomed, though, I feel obliged to keep her company.  The day after Sybil’s demise, Tibbs wouldn’t come out of the nest box. She wanted to stay and mope. Uh-oh.

I put a mirror in the nest box (a strategy that really helped when Sybil was grieving the demise of her best friend, Manuela the Jumping Chicken) and she perked up a bit. Spending the long lonely days free-ranging in that big garden, however, was a step too far for poor Tiblet the Giblet. She relocated to the woodshed and wouldn’t come out. Sigh.

Soooo.... guess who’s been spending a lot of time in the yard with her since then, making inane conversation and making chicken noises? Evidently my Chookish is understandable as she’s started following me everywhere and talking back. She even lets me pat her (unheard of for this skittish girl!)

Chooking with my girl Tibbs

We are continuing the excavations she and Sybil (and the others, before they shuffled off this mortal coil) began, and are currently shifting about half a tonne of dirt back to where it once was in what may one day, in a chook-free household, be a vegie patch again. Tibbs and I have bonded over Kikuyu-pulling and weeding – activities now known as “chooking”, as we work together companionably in the yard until my hands and back can take no more. Tibbs is, I fear, far better equipped for chooking than I am – but I’ll give it my best shot for my poor lonely girl.

So - for now, just call me “Tofu” – a well-meaning but not-very-effective chicken substitute.

RIP Sybil.

Tibbs

Team Chook and the Kikuyu Project

Team Chook: focussed and ready for action

I alluded, in an earlier post, to my insane and largely futile attempt to get on top of the Kikuyu takeover of my yard.

Kikuyu grass is an impressive adversary. It snakes along under and above ground, pushing out pointy stabby runners and grabby roots. Do not turn your back on it, seriously! It crawls over and under things at the speed of - well, Kikuyu grass - inexorable and unstoppable in its quest for world domination. Forget lizard overlords - Kikuyu is worse than any crazy megalomaniac reptile.

Nasty pointy stabby runner looking for some ground now that it's
managed to burrow beneath the rocks of the retaining wall

Rocks are no obstacle to this stuff - it just powers on underneath

 

If it can't go down, it'll go up and over...

...and down the other side.

This stuff is monstrous, I tell you!

Wikipedia says: The tropical grass species Pennisetum clandestinum is known by several common names, most often kikuyu grass, as it is native to the highland regions of East Africa that is home to the Kikuyu people. Because of its rapid growth and aggressive nature, it is categorised as a noxious weed in some regions. (Hear hear! Here here! say I)

Lawn Solutions Australia says: Due to its vigorous growth patterns, Kikuyu is a very invasive grass and doesn't tend to want to stay put in its designated area.  (And that, my friends, is what's known as an understatement!)

I say: DAMN YOU, Kikuyu, you will not win!!!! Well, a slightly modified version of that - you will not win ALL the garden. Some bits are MINE!

Right about now you should be hearing the theme music from Mission: Impossible  in your head. It's what I hear whenever I look at the expanse of Kikuyu-infested gravel.

To launch this major operation, I enlisted two experienced excavators:

             

Agent Sybil...

...and Agent Tibbs

As these girls have been largely responsible for creating the environment in which Kikuyu can thrive, I thought it a nice touch of irony to enlist their help with the clean-up. Not that they were unwilling. Any chance to get beaks and claws into the dirt.

The area of the gravel patch and retaining wall, circa 2013 - pre chook

This is how we work: I identify a runner or a deeply-rooted flatleaf weed and start pulling or digging it out.  Team Chook joins me in a flash. The girls start pecking, scratching and kicking. Repeat. Over and over and over.

When my back starts to ache or my weedbag is chockers, I call it a day. I return to the site a couple of days later to find that Team Chook has excavated a whole new lot of runners for me. And so it goes on.

I feel a bit like an archeologist. The team has excavated enough Kikuyu to expose what I think may be the foot of the retaining wall. What appeared to be about 12cm high is easily 30cm high.

How was this deplorable annexation allowed to occur in the first place? The first thing you need to know is that I have a long, sorry history of garden incompetence, interspersed with sudden bursts of frenetic activity. The second is this: the chooks, scratching about in the ex-vegetable bed (I ceded the territory to the chooks after a long and fruitless (also vegetableless!) battle), kicked lots of lovely soil out onto the gravel. Weeds and Kikuyu leapt onto it. Layer upon layer kept being added. Eventually the Kikuyu (and minimal soil) provided a fab false "ground" for weeds to set roots into. (TAKE NOTE: This is how world domination begins - with a small corner of the gravel patch.) Compounding factors included a human (me) too flattened by Ross River Virus or other nasty ailments to do anything more than sit and watch helplessly during the last couple of major growth seasons. Sigh.

Thankfully, the pandemic lockdown has given me the time and energy to Fight Back. I will not be vanquished by grass! One day this small patch of garden will be mine again. With the judicious application of carefully shaped chook wire I may even grow lettuces or something.

