One Giant Leap

Sally_3, originally uploaded by gumnuts.

I now have flickr going, and hope to have more posts with photos included. A giant leap for this blog!

Christmas Greetings

Once again Christmas has almost arrived and I have gone into relaxation mood before getting everything done. I guess I am about half way through the cards and emails I had hoped to send and maybe I will finish last year's Christmas stamps in the next week or so.

It is nice to have Jim and Lee here and Em on webcam in England. We are having lovely weather, not too hot and a bit overcast but not much rain. Sunny Boy is doing a great job generating electricity from quite early in the morning and even when light rain is falling - more details later.

Have a Happy Christmas and enjoy the cricket.

Birds in the garden

Things are growing madly at present with the cooler weather and rain. We have a lot of small birds - the brown honeyeaters working hard to protect their patch and some finches, wrens, thornbills and sparrows. Yesterday we had a pair of Rainbow Lorikeets on the Honey Gem. We do not get them very often out here, although they are quite common a few kilometres in to Toowoomba. The magpies, galahs and plovers also keep us company and the kestrel flies about too.

Christmas breakups

We had our Tuesday walking group breakup last week but at least one important member was unable to come, and the weather continuing to be cool, we decided to have another this week, which went off very well. It would be hard to beat the quality and diversity of the food which was shared on both occasions.

Today our Tai Chi group had lunch at our cafe. This was a change of venue from Sizzlers and turned out very well. So well in fact that we plan to have regular lunches there during 2008. Usually we just have tea, coffee, cake or sushi - all of which are good, as are the staff and ambience.

I missed our tennis group Christmas lunch when I was away in Melbourne. It was held early as one of our group is having Christmas in Canada. Now it looks like we may not have tennis tomorrow if we cannot raise 4 players.

The force is with us

We have just turned on the solar power system. It is overcast with possible showers forecast so it is a gentle start. It is almost an anti-climax after waiting so long and it now being late afternoon. It must be almost time for a drink? There is probably a direct relationship between power generation and the yardarm, although it is probably quite a tall one 10am-4pm and not conducive to good health. We will keep you updated.

Beans and corn

The bean trellis was holding up well with the accumulated crop when we got back. We have been busy picking and distributing at work, Tai chi and tennis. Before we left I took a selection for the bushwalkers and we had a raw bean tasting with our lunch. I have three varieties - scarlet runners, purple king and lazy housewives - in order of flavour. The corn crops also promise with cobs now silking.

Rain

Things are green with a lot of growing tips at present.
November rainfall was 75 mm which is a bit below the 11 year average of 93 but it was also cooler than usual so we did quite well without making up the deficit in the soil. The tank was full when we got back from Melbourne and may have overflowed, but I fixed that by leaving the tap on overnight and reducing it to one third full. At least it is now stored in the vegie garden and under the compost.

where is the inverter?

It is coming on Friday. Perhaps the current overcast skies and increased chance of rain are somehow related? Will the skies clear and things dry out when we are fully connected? Part of the appeal of solar power is that we will have a bet each way.

Solar power

We saw very few photovoltaic cells and solar hot water systems on our trip despite travelling through areas of Australia with very high solar exposure. There have been good subsidies for these but I suspect people still ask - will it pay for itself and what is the cheapest at this point in time? Are these valid questions or should we be thinking in a broader sense? We are an affluent country which adopts some new technologies like dvds, ipods and big TVs readily.

Melbourne

We had a great scenic drive from Rutherglen to Melbourne via Peechelba, Wangaratta, Whitfield, Powers Lookout, Mansfield, Bonnie Doon, Yea, Yarra Glen and northern suburbs to West Coburg. It was interesting staying in that part of the city, walking across to Sydney road where we found a great Italian pasticeria, then on to Merri Creek and back again. Four late nights in a row was a novelty for us, with some afternoon sleeps as well. On Monday we drove out to Organ Pipes National Park just north of Keilor, then across to Lerderderg Gorge near Bacchus Marsh - a celebration of the basalt plains and early land selections of the Port Phillip Association.
It was great to catch up with old friends and relatives.

a disturbance in the force

Not an original title but we have been waiting on an inverter that will fit the space above the meter. And time has flown by with a trip to Melbourne on the 21st November. We drove down the Newell Highway for a 40 year reunion at Ormond College. we enjoyed the trip with storms building west of Dubbo and coming down not long after we got there for the night. The wheat crops in the Riverina were baled into hay and the billabong near Rutherglen had dried to puddles. We are not so badly off here