© 1984 - 2024 Adrian Tritschler
Oh no, the 6yr old, $140 Aldi mower is one step closer to self-destruction – airfilter and cover fell off and straight under the blades
the flower buds on the street-tree plum are just starting to show their pinkness
The camellia out the study window is covered in buds and some are open, the wattlebirds are happy as a result
as if on cue, two ringtail possums appear in the plum tree to be shown off to our Japanese exchange student
thick fog and a heavy dew, the newspaper was 1.5m off the ground in the magnolia tree today
A hollowed out orange sits by the compost bin, the possum is very kind in its sharing. One every day or so, we get to eat the rest
Down the garden in the dark to find some parsley, up above in the plum tree a Ringtail poss.[1] watches as it nibbles away on the leaf buds
[1] Common ringtail possum
A startlingly loud THUMP at breakfast-time as a blackbird[1] flew into the kitchen window and knocked itself out
The Grey butcherbird[2] pursing it then sat on the railing, yelling loudly and sadly disappointed that its breakfast had escaped [1] Common blackbird [2] Grey butcherbird
A thornbill[1] in the bay tree, peep peep peep. hop hop hop. Ignored me completely while foraging quite close
[1] Brown thornbill, I think, not quite stripey enough to be a Striated thornbill
we have one hyacinth flower, and lots of bulbs sprouting … but is the flower our old one or one of the new ones?
The first magnolia bud is starting to open, like a large pink lipstick
Is that early? No, checking back they often appear around now, and I always wonder if they’re early
A solid hour of work and the three of us have pruned the straggly wild backyard plum tree
The hyacinths I planted some weeks ago are sprouting, as are the tulips I inherited
three rows of pavers now installed under the new gate in the fence, should stop it becoming an eroded mud pit over winter
Riding home I can see that the first crap tag has appeared on our new back fence, that took … exactly seven days
we have finally pulled out the zucchini plants – two of those last three were unpleasantly bitter
Monthly rain serendipitiness, we had 140.5mm of rain from January-March … then 140.5mm of rain in April!
There's now a small patch of tulip bulbs under the roses near the hyacinths — acquisitions from FIL's garage cleanup
We seem to have zombie zucchini plants!
They refuse to die, every time I think they’re done, a few more fruit set and slowly grow up, while the leaves and stalks are gradually becoming more and more shredded. Surely these are the last three
only just autumn but we seem to have freesias sprouting, seem early to me this year
One or two spindly ones under the silver birch trees, and in the front lawn around the plum tree and along the fence
planted eight hyacinth bulbs between the magnolia and roses out the front
Boosting the small number of spring-flowering bulbs out in the front garden, there’s only a few jonquils, freesias, and a solitary hyacinth somewhere nearby. Fingers crossed these all come up
one last zucchini remains, ripening up in a race with the drying up and dieing plants
home from a week of camping, three whopper zucchini to pick and one more tomorrow
tada! The zucchini harvest has commenced. First three picked this evening
picked 1.5kg of plums to make a batch of plum sauce – that's almost the end of this year's crop
woke up early and lying in the dark I could hear the leathery flap-flap-flap as some fruit bats flew away from the plum tree in the front garden
13mm of rain overnight, the lawn needs a mow and my arm is in a sling… not today
we've harvested the last of the broadbeans, time to dig the plants in on the weekend
snails are taking over, every time there's any rain every path is covered, any mail not collected is getting eaten overnight!
the neighbours have moved out, either they didn't take their cat or it's found its way back "home" and is in our garden
Came home to find an enormous cluster of snails on the wet path where a few had been squashed this morning
Very disturbing, not sure if they were eating the squashed ones or what attracted them, about a 20cm circle solid with garden snails on that piece of footpath
misc. garden updates; mowed the lawn, all the bluebells and freesias are finished, the jonquils never flowered, the one tulip didn't sprout this year
under cover of the rain, the Charles de Gaulle and Just Joey roses are blooming
We've nearly got some produce! A few of the broadbeans are about ready to pick
The native frangipani[1] on the north side of the house is covered in blossom and smelling strongly
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenosporum_flavum
late afternoon with the sun starting to get low, the blackbird[3] is loudly calling in the bay tree
The mudlarks[1] seem to have been noisy all day – all week and month really – and the Rainbow lorikeets[2] are shrieking endlessly in the flowering callistemon, but as it cools down in the afternoon the blackbird[3] takes over [1] Magpie-lark [2] Rainbow lorikeet [3] Common blackbird
The garden bed around our lemon, orange and lime trees is now a sea of tiny tree seedlings from the mulch from nextdoor's tree!
The Spanish bluebells[1] are finally flowering, and freesias[2] in various colours. The garden smells of freesias and jasmine and the distinctive bay tree[3] blossom
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyacinthoides_hispanica [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freesia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurus_nobilis
The plum blossom has finished for the year, yesterday's wind stripped what's left, the new green leaves are appearing
a warm enough day to have the window open; jasmine blossom scent fills the room
finally got around to removing the dead daphne from alongside the house – it fell victim to the builders and neglect
Looked up to see a Grey butcherbird[1] on the back porch handrail, one eye on the spiderwebs, one eye on the cat
After a few minutes of bird-cat stand off the butcherbird flew off to the plum tree and the cat resumed its interrupted business of head-butting a plastic bucket [1] Grey butcherbird
There’s not much more I can add to who I am.
Vanity site? Technology experiment? Learning tool? Blog? Journal? Diary? Photo album? I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you…
I experiment. I play. I write and I take pictures. Some of the site is organised around topics, other parts are organized by date, then there’s always the cross-references between them.
Its all been here a fairly long time. Like the papers on my desk, or the books on the bedside table, the pile just grew… and it all grew without much plan or structure. I try not to break URLs, so historical oddities abound.
Long ago it started as a learning experiment with a few static HTML pages, then I added a bit of server-side includes and some very ugly PHP. A hand-built journal/blog on top of that PHP, then a few experiments in moving to various static publishing systems. I’ve never wanted a database-based blogging engine, so over the years I’ve tried PHP, nanoblogger, emacs-muse, silkpage and docbook before settling on Emacs Org mode for writing and jekyll for publishing. But the itch remained… I never really liked jekyll and the ruby underneath always seemed so much black magic. So now the latest incarnation is Org mode and hugo.