Blowing the dust off…

We have been having the most perfect weather here over the last few days. It is like Spring got sick of waiting for its turn and just kicked Winter out of the way.

It has been far too nice to spend any time inside, so my blogging and blog reading has become sadly neglected, that and the far less important housework. Oh well, the nice weather can’t last so I will have time to catch up soon enough.

Sunday was a gloriously sunny Father’s Day and my whole family ended up at a local lake for a picnic lunch with Dad. We sat on the grass on rugs feasting on everyone’s delicious offerings and the kids dragged us all into a very amusing game of random bocce (no real rules, just throw and laugh, try not to hurt any passers-by).

Playing on a lumpy and sloping bit of grass ensured that no amount of skill could stop the heavy metal balls from zooming off on unexpected trajectories when they landed, much to the delight of the kids.

The weather has remained perfect since then so my computer has been gathering dust and I have been spending my time at the local nursery wasting money on plants I don’t really need, wandering about in the garden with my camera, taking the dog for more walks than she probably wants and just generally avoiding being indoors at all times.

A change of weather is due tomorrow so it seems that Winter isn’t going to give up without a fight. Oh well, poor footsore Jack can rest her weary paws for a while before Spring actually gets here and the walking weather returns. 😀

If I lie here quietly she might just leave me alone…

I didn’t do it. 1897.

What a funny tale from Queensland in 1897.

The Queenslander 4 Dec 1897 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article24472337

Late one night a small boy was seen stealing apples from a tree in Queensland.

Instead of confronting the young thief the owner of the tree quietly placed a large stuffed dog on the ground at the foot of the tree and retired to a safe distance to observe proceedings.

When the boy started to climb down he noticed the dog waiting for him and began employing all the tricks a young sneak uses to get by a guard dog.

Strangely, not one of them worked on that most determined of sentries and the boy settled down for an uncomfortable night in the tree.

When morning dawned the owner strolled down to the tree and asked the boy how he managed to get himself into such a predicament. The boy answered that he had climbed the tree to escape the dog who had chased him up there….

Dog vs shark. Round 2.

Here we are at round two of the dog vs shark wars. Once I saw this picture of a happy pooch I hoped it ended in favour of the dog rather than the unfortunate Fluffy poodle of yesterday’s post.

The Daily News 26 Jul 1938 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article83554914

In that post, and thanks to the ongoing amusement in the comments, we imagined a wife’s pampered poodle with an annoyingly tinkly bell on its collar being taken for a late night walk by a long-suffering husband.

We couldn’t really imagine too many ways that bell from a small dog’s collar made its way to the insides of the shark that those work-dodging police fishermen caught in 1911.

Even more unlikely was that a bell, heavily corroded from the digestive juices that had already consumed the poodle and the collar, would be ringing from the insides of a shark but we were willing to overlook that in support of an amusing story.

The Border Collie in this report was clearly made of sterner stuff than our imaginary Fluffy poodle.

In July 1938 he leapt from the pier at Queenscliff, grabbing a four-foot whip tailed shark in its mouth and swimming back to the landing. The shark was killed by fishermen but I really think that the dog was probably capable of doing it on its own, don’t you?

I hope that this dog didn’t ever overestimate its own abilities, imagine if it took on something bigger or a shark with a bigger friend lurking under the pier? Eeek!

Monster in the dark.

Every night, just before I go to bed, I take Jack out for a bit of evening relief.

I have one of those long retracting leads for this purpose so I can just stand on the back verandah and she can take care of business without me having to follow her around.

One reason for me staying on the verandah is because I am lazy, the other is because every night, out in the darkness, we disturb a possum and I would rather not get in its way.

Yes, I know possums are cute and mainly harmless but the one we have is particularly grouchy.

If you have never heard a grumpy Australian possum before below I am adding a YouTube clip for you. This clip is only marginally helpful in portraying the horror of Grumpy Possum. When I hear this noise it is at full volume coming out of the pitch black….

Even though I know full well that the animal making the noise is no bigger than Jack, it sounds as though a creature easily capable of chewing off a limb is just out of the small circle of light. If a monster stumbled into view and lunged at me I would not really be surprised.

Usually the possum is in the trees when we go out, so not only are we subjected to that scary, throaty growl but it is accompanied by the creaking of branches and a thump as the possum bumps to the ground. It then stomps off, grumbling all the while, to set off the dogs down the hill.

I know I could put out some apple and try to make friends with it, but I am a little concerned that it is some previously unknown beast that is only impersonating a possum. If I go out in the dark with a fruity offering it might result in me staggering back minus one arm and Jack never leaving the house again!

Here is a clip of what possums are like when they are happy to see you. Small, cute and friendly. Now play that growly clip again and you will know why I stay on the verandah at night…. Here be monsters….. 😉

A while ago I did a post which included a clip of a koala making an equally scary noise. Why is it the small furry ones who sound the worst?

Onion Orchid. Better than it sounds!

I was sad when I found that this tiny green orchid had such a blah name. Common onion orchid. Blah….

Onion Orchid

Look how tiny they are and how well camouflaged. That background greenery is just long blades of grass! They should be called something like the Stealth Orchid. I haven’t noticed that they smell like onions either, the Man isn’t allowed to mow the Hill at the moment and I don’t really want to know what they smell like when they are squished. 😉

We have heaps of these little native guys in our garden and this week is the one they have chosen to start their season. I almost missed them altogether yesterday as they are so well hidden. It was only because one of them was parked right next to a different kind of orchid I was already photographing that I noticed them at all.

Of course once I got a glimpse of one I saw them everywhere!

Badly timed bite.

I have also included this picture illustrating the dangers of low level photography when accompanied by an interested canine.

A long time ago we had a dog called Reddog. If I crouched down to take a picture he would quickly make off in the other direction fully aware that getting in my shot would result in a scene.

The little Jackal has only just begun learning that the thing I am looking at might well be interesting but must be left alone at all costs. Just as I pressed the button on this shot she dived in for a look, eeek! She was smart enough to let go and run away before any harm was done to the plant though. Just as well or she would be locked inside all alone next time I take my camera for a walk!

I have enlarged one of the pictures I took so you could see the tiny flowers up and down the stalk. Each stalk can have something like 50 little flowers on it, so the dozen I found today means that there were hundreds of flowers in just one small area of the garden but still almost invisible. I wonder how many other things are hiding in plain sight just waiting for me to find them?

Onion orchid close up

Solar powered dog.

Our furry family member Jack has been along with us on this trip and has been loving it. Faithful readers will know that cold-blooded Jack has trouble tearing herself away from the fireplace, so this trip to some warmer parts of Australia have been right up her alley.

Now we are back in chilly Victoria Jack is not as happy about travelling as she could be. The annex, where her doghouse lives, is not equipped with a fireplace and on a cold morning she puts on a show of being a dogsicle instead of her normal slightly singed self.

When we were recharging our batteries in Wentworth with the solar panels it was easy to see where the best place to put them was. Wherever the dog was lying was clearly the most sunny place, and so the most effective position for the panels to be positioned.

As you can see by the photo below poor Jack was cooked out there in the sun, panting, and almost combusting in the dry grass. No matter what we did to make the shady spot where the rest of us were sitting look enticing to her she would not budge other than to come over for a quick pat until the sun went down.

I am not a ‘dressing your dog in clothes’ kind of person but I can see that Jack might love me a lot more if I got her a warm jumper for these cold mornings. Tough luck dog, you live in Victoria, you’re going to have to get used to it!

Solar powered dog.