Daily Delights

 Freshly-laid egg collected when I let the chooks out this morning:

It wasn't warm because the temperature was colder than a fridge - 0 degrees!

But the day warmed up, and just after midday I photographed the first butterfly I've seen at our place this (almost) spring: 

An Australian Painted Lady.
 

Catching Up on March So Far

There has been a bit going on, but I seem to have got out of the blogging habit. Here's a few happenings of the month so far.

The white belladonna lilies opened:

They will probably have faded by the time I do my garden round-up on Monday. This photo was taken on the 5th.
 

We had a field naturalist's outing to Geelong on the 7th. We saw all sorts of fascinating coastal vegetation such as this Grey Samphire (Tecticornia halocnemoides):

Obviously not grey at this time of year. 

And the Grey Mangroves (Avicennia marina):

Also not actually grey.

And lots of water birds:

The 10th March was my parents' 65th wedding anniversary. This is not an event we expected to be celebrating, as earlier in the month my mother was thought to be dying. She doesn't look in great health in this photo:

But it is the first time she had been out of bed and in her wheelchair in over a week. A vaccination team visited her nursing home on the 4th to deliver the first round of the covid vaccine for the residents, but she wasn't offered it as she was too ill. Maybe she will have her first one when the rest of the residents get their second one, if she is still with us.

 

Also on the 10th, we had 8 kookaburras come to visit in the morning:

The chooks are having a tour of the front "lawn", moving to a different part of it each day. The kookaburras are sitting on their temporary fencing.

The chooks weren't impressed that some food was thrown to the kookaburras!

One of my orchids has thrown up a flower spike:

It has flowered in winter/spring in previous years, so this was a surprise. Perhaps being in the shade house has confused it about the time of year.

Another "time of year" confusion:

A bunch of peonies open right now. I had half a dozen buds left in the fridge which I had forgotten about, so here they are, as if it was spring rather than autumn.

And finally, today I basted my WOOFA (working on or finishing a ...) project for this month, my small Frolic that was assembled in March last year.

While I was at it, I pieced a backing for Trail Mix and basted it as well:

It's only been a top since October. It will probably be my WOOFA project for next month.

So that's March so far!

November

 I can't believe it is November already. This year has been a bit of a write-off.

But it has been a good year for tiny orchids:

This is a musky caps orchid, Caladenia moschata, growing on our property. You can get an idea of how small it is from my finger.

We have two new arrivals in the menagerie:

These two pullets arrived a few days ago but I forgot to take a photo at the time. They are settling in slowly. For the first couple of days they hid in the chook shed and wouldn't come out, but they have a bit more confidence now.

And last but not least, the first daylily to open without being wrecked by slugs or snails:

New Arrivals

Three new members of the menagerie today:

The black ones are New Hampshire Australorp crosses, and the other is a commercial brown chook. They are only 10 weeks old, so it will be a while before they are up to laying eggs. But because everyone has gone chook crazy under lockdown, it is hard to get the normal "point of lay" pullets. These ones make cute baby chicken noises rather than grown-up clucks. At bedtime tonight they snuggled up to the larger chooks to keep warm.

Visitors

Visiting may be outlawed at the moment, but this is essential. These five ladies came today to stay with us for a while:

Their owners are moving house and needed a temporary place for them in the interim. The chook ladies quickly made themselves at home in the orchard.

Straw

You know those round bales of hay or straw you see in paddocks, but never up close?

Well you can't fit many of them in the ute at once!

This is wheat straw to spread around the orchard:

In just a couple of rainy days the ground had become pretty muddy. The straw will keep the chooks cleaner and make it a bit easier for us to walk around in there too. One more bale will cover the whole orchard to a nice depth. Of course it will rot down and get muddy, but the straw was only $12 a bale, so topping it up won't be a problem. Apart from the issue of getting it off the ute and into the orchard, that is.

The chooks seem happy. Here's 5 of them in the straw:

Some of them look a bit ratty because they are still going through their autumn moult. And some of them are just old! The black Australorp in the centre is about 10 years old. You can see her in her prime 8 years ago here. The ISA brown in the front is 8 years old. See her as a pullet here. Behind her is a Barnewelder looking very ratty, which is 3.5 years old. See her when she arrived here. The two in the rear are a silver-pencilled Wyandotte and a blue Andalusian, both of which are about 1.5 years old. Their arrival here.

The newest chook is not in that photo, but here she is in the foreground with the blue Andalusian:

She is a Dorking. I haven't posted a picture of her before, but we have had her for a bit more than a year. She will look prettier when she finishes growing all her new feathers.

Speaking of pretty, here's my Mystic Star dahlia looking lovely in the sunshine today:

Hen or Rooster?

A member of the extended family obtained this young chook a couple of months ago. They've been waiting for it to start laying eggs, but instead it has started crowing:

It is not unknown for hens to occasionally crow, but as the family live in a suburban area, a crowing bird is not going to be good for neighbourhood harmony.

