Not a good day today. Firstly I had so little sleep last night I felt like a zombie when I woke up. YOu know that wombly feeling you get when you feel like your mind is halfway into another (very foggy) dimension and on a slight time-lag from your body? It being five in the morning there was not terribly much I could do other than hover over the (at that point, unneccessary) fire and read my depressing 19th century novel about conditions in the cotton mills in the 1840s. So by the time i could be up and doing, I had little energy to be doing.

Still, I got stuck into more weeding and managed another five or ten metres, but realised that all the straw I have been stuffing behind the wire was probably what gave Rastus purchase when the goose goosed him, and allowed him to get over the fence. Since the geese seem to have picked up on my mood and have been loitering with intent for the last few days, I concluded the only sensible thing to do was to move the chooks into one half of the yard, leaving the geese to the other half. So I did. I have fastened a bit of chicken wire over the opening between the two runs and fastened it to the ground with a bit of reo.

Despite their value as lawnmowers, I am beginning to wonder if I should consider getting rid of the geese - at least until a hedge has grown up to avoid being overlooked. At this time of year they should have goslings which would be able to help them keep up with the prolific growth, but they did not breed this year. This kind of defeats my purpose in keeping them (as a meat source), and if they had had goslings I suspect this would have resulted in further hostility as, when I mentioned this to my neighbour a few weeks ago (in a conversation about keeping the grass down in the orchard), I could see the non-verbal response, and it was not good. So ........... Something to think about, especially if they are causing poor Rastus to shoot up in the air with fright with the potential to come down on the wrong side of the fence ...

That done, I went up to the house for lunch and discovered it was only 10:30, so after a cuppa and some dry bread (forgot to get spread while in town yesterday) I read a bit more of the book, decided it was depressing me (and that I was becoming as obsessive as the neighbour about the state of affairs) so I took myself into town to the all-town garage sale.

Naturally, in that frame of mind I failed to find anything even remotely interesting, and was not terribly keen on engaging in conversation with the folk in their garages, so I drove around a bit (after going to the shop for spread) and was heading home when I realised the Historical Society was having a sale, and my bee adviser was there.

I felt, since I know he has been pursuing enquiries on my behalf, that I should let him know that I now have some reservations about the wisdom of investing money if in doing so I exacerbate an already bad situation. We talked for some time and he has put my mind at ease at least in relation to the legalities of the situation. Legally I am entitled to two hives (I already knew that). Legally I am not liable for the actions of my bees once they leave the hive - apparently they are viewed as feral once they have done that.

So, discovering her next door was out when I returned home, I set the bee box up in the back yard and will see what the results are. Since I have no idea how to attach the metal binding strap, I have whacked a couple of heavy rocks on the roof to stop it blowing away and blowing my cover at the same time. Did you know that bee boxes sit one on top of the other and do not have rebates to lock them together? I was not aware of that, though I am sure it is locked away in my subconscious somewhere.

Apart from the music, and the busy presentation of her 'garden' to her visitor yesterday (carefully avoiding the back of that tank with its message) there has not been a peep out of her. But it seems an ominous silence I have to say. Her normal routine is to drive in and out, radio blaring, park in the drive with the doors open, radio blaring while she unpacks and then go indoors having turned off said radio and parked the car in the garage. At present, it is silent entries and departures. Lights on, on the side of the house till late at night, general furtiveness or ostentatious activity. Hard to know what is going on, but it is giving me the willies I have to admit. Will be very glad to get to the relative sanity of quilting on Tuesday.

To do her credit, her yard looks fabulous - with a sweeping drive mown into it and groupings of trees flanking it and so forth. She really had done herself proud. Now if only she can work on being a good neighbour we could have a really good relationship (once I am prepared to resume trusting her as I have tried to show her has been the case in the past). My yard, on the other hand, looks like a bomb hit it, and it has not been mown for years. Still, that can be taken in hand when I get into a little better frame of mind.

Here is an iris that popped up by the front path today ...

