Between Now and Then.

Christmas has been and gone and New Year is happening tonight.  The garden though continues to be timeless (almost an inverted oxymoron, that statement) and the chickens and ducks, kangaroos, magpies, crows, the bush rat that lives in the roof of the shed - all are completely unaffected by the phenomenon of counting days or years.  A very wonderful lesson!

The water falling from the sky (you can't really call it rain, more like a deluge) has flooded many parts of Queensland and we were afraid the garden would be affected too since it is in a low lying part of the grounds, but it's still there - waterlogged and soggy with every bucket and bathtub and dish we left lying about filled with water.

Oddly though not much has grown.  We expected to be overrun with beans and tomatoes and weeds but no, things have not moved on much.  Probably too busy gasping for air amongst all that rain.

The good news is that there are at least 15 new ducklings - yellow and black mostly and moving about in a group so that they almost look like one being.  It's hard to count them as the mothers won't let us get too close - very protective and fierce.

There'll be six new chickens too when our routine gets back to normal.  You can see the chicks in the box below.  They've been hand raised.  Lisa took them home over Christmas and although she's loved having them, I believe her son is rather amazed at how much mess they can make in the kitchen (where they run free).  So I'm guessing she won't miss cleaning up after them.

We're pretty sure the really big one is a rooster

The previous entry is about the rose flower and how, as a climber, we hope it will screen the chook palace.  In between the roses are rosellas (plants not birds) - a relative of the hibiscus so they have lovely flowers.  They also grow quite tall and will screen the palace and provide lovely shade. The flowers eventually turn into fruit and will be dried and sold as tea.  Very refreshing and tasty.  The nut grass, which is probably our most pesky and persistent weed, was rivalling the rosellas so we mulched heavily with newspaper and then with straw.  Below is the picture of our progress.

Mulching the rosellas

Next time I write it will be next year, but then of course, it'll be this year.  A toast then to the timelessness of life; it's always the present - and that's the best place to live.

Cheers for now
Norid