In the meantime I'm refusing to think about the evil Kikuyu Empire's expansionist behaviour at my borders. That's a battle for another season.

Spring!

Spring has sprung! Willy wagtail nest  at the Post Office

Despite the weirdest spring weather ever (it swings from heatwave to cold snap in the space of a working day) Mother Nature is working her magic in the garden and all around me. The fan-tailed cuckoos have been trilling ceaselessly in their quest for a nest; the willy wagtails at the Post Office have built a daring home on the (very exposed) stairs of the Postmistress’ residence. Birds of all sorts are travelling in pairs – from mighty wedge-tailed eagles to tiny superb fairy wrens… Galahs canoodle on the telephone wires and at the top of my weather-vane. Love is definitely in the air.

Duck family at the main wharf - Daddy Duck is striding ahead to shoo away the seagulls

 Over the back fence, kangaroos graze peacefully. Tiny joeys lean from the pouch to peer at the new world all around them. Sometimes, when mum bends low to nibble at the grass, joey leans out too, giving the very comical impression of a two-headed kangaroo. Sometimes, a little joey forepaw sneaks out of the pouch, and the baby roo appears to be slouching against the lip of the pouch, much like a teenage boy slouches elbow-first against the wound-down window of his first car. Very cool.

And my garden is flowering. Oh, how it is flowering! Waratahs, azaleas, roses, my one and only rhododendron… the clematis I planted earlier this year.. the grapefruit tree…

 

Some of the many roses that, pruned in winter by my sister in-law, Jayne, have gone absolutely berserk!

 

two different types of waratah

I must say that the scent of grapefruit blossom is one of the most exquisite garden scents ever! I don’t have words to describe that heavy heady perfume – it smells clean and clear, creamy golden and velvety smooth, sort of syrupy and perfectly round, if that makes any sense at all. If it were music, it would be probably be that purring flute music towards the bottom of the instrument’s range – or perhaps the clear sweet notes of a clarinet.

I wish you could smell these grapefruit blossoms!

 I have come back to life after a winter of pain. Doing less cleaning has given my aching joints a bit of respite. After several years of exhaustion and debilitating stress, I’m getting healthy again. I sleep well(!) am losing weight and feel FABULOUS. Oh, and I’ve started writing again; nothing much – just a dabble now and then – but it feels so good. Crikey, at this rate I’ll be back on the Harley soon as well – wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Big Ideas from my Tiny World

Oh, and what a wonderful tiny world it is – my blood pressure has gone down and I’m sleeping better (except when Basil chases my toes across the bed in the wee hours and tries to sharpen his fangs on them). Life is, quite simply, wonderful.

I’m about to burst with creative energy! I feel as if I’m in the middle of a giant swirling cloud of ideas, and I just don’t know where to begin. If it’s a dilemma, it’s probably a nice dilemma to face! So many ideas; so many possibilities. I’ve been umming and aahing over a project, but a project has come to me, and I’ve written the first draft of a text for a  picture book. I’m going to have a go at doing my own illustrations (don’t laugh!) and  have bought some watercolours, pencils and a ‘how-to’ book.

I tried drawing a gumnut yesterday and realised drawing is harder than I remember. Still, for a first attempt it wasn’t too bad. 

Last year Mother Nature and a huge storm gave me a tree. The SES came and chopped it down before it could fall over, and left a giant pile of it on my nature strip. Yippeeeee, free firewood, I thought, and called the people who chop up wood.

‘That stuff’s pretty shit as firewood’, drawled the bloke who came to have a look at my pile of tree. ‘An’ it wouldn’t be worth our while gettin’ the big chipper out ‘ere.’ So my shit firewood stayed in a pile of logs too heavy to move - aka the Too-Hard-Basket - and back to Canberra I went.

The wood's not quite so green now, and only weighs half what it did, so my lovely neighbour Peter got stuck into it with a chainsaw and turned it into manageable logs that his wife Rita & I rolled into place along the nature strip in a sort of garden border. Here it is:

So I started getting grand ideas for it. I dunno - the past several years, I've struggled to have any ideas at all, but now it's as if the lid is off the pot, and they're all bubbling over into every part of my life. Picture this: a bird-bath on the stump, some plants potted into some hollowed out logs, a seat or two for weary passers-by (or for me as I survey my empire). Yes, nice, I thought. And then…

Somehow I ended up in the shed, a small spare log on the workbench and Basil dancing around my feet. Self, I said to myself, why just have ordinary logs with stuff planted in them? See, heaps of people do that, and I didn’t want my log planters to be like every other log planter in Mallacoota. I want my logs to be Special.

A few hours later (oh, my aching shoulder), I had this:

And then this:

I enjoyed it so much, but I have very limited tools, so I'm waiting for a set of carving tools to arrive in the post, now, and I'll add a few more details to Log #1 - which may end up being a doorstop or something - and if my stamina holds out, in about a year I will have a fabulously whimsical  carved log planter border.

Right now, though, I’m off to play with watercolours. Watch this space