Fabien's art work

Our current HelpXer is Fabien from France (see posting below for pic). He has been a great help, as all of our Helpers are, doing all kinds of stuff including weeding (and lots of it), mowing, planting, looking after the chooks and boys; and a host of other stuff. One job he liked doing quite a bit was taking the white painted outdoor setting we bought from one of our forays to the Tender Centre and spray painting them these bright, bold and cheerful colours. Certainly brightens up the deck.

The python strikes again

Just when you thought it was safe to gi back to the chook house, along comes our local carpet python doing his best Big Bad Wolf trick from Little Red Riding Hood...except that he swallowed our little black bantam hen, Sushi. Memo to self: don't obtain any more bantams until we build a python proof bantamry. You can see poor old Sushi in that rather obvious bulge. You might see that the python has got itself into a spot pf bother by trying to slide through the wire instead of over it.
Poor Sushi...
This is our HelpXer, Fabien, from France, being exceptionally brave by allowing me to position him close to the carpet python. He looks reasonably relaxed though, don't you think? Not sure about Fabien, though.

Kyogle's best

Our favourite stallholder at the Kyogle farmer's market would have to Esther, who makes a fabulous array of cakes, samosas, Greek eggplant and fetta pies and all kinds of delicious food. We always buy a piece of her chocolate brownie but have lately also been buying her daughter's cup cakes....oh so scrummy

Andy's images #1

panoramic shot, made from several photos 'stitched together' of our place...shows up all the work we still have to do - painting or replacing the lattice work, painting trim etc
great shot of a st andrew's cross spider..click on it to enlarge it and you should be able to see the hairs on her legs
white flower of a storm crocus
pink frangis

Andy's images

contrast the delicate beauty of the 'lacework' with the wicked looking brown, foul smelling goo
Dexter enjoying being sprayed from the hose
delicate beauty
sublime

Andy and Susie: Austrian HelpXers

We've just said goodbye to Andy and Susie, HelpXers from Austra, who have been staying with us for the past week. They were fantastic - great workers and great company and we will miss them. They fitted in really well - they both loved food and cooking, so that helped! Earlier in the week, they made us an Austrian dish, the name of which I forget, which was delish, and then on Froday they produced these two ginormous apple strudels, which we managed to polish off in a couple of sittings!
The proud creators of the apple strudel: Andy and Susie.
We farewelled them on this rainy Sunday morning. They are hoping to get up to the Barrier Reef, provided they get some fine weather, but first stop was the Lismore car boot markets. Hopefully we shall see them again on their return trip south. Andy is a superb photographer and if I can work out how to re-size his photos, I will post some of them up on the blog.

Parkview Square Bar, Singapore

I'm in Singapore for a few days for work and last night my colleague, Maree, and I went out for dinner with a former colleague, Jim, and his vivacious wife, Pam. After an entertaining and delicious meal, Jim and Pam decided to take us to 'their club' for cocktails. It turns out that 'their club' is the Divine Wine Society Bar in the Parkview Square Building, a brand new, art deco inspired building built by a rather wealthy Korean.

Talk about OTT and old worlde opulence! This photo of course doesn't do this amazing bar justice but you might get the idea. And apparently it's almost always empty. While we were there last night for a couple of hours up till midnight there was only us and another group of 4 businessmen. That didn't stop the 'waitress-fairy' from gliding 5 metres up the refrigerated wine cellar built into the wall above the bar to retrieve a bottle of wine, I kid you not.

This is where the wines are stored and you can see the 'fairy' right at the top, getting a bottle of wine. Yep, Over the Top and...loving it!

White cloud mountain minnows

Cute, aren't they. We bought a dozen or so white cloud mountain minnows when we bought the water lilies, hmmm, in the first week or so of January, and they seem to be enjoying their new home in our fish pond, so much that there have been several egg laying events and we now have newly hatched bubs a few mm long, older children and teenagers who are almost as big as their parents, about an inch long. They are very cute and add a little splash of colour and movement to the pond. Now, I realise they are not native but they don't eat tadpoles and they are quite cute. I know that some of you would rather us have a few silvery perch or bass or gudgeons in the pond as some kind of salute to Australian icthyology, but, those species are aggressive carnivores that would consume our taddies within hours of their release. And at least they are not goldfish, although they would look rather lovely, swishing about with their long, graceful tail fins....

ratty pumpkins

I should be packing for my work trip to Singapore that starts on Friday, but I'd rather be blogging. So that's what I'll do. At least for now. Rats. You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em. Well, actually, it's probably very easy to live without 'em. While we haven't seen any of the rascally rodents, lately, there's plenty of evidence. I doubt if there is a shortage of ratty food at present, but they have certainly been gobbling up our pumpkins, those that we have picked and stored on our verandah, and those still growing on the vine. What to do? I don't really like poisoning the varmints and we certainly don't during the warmer months when pythons are slithering around, looking for rats to eat, so maybe we'll need some kind of live trap. But then you still have to kill them. But that's OK. I have killed many a rat in my day. They really cause lots of problems - they gnaw through wires in your house of your car and can cause electrical fires. They are of the feral variety, not native bush rats. Anyway, I took the pic this evening of one of our Japanese pumpkins that had been eaten almost entirely by Rattus norvegicus.