Another lovely day here in Paradise and I actually managed to get the mower started this time. It refused last time, so presumably had thought it over and agreed to work on this occasion. So all that area that was once chook run and is now lawn, actually looks as if that is the intention. It occurred to me that it being one of the few relatively level spots in the yard that is out of the way of caravan manoeuvres, I might actually temporarily dedicate it to stacking the various piles of timber currently flanking the caravan so I can get on with selling it some time this decade.

The area having now been cleared and mowed, it will also be a good spot to put the bee boxes so will pop one down there tonight and see what happens from next door.

I also got stuck in weeding the hedge, which, as you can see from the section that is yet to be dealt with, needed it badly. Since stuff seems to be growing out of the side of the ditch an up over the planting area, I have stuffed straw down behind the fence so that it forms a sort of compacted mass of straw. This will have the added benefit of retaining moisture along that wall.
The various plants seem to be pretty healthy, though there are one or two gaps. Whether this is because they did not 'take' or whether I have pulled them out along with the weeds, remains a mystery. These two are a Kentish Cherry and a hawthorn.

The chick has been allowed to become more active and he and his mother have made it their hobby to dig through the straw and bury their food and water bowls on a regular basis. I can suspend them from the ceiling, but it is such a long drop I would be concerned they may cause injury if they were to be knocked aswaying ... He is rather pretty as you can see.
One of the fencing contractors called and he and his wife came up for a drive. He is providing a quote using the format I have provided (thought it would be easier to have all the same information in the same order on all the quotes, for me and her next door. She scurried over to her over the road and both stood in full view in the front yard huddled together speculating as to why this man was rocking the boundary fence back and forth. After he left, the dog and I popped into Oatlands for some dinner (for me) and then back home, chooks fed and the fire laid for lighting. It is, however, still too warm to bother so not sure when that will happen.

What's on tomorrow? Not sure. There is an all-town garage sale in Oatlands, so that might be fun. Or I can wrestle the rest of the mowing under control, or work out how to start the line trimmer (which also refused to cooperate this morning) or heck, I could even paint the internal doors that still have not been hung because i have been too preoccupied with other matters.

Or perhaps I will be working out how to separate the geese from the chooks. Rastus was out this evening, briefly. Given his location at the end of the hawthorn hedge, I have to assume he was cornered and 'goosed' and flew up in the air to avoid attack. Bother. He happily returned to his run when I opened the gate and there were no dramas from next door so presumably she had not noticed. Damage done? a bit of the mulch has been scratched to one side.

Well. Today I managed to finish off the revised format of the chook runs. Basically what I have done is move the end boundary eastward (toward the rear of the block) to line up with the new shed. On the southern side, this frees up the slab for me to construct a shed on it, to house poultry food and related accoutrements, thus forming a sort-of courtyard for privacy which will include the original chook shed (now moved forward) and the new chook shed and this third shed. Further accommodation will be provided when I construct a frame for the existing wood shed which is presently in danger of falling down in a strong wind due to inadequate framing in the first place, combined with rot.

All in good time.

The challenge I faced was moving the poultry into one yard while I worked on the other one, without providing the neighbour with grounds for conniptions. Fortunately the chooks decided this morning to spend their time in the one yard. So I was able to transfer the geese (via the hole in the fence they discovered after I cut it) into the same run as the chooks and to rapidly place the gate from the original fence, into position over the intended opening. All good so far.

The I had to pull up the star pickets that formed the part of the other run that I was removing and pull the fence into position, drive in the posts and add further bits of tie-wire to accommodate the bulges that this caused. And to attach more chicken wire to the base, as the position in the drain was leaving a gap. Then dig up the water bucket that Desi had left beside the shed which was now outside the yard. THis is a particularly useful water bucket for the geese as they can bathe in it, now it is not wedged between three walls. So they now have a 'pond' of sorts in both runs.

The geese were excited at their new location and so went exploring in a major way. They wandered in and out of the shed, poking their necks into nesting boxes and scandalising the hens. As a result i have only one egg today ... But they soon settled down to bathing in the pond and grazing on the fresh new growth that has sprung up in there, so I could get on without stopping every ten seconds to work out what the latest fuss was about.

