Green-fingered Eccentricity
My dislike for cockatoos has been well documented over the last year – I used to think they were pretty until they wreaked havoc on my beautiful sunflowers, and then it was all out war.
A war that they are currently winning.
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Is it normal for chooks to sit in trees or have we got our hands on some superhero chooks? I’m really hoping for the latter because I’m planning my early retirement courtesy of the talk show circuit.
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I’m not actually. I suck very very badly at growing corn. I had such high hopes when I planted the first batch of seed only to watch all 100 of them washed out of the soil by mega rain. That didn’t deter me – I live by the adage ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’ – so I tried again, planting a slightly smaller batch of 60 seeds, most of which lived to grow into kind of healthy looking corn plants.
They produced those thingys at the top that hold the pollen and they produced the thingys at the bottom that have the silks. The fact that the gales kicked in and the rains smashed down just as these two thingys eventuated should have been beside the point. I assumed it was a wet and wild ride for corn mating but I also assumed the deed had been done.
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2010 was an absolute corker of a year. This garden malarkey sunk it’s teeth in with a vengeance and quite suddenly I was looking at the world with new eyes. I fell off a motorbike and got married in a Lahu hilltribe ceremony, I fell off a step and discovered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I got a new job and found a new career. And I grew loads of plants, battled snails and weeds, contended with Mother Nature’s temper tantrums, experimented madly, got things badly wrong and occasionally got them right.
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Saturday morning was so hot I pulled the gardening shorts on for the first time since May. I sent up a warning flare first so people in the vicinity could put their sunglasses on before looking at the legs directly – it is akin to looking at the sun, the glare will leave leg shaped black spots before your eyes for days afterward.
The shorts and I zoomed up to the nursery to buy some potting mix, as some of the tomato seedlings are requesting an upgrade to business class, and on the way there I spotted the cloud.
It was black. It was roiling. It was moving in fast. It looked angry and like it might have some hail to throw on my cars and my garden. The nursery folk were outside pulling the lettuce seedlings undercover, always a bad sign, so I threw some money on the counter and a couple of bags of potting mix into the boot and headed home like the hounds of hell were on my heels.
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I live on a farm with roughly 150 free range chooks. Marge the Chook Lady, custodian of the farm’s chicken population, talks to them, compliments them, tells them they’re beautiful and occasionally shouts at them and tells them they are being greedy – this usually happens when they peck her legs trying to get her to hurry up with the food already.
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It is with great relief that I farewell the second last month of Winter. Only one to go and then The Season That Should Not Exist will be over. And not a moment too soon. My soul is crying out for some hot from the sky (hot from a heater is a terribly poor substitute).
Today was a lovely mid-winter day though. While Crazy Car Man was off playing with fire trucks (he’s a volunteer for the Rural Fire Service) I spent a satisfactory couple of hours playing in the garden.
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There are roughly 150 free range chickens that share the 10 acres of farm on which we rent our cottage. Marge the Chook Lady, keeper of the chickens, picker of olives, carer of the ancient landlord, source of village gossip ensures her charges live out their days in a wallow of dust baths, sunshine, bug feasts and all manner of fresh goodies from the greengrocer in town.
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