Alas, poor Zucchini

I finally had to take them out. The fruit was actually dying on the plant. Still, I got the last five, and here we are not far off June. The seasons change, and right now dawn (above) is just spectacular. The book is finally moving -4K words yesterday, but that is meaning I see little but my desk.

I've planted out a garlic clove under a plastic cup - partly to follow Quilly's advice, and partly to keep the $#@#ing mice digging it up and eating it. Roll on kitty-cats! (yes, not good for birds, and I am sorry about that, but the mice are just so darned destructive.) I've also planted - in an enclosed bed Jerusalem artichoke -also mouse sheilded. Oh and we have had an outbreak of snails again. Yep, small farming, dead easy, innit? Anyway, in the electricity conservation stakes (I think this heat-leaking piece of rubbish oven is a major culprit) I did my best to cook on lounge heater/stove thing tonight. Hmm. Well the big 'camp oven'cast iron pots were supposed to produce pitas. It was more like frizbees. Anyway very tasty frizbees, and so what if they don't open up for filling. The filling went fine on top :-)

The March of Zucchini

And so it begins... The march of the Zucchini.
There is another one that needs harvesting today. The wildlife however is adding a new dimension to it - something had been digging up seedlings, so I set two traps. Well, this time around they caught 2 mice. The second I spotted in the torchlight at about 9.30 pm, when I suddenly relaised I'd forgotten to cover with plastic cups the surviving beans - my night-garden looks like a disgruntled kids tea party, with added nightmare elements as the gut section of the mouse had been eaten. I retreated to put on boots - which I was an idiot not put on in the first place.

This morning there was evidence of a wild and busy deadly night out there. Firstly the gate had been knocked down. Secondly there was a large dead rat in a bloody puddle between the beds. Cause of death - undetermined. Could it have been post- election violence, Australian style? Have I become a sleep-walking raticide? Was this the effect of cannabilistic excess?

The garden is - despite the depredations, coming along. My tyre-tower potatoes are nearly ready for another tyre.



We went to a harvest festival and barbeque on one of the farms on Summer road today. As it was spattering with rain, the entire thing took place in the farm shed. Corrugated iron... and it rained. It was rather like Nottingham Road's annual carol service (held in the sale-hall - with real sheep and calves and any kid under five that showed up dressed as either an angel or a shepherd in with them. Last time one of the angels got her hand sucked by a calf... it was one of few bellows that was louder than the inevitable drumming of the rain on the tin roof). This too was drowned out by the rain that bucketed down. Good thing too: the farmers need the rain, and I was singing. The rain stopped and we cooked snags (see, I learn. They are called sausages elsewhere) - we talked, kids rode bikes (a unicycle yet! I WANT one) a couple of chooks looked in and we were a world away from Africa. Or Venice, that I must now return to.

P-Plater crabs and dawn walks

Someone (naming no names) omitted to tell my legs that this getting fit idea involved them. Actually, that same someone also forgot to mention how hard it is to get out of a nice warm bed, from next to cuddly wife to go out into the pale predawn and take a brisk walk. I'll find him one day (this someone) and we will have words. Anyway, as you can see by the picture I did this thing. It's about 2km down to the beach, and a lot of it is down a little back track.

There was a spectacular lonliness to the beach - Mr Somebody had obviously forgotten to tell anyone else. The sky was grey and overcast, and the tide was already fairly far out. The diffuse soft light made it look like the opening shots for one of these angsty movies... except they would have some gulls or peewits or some fowl creature doing haunting cries, or played suitable mood music. Instead we had the Black Oyster-catchers making noises like off-pitch elderly cricket phones. I'm a biologist and a forager (and I am never too sure which trumps which) so sand and mud-flats and low tides hold a fascination for me, and I put the fitness walk back on hold for a wade-and-fossick. The sand above the tideline was suspiciously dimpled. Now sand patterns are caused by the washing of the waves... and the sea, well she has no sense of humour. A very serious thing is the sea, and don't you forget it. She'll leave ripples or fans or layers on the sand yes, but dimples no. Dimples mean something is living there, and neither the biologist nor the forager minded me digging. I like to understand these foodwebs (because what looks like desolate mud is a seething arcology of life. Some of which you don't want to eat, and some which you don't want to know. Digging and sorting produced some tiny wedge shells - too small for dinner for me, but considered utterly yummy to some tiny pea-crabs (which should maybe be called p-crabs (you have p-plater drivers here in Tassie), because when they get bigger they'll be crabs. At the moment they're just greedy clam-eating hoons, so busy scoffing the free grub that they didn't even notice me pick the shell. When I put it down they were very embarrassed and shook down into the sand, just eystalks protruding. So I left them to get over it and walked on. The shallow water is full of little pimple-mounds with holes in the top, that something must live in. There are different burrows in between, and every now and again, scooped out basins of slightly deeper water, with scatters of shells - stingrays methinks. I need to get down there earlier, with a torch. Yes, now that you mention it, a lot of people do think that I am barking mad. This is not true. I leave all the barking to Roland -Old English Sheepdogs just do it better.

