... and the world looks a bit better. The red wattle is flowering, so's a red bottlebrush, and I'm finally digging up the finished gardens and adding the compost I've been carefully topping up for 12 months. Well, heck, that's what the compost is FOR ... even if it's a bit dry right now. Owing to Chook Adventures (below), I didn't get to plant, but the soil is in and weeping hose buried, which is an excellent start.
ALSO ... the recalcitrant chook is found and removed from her dreadful eggs (6 weeks old and she's still trying to hatch 'em in a very secluded corner we only found today), all the chooks are enclosed (again), in an attempt to persuade them all to lay where I can get the eggs and sleep where I can check on them, which means I can garden without worrying the chooks will dig things up.
I LIKE the chooks but I guess it's typical that mine are all free-spirited creatures who want to sleep where THEY like, not where I want them to. Sigh. Also another is moulting, which means feathers _everywhere_. She jumps somewhere and the feathers keep moving after she's stopped ... !!
Pups are also cute but getting big and prone to taking off and having adventures with roos. Or next-door's sheep, which is the worry, esp. when one hears gunshots not long after having hauled them both back, panting and delighted, by the metaphorical (or literal) ear. No amount of microchipping and collars and good nature will protect a dog chasing a sheep around here; not where wild dogs are such a problem.
So MORE fencing is going up. I don't think I ever realised how much of living on the land was taken up with trying to persuade things to stay where you want them ...
Weather is now allowed to be autumn. Which means, of course, I was in singlet and sunhat today. Heh. But at least I'm no longer mourning a summer we never had. (Upside, of course; no bushfire threat this year, apart from a couple of days here and there). We are preparing for winter, with wood being collected and stacked up, and plans for more effectively using the heat inside the house.
See, it's a lovely house; long and large, well-insulated, excellent windows, and all that. However, excellent insulation also means that if the inside is cooler than the outside, it stays that way. Overcast days, even in summer, can be dank if they last too long. In winter, without central heating, this house is slow and painful to heat up. The little fuel stove is our main source of heat. When it's roaring, about 90mins after it's lit, the house gets sweating-hot; but in the black evenings after coming home from work, you've barely got the house warmed up before you go to bed. It seems such a waste of time and wood.
So we use oil heaters instead. I have a small one that runs on a timer in the bedroom, and that keeps that all-important room a constant temperature and humidity. Without it, I'd be waking up with asthma attacks at 3am. All the enclosed rooms can be effectively heated this way.
But the huge open living/kitchen areas, which take up almost half the 21-by-7.5metre house, just swallow the heat from even the largest oil heater. Last year we ran it constantly, even when we weren't home, just to try and keep the place warm. Let's not even mention the electricity bill, shall we?
This year, we're going to try moving the living areas around. The TV and lounges will move into the area where the dining table currently resides. It's also where the stove is, in the area closest to the rest of the house. We'll move the dining stuff into the end-area, which we'll then curtain off; try to keep what heat we can generate during weekday evenings. We can put the oil heater on a timer and see if successfully raises the temperature enough to make coming home comfortable.
I just realised ... MORE fencing. To keep the heat where it's meant to be ...
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