My apologies....

Just a quick note to all those who have sent emails. Thanks, I am fine, however work is keeping me busy - always madness around this time of the year with audits and funding applications.

Back to posting normally next month, till then forgive the flying snippets please lol

SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL

Whilst I believe, I generally don't advertise, however I found this today and thought it was an exquisite display of parental love and the determination we can all find within when we dig deep....
Hope your weekend is a good one:)

WARMING WEATHER AT LAST!

Finally the days are warming! The nights and early mornings are still cold, frosts still show themselves every few days however the later mornings and afternoons are nice:)

I got out yesterday around noon to play in the sun, and planted out: spring onions, silverbeet, onions, rhubarb, and some herbal tea seeds. Today I have capsicum, chilli, sunflowers, a cape gooseberry, oregano, thyme and a ton of tomatoes going in once this post is complete:)

Given the winter we have had it will be interesting to see if it is too early to plant out, although normally at this time of the year these things would go in here.

I am hoping my poor frozen cream guavas and ice cream bean trees will survive, they dont look great but there is still the odd green leaf on them.....fingers crossed!

We finally got the last of the side fence up and the painting finished, feels so good to know the weed seeds cannot find their way in there anymore!

I also planted out 10 tagasaste trees along the afternoon  sun side of the house. These trees not only make for a wonderful protein food for stock (including our chooks) they are fire resistant. In addition to their stunning masses of white flowers every year they hopefully will shade the worst of the summer heat from the side of the house....lowering indoor summer temps is the aim.

Our bathroom renovations are coming along slowly. The things you find when you do renos......lordy! Some drongo decided to fill from the end of the bath to the side of the shower with a ton of cement, it took Al some time to get through it all, now we can remove the bath, cover the gap left in the floor by the bath and install the new shower, then its a case of removing the old one and installing storage cupboards......will be nice when complete but lordy I hate the mess in the meantime lol.

Topping up of the mulch has been completed. I generally order 10 bales of pea straw every 3-4 months, throw it all in the chook pen and let the girls go mad on it for a month or two and then rake out and cover the garden beds with it. Works wonderfully: the worms love it, keeps the soil moist, warm in the winter and cool in the summer and all that chook manure does wonders, not to mention the fact that the girls have cleaned out most of the seed left in it at baling time.....win win all round!

My mind lately has been on the weather and the changes we are seeing. I remember as a child vegies could be grown out in the open, did not matter if it was summer or winter, they thrived. This doesn't happen now, at least not in the last 5 years or so.

What does it all mean? For me, to grow successfully, we are going to have to put in some shade for the summer and shelter from the winter frosts. It appears over the last few years summers are much hotter, and frosts more continuous in numer and colder, like -C numbers.

All this mulling over weather had me doing more than a little research into our local town weather patterns, and the results look something like this:

An approximate 100 year comparison of average annual mean minimum and maximum temperatures.
The temperature averages have been extracted from the database publicly available at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website for Western Australia, and from the first ever climate study conducted in the colony of Western Australia before 1900.

Minima
Late 1800s/early 1900s minima - 181.4 / 16 = 11.33
Late 1900s/early 2000s minima - 193 / 16 = 12.06
August 2009 - July 2010 minima - 193.94 / 16 = 12.12
Average mean minimum in 16 inland locations combined has risen .73 degrees C from early to late 20th century
Average mean minimum in 16 inland locations combined has risen .79 degrees C from early 1900s to 2009/2010

Maxima
Late 1800s/early 1900s maxima - 409.1 / 16 = 25.56
Late 1900s/early 2000s maxima - 412.6 / 16 = 25.78
August 2009 - July 2010 maxima - 429 / 16 = 26.81
Average mean maximum in 16 inland locations combined has risen .22 degrees C from early to late 20th century
Average mean maximum in 16 inland locations combined has risen 1.25 degrees C from early 1900s to 2009/2010
For an indepth report HERE
Western Australia's capital of Perth is said to be on the coalface of global climate change, with 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery in 2004 predicting that it may become the first city in the world to become a ghost metropolis due to lack of water (BBC, Sydney Morning Herald). Hence my desire to cover our place with water tanks!

Now those temperature changes don't look like much at all.........translated into planting and harvesting it can mean one hell of a lot, certainly the times we plant will change, protection of crops from frost and sun becomes an issue, pests and their cycles will be another challenge....and so on it goes. If only mankind realised that every action, no matter how small has a massive effect downstream.........the whole pebble in a pond concept.

Well, that's me for the day:) The sun is shining and seeds are calling my name:)
Hope your weekend is a fantastic one!