So, now both runs have a new boundary fence - in a new location, freeing up part of the yard for planting some in-ground veges (possibly potatoes, onions and so forth?) and for locating the bee box/es.

Once that was done I got stuck into some hand-weeding along the hedgeline (where the lack of mulch on one side had resulted in an explosion of weeds). I will probably be spraying the twitch and hoarhoand, but did feel that it would be best to work out where the plants were before I did that. So this is what I have been doing. I will need to move the geese back into the other yard once i do spray as they have been grazing on the twitch that pokes through that fence. Not sure what the with=holding period is for Roundup- will have to read the instructions.

Then I started to distribute mulch, but the neighbour's poor horses were leaning on the fence to reach it with such desperation that i had to stop in case they damaged themselves when the fence collapsed (which seems likely given its condition). So that remains incomplete (but then, too, the weeding remains incomplete as well). And the hedge had a half-hour soak and the tank rounds got a bottom-filling as well as a top-watering and then I knocked off.

Next door played some unusually loud music this morning, but as I was working down the back I was not unduly disturbed. I do feel that she is perhaps attempting to provoke a complaint so will have to exercise patience.

Cats, dog and I are now settled indoors for the evening and looking forward to our respective dinners.

It was jolly chilly last night and I found it quite difficult to get to sleep with it. Trouble was that the dressing gown does not go down far enough, and I was too lazy to get up and get out the quilt to put on top of the doona. So I lay and shivered and got up and went back to bed and shivered (warm as toast on one side where the electric blanket was, but cold on the other side. Especially as the cat kept on getting up, climbing back in leaving drafty gaps and so forth.

So I had a bit of a sleepin this morning and consequently was not up and dressed till 8:30. It being minus 0.4 at that time, I was glad that there were still a few embers to get the fire going with, and one decent-sized bit of wood to keep it going for a bit longer. Then I off down the back and dug out all the Scotch Thistles I could lay my fork to. They came out easily with the soil so moist, so have been left sitting on their faces to dry out when and if the sun ever returns. Then I decided to do some mowing and so got the mower out and, after 15 minutes concluded I would never get it started again and so fiddled with the string on the line trimmer to feed it out of the holes, and decided it was time for morning tea and I had had enough of getting spat upon by the rain and meeting recalcitrant tools.

So I took a barrow of wood up to the house and cut it to length, fed the fire and set about organising to paint the bee-boxes. I have decided that once the paint is dry I will set them up in the back yard so that any fuss is dealt with before the bees arrive. A claim of increased bee activity and stinging before the bees arrive should make it clear that there is a certain element of hostility in the approach I feel.

I have also had an email from the native nursery regarding tubestock. Will need to work out what i can afford once i get the quotes in for the fences. The most attractive choices seem to be bursaria spinosa (a prickly pittosporum with flowers at Christmas) and callistemon pallidans, which is a leafy banksia with pale yellow flowers ... Will need to know a bit more about their habits, denseness (from the ground up) and spread before I commit to one or the other. Given the paling fence will be five foot, I can perhaps save some money by only planting along the cyclone wire fence - though that is 70 metres or there abouts.

I have also managed to contact contractors and line them up to come give written quotes over the weekend. I will print out a standard quote form for them so that she can have all the information in the same format and that will make the decision easier for her.

And the rest of the day was spent cleaning up in the bedroom, sorting clothes to get out some summer ones that fit, putting away anything that does not fit into the suitcase in the shipping container, and generally tidying things up a bit. And putting on a load of washing and so forth. So a fairly relaxed, but productive day all round. More cold weather tonight, but i am snug and warm at present.

I tried to get a photo of the one chicken that hatched, but mum keeps getting in the way. If you look really closely, it is just under mum on the right hand side, immediately below the equator line of the photo ...