I lifted some drifts of seaweed from pools saw a couple of tiny translucent shrimp shaking their nippers and yelling "Homewrecker" at me before I put it back and walked back through a few spatters of rain. There were snails out on the driveway - I didn't have to walk to the beach to find molluscs, so it thought I'd better check the veg before settling in to write. The mouse that had been digging up my pea-shoots had had me set a trap inbetween them.

Unfortunately, he must have brought big brother along, because the trap was conspicuous by its absence. And to pay me back for my impertinence, it had dug up a round dozen broad beans that had just germinated.

So: Once I found the trap (on the far side of the garden) I planted some more, and went back to my desk job. Spies in 16 th century Venice right now. Talk about shifting worlds. But it's actually come out well this morning so maybe the walk did me good.

Mouse mazurka and caterpiller cavort

We live as they say, at the sign of the ups-and-downs. Yesterday's entertainment was the new vacuum cleaner (we had to buy a new one as you're not allowed to bring old one over) deciding to have a little fire unto itself. When taking it back involves getting it back to K-mart in Lonnie, and the ferry situation is as entertaining as ever (what was this about waiting until your ship comes in. Be patient. We live on that happening here) and Doctor Sonya telling me I need to watch cholesterol in my diet (I conclude in my paranoid, persecution-befuddled and byzantine way that she must town shares in a brocolli seed production unit, and is therefore out to recommend that the entire island eats a certain lumpy green veggie - _without cheese_ .) A little research on CSIRO site shows I am less high Cholesterol than 50% of Australians, but I figure I'll eat more whole grains (and brocolli). And drink more red wine and eat more tomatoes, and have gout instead. And do more excercise - which is awkward because I am very behind in my writing schedule.

This morning however I got my extra excercise with a lovely new dance called the mouse mazurka - which involves a mouse on the screen door and a lot of leaping and kicking. Try it, you will love it, and it's very good for the heart and calorie count. The mouse fled outside, laughing fit to bust, little bastard.

Then B went nervously in to town to do her drivers with Policeman Pat - I still have to do mine. Anyway, she passed - which is kind of right because she's a good driver and has been driving for more than 30 years - but logic doesn't always work with these things. You don't do a lot of parallel parking in real life in rural Africa. Anyway, she also brought me a letter from the the bank saying that the Save the Dragon's money was safely in the account - a relief because we've borrowed from peter to pay paul with the dogs and cats.

And that, right now, is that. Ups and downs... oh well, Barbs has developed an alternative to the mouse mazurka, called the caterpillar cavort, which could be a big hit if we can find a reliable supply of caterpillars to drop down dieter's necks. I didn't squish it but just put it out for the skink. A place with lizards that must weigh 2 pounds and walk like sumo wrestlers probably has tiny caterpillars that are poisonous or do kung fu.

And now to my 16th century Black Sea naval battle... I think I need to write about something closer at hand!

Of Mice (not of men)

The Island has mice. I have no idea if they're introduced mice (seems likely) or natives, but they're a bloody nuisance. Miss my cats! Anyway, we've had a couple of invaders, and dismal failure so far at getting the little beggars out, bar the one I caught in the bath (cleanliness is a way of getting closer to the God of rodents anyway). In theory the house is mouse proof, in practice not so. I was standing at the fridge gazing vacantly into it as I often do when I have got up to put the kettle on or fetch myself pair of socks, when Mister Mouse hurtled around the corner. I did a good Slartibartfast imitation, and sadly did not land on the mouse which ran behind the fridge. In my defence I just saw something coming along the floor out of the corner of my eye and assumed 'snake' - and they'll be next if we have mice. In the absence of cats I have set some very inferior moustraps and, as little as I like the stuff opened some boxes of mouse-poison. The mice have so far ignored the poison, and eaten the bait off the traps without setting them off. Today saw the effects of nibbling on the bottom of a cornflour, bag drat the gibbering ferligt. A mighty shower of cornflour ensued. A hasty putting into rat-proof containers of edibles followed. This included the important life-lesson - do not squeeze the bottom of the bag of flour to see how full it is ;-).

Today has been our hottest day yet in Australia - about 27 according to the willyweather.com.au site (an asset, that site) and airless and perfect for swimming and very little else... except B and I are still a bit shaky and miz. I caught on to the hotness a bit late to do the Eastern Cape thing - houses open windows and doors for the cool of night and close everything for the daytime. It really works - counter-intuitive though it may seem at first. It's now blowing up a storm out there if I am any judge (which as yet I am not of local weather. Back in South Africa I was nearly as good as the local weather forecast - not wildly wrong more than 90% of the time).

We're getting the first bits out of the veggie garden - spring onion, Silverbeet, thyme, and a little parsley. And we nearly have a zucchini (corgette) and to make my dear family laugh, chillies.

Update: I caught the next mouse in the bath this morning.