As a rule we don’t really celebrate halloween seriously here in Australia, although in recent years the supermarkets have been doing their best to wring a few bucks out of us, tempting the kids with shelves stocked with halloween-y things
Nevertheless, All Hallows Eve is the ideal time for me to share this clip, a short film called Vincent about a tormented young boy, Vincent Malloy, who wants nothing more than to be like Vincent Price.
Of course this film had to be narrated by Vincent Price, the owner of the best evil laugh ever, and animated by the suitably dark Tim Burton* who was probably just recreating the story of his own childhood. What more could I possibly ask for?
Happy halloween and a Mwah ha ha to you. 🙂
*You just knew animated movies are my favourite didn’t you? Nightmare Before Christmas, the best xmas movie ever, or maybe that’s just me 😉
At the moment the boys and I are locked in battle with a group of neighbourhood menaces.
No, we aren’t being harassed by a gang of destructive teenagers, we have a group of Sulphur Crested Cockatoos who are trying to muscle in on the cushy ride our regular backyard parrots are getting.
If the cockies were happy to share the bounty we wouldn’t have a problem with them, but polite isn’t really their thing. They rudely flap in, sending the regulars dashing for cover and freaking out the chooks. They then eat everything in sight and retire to the trees waiting for the next course to be delivered while keeping everyone else at bay.
Although they are regular visitors to the street we haven’t had a problem with them before. They are usually well-catered for across the road but unfortunately for us the lady of the house has gone overseas for a few weeks and clearly the man of the house isn’t supplying the usual menu!
Cockies are lovely looking birds. They are large and intelligent and very animated, but having big, strong, smart birds with huge beaks around is a bit like giving a small child a pair of pliers and expecting them not to damage anything. It can only end in tears.
They eat the seed we put out, then they eat my plants then have a bite of anything else that might look tasty regardless of what it is made of. Aaargh! We had to get rid of them.
After spending days running out of the back door and flailing our arms about like maniacs each time they showed up the kids and I have finally trained them. If we see them in the backyard now all we have to do is step outside and they grumpily clear off.
The other birds have worked out what is going on too and instead of flying away in a panic will just keep their heads down until the menace has been removed then resume feeding as if nothing happened.
Hopefully the diner across the road will reopen soon, then they can go back to eating at their normal dinner table and leave us alone!!
On the washing line, just waiting….
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Clearly I am not the only one hating Telstra and their intermittent internet coverage at the moment. Over the weekend a nearby resident was outside the local shop, the busiest place in town of a weekend, collecting signatures on a petition that could easily have been titled “Fix our damn internet Telstra!!”
Of course the Man and I were both quick to sign. I doubt anything will come of it, but if they listen maybe one day I will be able to catch up on my blog reading. 😦
It seems as though it was only a week ago when I last posted, but I checked my emails today and it has clearly been longer than that.
I’m not quite sure when I lost track of time (or last checked my emails) but such unforgivable neglect wasn’t intentional, I promise!
I have been taking photos for you as always (my camera was bulging at the seams) and thinking of things to write all the time, I have just had difficulty getting it from head to screen!
Although I can only blame myself for being so hopeless I was assisted by that ever present evil, bad internet. 😦
It has been sort of ok during the day (when I am busy of course), but in the evening it has become abysmally slow right when I have time to actually use it. Grrrrr…
Funny thing about that though. Over the weekend I was hard at work with a saw (blistered palm, ouch!) clearing away a stand of scrubby trees at the very furthest and highest part of the back garden.
When I stood back to admire my handiwork (ok, I was really hoping that The Man would notice, take pity on me, and take over) when I realized that through the trees I could actually see a new(ish) mobile phone tower on a lower hill a kilometer or so away.
Hmmm…. That means we are in between two towers, one on top of a hill to the west and another lower hill to the east. Nevertheless, I still can’t get decent reception! Aaargh!!
I promise I will be better at keeping track of the time from now on and here is a photo of the most powerful plant in my garden, the Donkey Ear Orchid, as an apology.
Why so powerful you ask? Well, there are a few of these guys scattered over our hill and the Man has a particular affection for this flower above all the other equally beautiful orchids out there. This is possibly because it is the largest and tallest and, although he is horribly afflicted with domestic blindness, even he can see them when he is clomping around out there.
His affection for them means they have saved the entire population of the hill from being blitzed with the mower! Yay!! ….. for now, anyway…. Here’s hoping that they outlast all the others so they all get a chance to scatter a few seeds about for next season. 🙂
When I took this photo my camera wasn’t aimed at the butterfly though, I had spent ten minutes aiming it in the direction of the big spider curled up in the bottom corner of the photo.
Lurking death….
Eeek, right? (Sorry to you arachnophobes, maybe you should stop reading now 😉 )
This guy is a Wolf Spider and, unfortunately, we have plenty of them living in the garden. They live in burrows, so digging a hole always brings the chance of an unexpected attack. I think that is all the more reason for more of those raised garden beds!
They love a bit of sun, often seen soaking up some rays in the mouth of their burrows. They can be quite hard to get close to, your shadow or the vibrations from your steps sees them dashing back down their hole to safety. This is good. I don’t want them thinking they can scare me off by standing up to me, although they definitely could.
Wolf spiders have excellent eyesight and aren’t wait-in-the-web kind of spiders, they will hunt down their prey.*
He was watching me… and freaking me out.
Now we come to the big problem I have.
Unfortunately his (or hers, but I’ll go with his) burrow is right where I need to dig the level for a new garden bed that is in the shed awaiting assembly.
He is pretty big, as you can see in comparison with the butterfly, and I have seen him stomping about his front garden of an evening without being wary of me at all.
I don’t really want to have to introduce him to the flat side of the shovel but my attempts at moving him on so far haven’t been successful at all…
Just for those of you who haven’t already run screaming away because of the horribleness of the spider, any spider, here is some video from a person who is more patient and far braver than me. Once my spider started getting a bit active I was happy to wander off and take some pictures of things that were less scary… and hairy.. 😉
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*Some years ago the Man was doing a late afternoon car repair that ran into the evening. He was lying out on the driveway underneath the car and I was holding a torch for him. Every now and again we could hear scuttling in the gravel near us and, shining the torch around, we could see three of these guys, big ones, hunting the critters attracted to the light. Terrifying.
As you can imagine there was never a car put back together as quickly as that one….
If you wish to use any images or text from my blog be sure to ask permission and include a link back to Buried Words and Bushwa, and full credit to it.
Trove.
The newspaper articles here come from the National Library of Australia (trove.nla.gov.au). Get on there and do some text correcting! You never know what you might find...
Buried words and Bushwa. 
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