As promised, here is that photo of the crabapple tree in bloom. More bloom than tree, as you can see. There is a pair of them planted flanking the front path. The rest of the fruit trees are in various stages of emergence, with the two that I thought might have died finally showing signs of life. So fingers crossed for them getting into leaf some time before summer.

If possible, I got even less embroidery done today than yesterday. Tracy did, however, helpfully point out that if I worked from the top down (instead of the bottom up as I have been doing) there was less risk of my arms rubbing up pilling on the tapestry wool. So I am now back in the indian ocean, adding a wake to the yacht I have yet to fill in. This, sadly, means I am going back to endlessly sewing pale blue for some time to come, sigh.

the geese had finally worked out they could get into the southern run this morning, but found the whole experience quite stressful so I drove them back to their side and popped a minor obstacle in position that seems to have worked. I will get onto the fencing tomorrow as I have no other commitments (apart from washing, mowing, spraying weeds, trimming - the usual).

I can also get onto phoning fencing contractors which didn't get done on Monday as I went to Carolines instead.

Also phoned the insurance guy who had left a message on my mobile yesterday and upped the cover on the house and downed the premium as he realised I was over 55. So that was a good conversation all round.

It has been sunny but very chilly all day today, and I suspect tomorrow will be more of the same, with a frost forecast for tonight. So I had best add cutting some firewood to that list ...

It being Melbourne Cup day today we had a get-together at quilting. I wore my hat that I bought to go to Ascot (had to cut off the labels as it had never been worn, the outing having been cancelled). And my little black dress and a blue jacket I bought years ago that had never been quite the right thing for anything I wore at that time. I did, however, manage to get the whales and dolphins fully blocked in with colour so that is a good thing. Tomorrow I may even make some progress on the Sydney Opera house. Though my first priority will be blocking in the colour on the strange land mass the pelicans are sitting on in the middle of Bass Strait.

The day was a mix of rain, wind, sun and whatever, so not really a day you could have done anything in the yard. And tomorrow may be more of the same - certainly a lot cooler than it has been of late.

I admired the blossoms of the crabapples, and took a pic, but i have not downloaded it, so you will have to wait!

Fortunately the wind had dropped today and all was still where it should be. It was a glorious morning, but rapidly clouded over and it is presently raining once more. the total rainfall for this morning (that is, the rainfall from 9 yesterday morning to the same time this morning) was only 10.9mm, though that is a pretty good start to November I guess.

I was happily unassailed by trick and treaters. I had nothing in the house to offer so it could have been nasty had they turned up. I also made some more progress on the tapestry taking advantage of the directional light I bought at K&D last time I was in Hobart.

Today, by prior arrangement, I went to Carol's place so we could sew together and have a good chat. Her problems seem to be well in hand and the police are dealing with things fairly efficiently. Mine do not appear to have gone anywhere, but at least there is a hiatus in activity. Yesterday and the evening before she played music - the sort of music that makes you want to cut your wrists - at a slightly higher volume than usual, but not the sort of volume that would warrant a complaint. Then she went out for some time in the afternoon which was a relief.

I made good progress on the tapestry - the whales now look like whales, the penguins like penguins, and the Wimmera is rather greener than usual (though it was surprisingly green when I was out there for the reunion).

Home to check on the broody, who still has only one chicken. I listened to the remaining eggs, and while I admit it may be imagination, I felt that there were little clicking noises going on inside, so I put them back in front of her and she once again tucked them into the warmth. I did, however, realise there were fewer eggs than I had expected so rummaged in the area she deserted yesterday and found four. One was broken and about two thirds of the shell was missing. Inside was a dead, but fully formed chick. The other three I broke, and they all contained partially developed foetus's, but none had gone to term. Sad that she has so little reward for all she has been through, but i will have to remove the remaining eggs tomorrow so that she starts to move about with the chick and showing it how to be a real chook.

Since I left the tapestry at Carols, in anticipation of tomorrow (melbourne cup treat day) I have little to do tonight apart from google around. I may see if I can get the telly to work now I have a remote - I will need to be able to report to Jean on progress since she went to such trouble to find and have a remote delivered to me.