So yesterday she/he came to stay with us for a while. We are keeping him/her separate from our chooks, although in sight of them so it doesn't feel too alone. The owners do not know what breed the bird might be. It is only a few months old, but this chook is already much bigger than any of our hens. That could be because it is a meat breed rather than an egg-laying breed, or it could just be that it is a rooster.

What do you think?

New Arrivals

Another new rose open today:

"Vienna Charm"

Two new chooks arrived:

Blue Andalusian behind, Silver-pencilled Wyandotte in front.

The four older chooks:

On the left the Barnevelder and Australorp cross who arrived almost exactly 2 years ago. On the right, an ISA Brown who arrived in October 2010. I'm not sure how old the big Australorp cross in front on the right is, but I've got a picture of her looking just as big in August 2010, so I think she is at least 8 years old. She's older than my blog, anyway!

Full Day

The brickies returned to bag the walls. First coat on one wall:

and the other:

Look at the mess they are working in:

Glad it's them and not me trying to work in that mud.

After they'd had their morning tea or lunch or whatever their morning meal is, the walls had dried enough to put on the second coat:

I forgot to take any pictures of the completed second coat. The brickies will be back in a week or so to finish off the walls (fill them with concrete, and smooth the tops and those edges where the gates will be).

Meanwhile, I attempted basting a quilt one quarter at a time on my cutting table:

That's just the batting, not the actual quilt top. Doing it this way worked for the most part, but when I had finished and looked at the back I found a couple of tucks which meant I had to re-pin some of it.

Later in the day, the chooks took a trip by tractor:

which they didn't seem to enjoy:

Although once they were in the orchard, and they were allowed out, they looked very happy. It's the biggest area they've had to explore since leaving the city. It didn't take them long to find the rhubarb:

They also enjoyed a dust bath. Now we will have to be very careful to lock their fox-proof pen every night!

Chooks and Koala Count

The chooks enjoying their first chance to get out of their coop and roll around in the dirt since arriving at Lal Lal:

Their fox-proof coop has a steel mesh base, so they can't have a dust bath in it. So today they thoroughly coated themselves with dust, then lay in the sun. Do they look happy?

This evening we went for a walk, armed with binoculars and cameras, looking for koalas. We often hear them at night, and a week or so back we actually saw one but I didn't have my camera with me. So for the 2015 Koala Count, we headed to where we thought we had a good chance of finding one.

Our total koala sightings were - zero! But as we were returning home, we spotted a different native animal crossing the road about 100 metres ahead of us. By the time we reached the spot, it seemed to have disappeared. After a bit of searching we found its hiding place:

An echidna in a drainpipe!

We know there are echidnas around, as we often find where they have been scratching around the base of trees. We even saw one recently, when once again I didn't have my camera with me. But this time I have the photographic evidence!

Arrivals

The chooks now live at Lal Lal:

Temporarily lodged inside the car bay of the shed. They will get dirt to scratch eventually, but for now they are on concrete.

The second big arrival today:

Our kitchen and laundry cabinets! They will be installed tomorrow, but were delivered in the warm sunshine today because rain is on the way.

Piles of cabinets stacked up for tomorrow.

Baker's Dozen

This is what happens when you go away for a few days:

The chooks have laid one dozen eggs, and have started on the next one!

Pullet Egg

One of the new arrivals from December has started laying:

Compare the cute little egg on the left with one from the big Australorp cross on the right.

In other news, I spoke to the earthworks guy today (finally), and now he says he will be there on Wednesday. We'll see.

Walking, Not Walking, and Some New Arrivals

Reached a walking milestone today:

But my walking foot seems to have decided that it has walked far enough. Here's what it did to a needle:

At least it didn't break! The needle hit the foot, which was a bit surprising, for both me and the needle. But a new needle didn't help, it just kept hitting the foot. So I had to finish the small quilting job I was doing with the regular presser foot. Fortunately that handled the task acceptably.

Two new chooks arrived today:

Separate accommodations for now, but the older ones are keeping a close eye on them.

This photo probably gives a better idea of how small they still are.
The new ones are an Australorp cross and a Barnevelder, and the original ones are an Australorp cross and an ISA brown.

Happy Christmas!

Last night I made a couple of quiches to take to each of the family gatherings this weekend. This morning, as I was loading into the car a bag of goodies (pavlova with home-grown berries, a box of cherries, and a quiche) I managed to drop the quiche. The pyrex dish shattered, and the quiche was history. Lucky I had made two, I guess! But this one didn't go to waste:

The chooks had eaten the whole thing by the time we got home. Is it wrong to feed chickens their own eggs?

Also tonight I managed to catch a couple of daylily flowers open.  A few have opened over the last week, but they've closed before I got to them.

This is one that I bought at the Macedon Plant-Lovers Market in September. Unfortunately the labels have faded/washed off/been eaten, but I'm pretty sure this one is "Huckleberry Candy". Isn't it beautiful?

Hope your day has been happy and peaceful, with no worse disasters than my quiche!

New Arrivals

Two new pullets settling in at the chook-house.

And a bonus shot of fuzzy babies at the poultry farm: