Sunday, September 12, 2010

Back at last

my computer got a nasty worm virus about a month ago, took a week to get me up & running again but unfortunately all the programs i know & love could not come with me to my new & improved computer as they were so old & you cant get updates for them. so now i am trying to work all these new programs that are really not easy. needless to say there have been a few tense days & a few choice words mumbled at the screen. not liking windows 7 at all grrrrr, google chrome doesn't do much for me either.



well enough about that, how about an update on the solar
our new bill came in & went went from $520 on our last bill to $124 this bill, how cool is that.
over summer will be even lower as this bill was over the winter, shorter days with rain & cloudy over cast days. we dont generate power unless the sun is on the panels. so over all i think we did brilliantly.



on the garden front, we are swamped with yellow grapefruit & mandarins, the grapefruits i have been leaving out the front for people to take. on a side note just before i came in i went out the front to bring in the crate & what ever was left of the fruit & some crappy person took the crate as well as the fruit. next week i will have to put a sign not to take the crate, that is after i bring home another one from work.
there are happenings in the chook yard, potatoes have sprung up in the first two rows i planted & last weekend the other two rows were planted out.
i let the chooks into the second part of the run to clean it up ready to plant out some corn.

as for those girls of mine, Miss Brown, Miss White & Miss Grey are taking it in turns to sit on 8 eggs. so who knows maybe this year we will get a couple of chicks. last year their shed got flooded while they were sitting, it was a very bad 2 weeks.
as for the rooster that i was assured was a hen has decided to jump at me when my back is turned, his spurs are an inch long so a little scary. if hes not careful he will be destined for the oven.

this is what my rhubarb looks like after a month, i can already taste the apple & rhubarb crumble mmmm

today we put in two posts for the new veggie yard, curtsy of the lovely old lady next door, the area will be fully fenced with the wire concreted into the ground as we did with the chook run. the reason for this is the area is not just for garden beds it will also have a couple of residents, the quacking waddling type.



last month found us at the Gardening Australia Show, it moved from Homebush down to Rosehill. it wasnt all that great & it was a lot smaller than it was before. however i did pick up 18 packets of organic seeds from the Greenpatch stall, so it was worth the trip.

that same weekend we went to the Organic Expo down at Darling Harbour. one of the reasons for going down was to find a new meat supplier as our old one only sells to butchers in the city now. no luck with the meat but did get few good ideas, oh & lots of samples esp as we had trade passes.

4 comments:

Xena said...

welcome back to blogland. Our rooster could be destined for the oven too he attacks anyone and rather bad too.

Toria said...

Hi Nicole, saw a few posts on freecycle this morning that I thought were you & started thinking that I hadn't read a blog post from you in ages & wondered where you were. Try Mozilla Firefox for a web browser, it's better than the others. Just google firefox, it's a free download.

Bugger about the crate, how selfish of whoever it was. Someone up the street from us keeps putting a box of grapefruit out the front of their house, but they don't label it, so I'm never sure if they are offering the fruit to passers by, or have just left it out for some other reason.

greenfumb said...

Hi Nicole, great to see you back. Ducks eh, I'm envious but my neighbours would have a hissy fit.

Fingers crossed for some chicks, I've had heaps this year but I just sell them on mostly.

You're right I do look pretty good for 350, not quite so good for 35 though :-)

Jacqueline said...

Hi Nicole, for a minute there I thought you were going to say you'd lost your blog! (I was viewing it through a reader). Glad you're back - I hate it when new versions of things come out and they aren't user friendly. Why do they do that? I'm so jealous you are getting some ducks! That will be so much fun. Had to laugh at your three girls sharing the nest - I'd be eating that boy by now if he came at me with his talons. I hope you get some good chicks from him.