Rain, Rain Don't Go Away, Just Change Your Day!

There was a spell of nice warm weather there for about a week, and even our trip to Sydney took place in perfect conditions, but I was left wondering at the irony of life when Sunday morning dawned miserable and wet. Whilst we do need as much rain as we can get scheduling it during the week would be a bit more considerate.

After spending about an hour trying to decide whether to venture out in the rain and get the shed started, or to stay in and potter about under cover, getting a start on the shed won out and I loaded up in the wet to go over to the block. It was dry, though still cloudy and threatening rain, from about half way there, so I allowed myself a little hope that it would remain so for long enough to get the portal frames bolted together.

Four finished frames

About twenty minutes after arriving, having sorted out the materials and just teetering on the cusp of getting started the rain began, and didn't let up until half an hour before I reached the end of the work. Of course it remained sunny for the rest of the afternoon and didn't start raining again until the evening. Funny that!

Whilst it was wet I still managed to get the frames bolted together, now they're all resting waiting for next weekend. I've got a small crew together to help out with putting them up, so as long as the weather is nice we should have the worst part of the job over by this time next week. I don't enjoy trying to get things square, level, parallel and in tune with the environment, it takes a lot of fiddling and back and forth measuring and adjusting. I certainly appreciate the need for it, but I can't bring myself to find any joy in it, it's a frustrating job of push-me-pull-me, inching slightly closer to perfection until a slip shifts the whole lot out of place and demands we begin all over again. I should stop now or I'll talk myself out of the project LOL!

Back on the home front the Chinese Tallow seeds I put in a while back have all started to sprout, eleven of them are pushing up above the soil. I had to collect the boys from school last week, so grabbed another pocket full of them. I'd despaired of finding any after searching the Orange cemetary for the trees that had been there many years ago, but failing to find them, and was most pleased to find that there were three trees right outside the kid's school gate. Talk about having your eyes painted on...

Chinese Tallow trees, future bio-diesel plantation

We've also got a lot of cuttings in the glasshouse that are coming along well enough, and as long as this latest spell of wet weather doesn't bring the frosts back we should be able to start planting out the tomatoes and other frost sensitive vegetables which are growing nicely in the warmth. Outside in the greenhouse areas we've got 9 lovely new oaks coming up (we're going to have one big oak grove out there!) and all the other stuff is growing nicely, even after being trashed by the chooks on Saturday. We'll need to pot a lot of stuff on for the season as there is no point trying to plant it out now with the heat of summer to come (if indeed it does...) so we've got a bit of work to do there. It will save us a bit of time in the end as the worst of the pot-bound plants are needing water every day now.

The new oaks and a couple of pots of weeds saved from last year...

The duck eggs in the incubator should hatch in two short weeks, and as you can see below the silky chooks we hatched out are growing swiftly (though not 'big-ly')

Four of the new chooks.