50 copies of Who Killed Dave? to give away

The free books will be sent to the first 50 Australian* residents
who send an email to lintrezza-at-activ8.net.au
with Who Killed Dave? in the subject line
and their name and address in the email body
and a link to your blog



The conditions? Within 8 weeks you've read it, and reviewed it on your blog.(You're not obliged to give it a good review)
But no spoilers please - Who Killed Dave is a secret.

You can read more about Who Killed Dave? at
http://www.togetherpress.com/
*apologies to those overseas - the postage cost is too prohibitive

A word that rhymes with duck

We got the ducks to get rid of the slugs. But obviously we can't have informed them of their function in life.
Trev told me, 'They'd be at risk of becoming magnetic.'
He'd watched them start at one end of my garden and throw down every snail pellet in sight. They're non-toxic, based on iron and in no danger of dying from anything but my left foot.
We have a large slug population, and they make me think more fondly of snails, who have a nice slime free zone to grab hold of them by and throw them in a bucket. These seem impervious to everything I've thrown at them - all the usual beer and vegemite traps, orange peels have done little to dampen their enthusiasm for my seedlings. I've taken to halving plastic bottles and pressing them into the soil around the plants to exclude them, though the ducks saw them as a personal obstacle course and challenge and tipped them all over.

It's my own fault we have so many slugs, I use enormous amounts of mulch and it's been very wet (though, to be honest that part hasn't been up to my personal responsibility).

Then the ducks ate my strawberries, knocked off the asparagus and gone thrown out of eden and into the bottom grassy area with their bath soon to follow. It was probably good timing. We've been witness to the weirdest of duck perversions (he kept mounting her head), but he's recently come to the conclusion he needed a 180 degree change in the arrangements and is out there looking very proud of himself.

But Trev did warn me that in his experience ducks weren't work a word that rhymes very much the same.

Mud buddys

Trev and I have been slappin' up mud - well I'm probably the slap happy one, Trev's the one who is achieving the unachievable and creating right angles out of clay and straw slip.

He has an audience. Not one he's much enthused by. Brie and Hazel think the house site is a purpose made playground for goats. They love to jump from one window sill, race to the next, jump on that, and continue around the house, appearing at each window for a few seconds before conquering the next. They knock over Trev's test jars full of clay, sand and silt. And they talk, especially Hazel, in a very raspy bleat. Continuously. They've been sent behind the electric fence during the day to hang out with the soon to be mumma goats. Charity is happy enough to share her space with them, poor Bella is so old she knows she hasn't a hope of keeping up with them, but Daisy, big round bellied first time mumma bashes the hell out of them. They've learnt to keep their distance.

Posting photos as soon as I remember to bring my camera home from work.

Billy Button the baby bandicoot

We rescued the 'wee fella' as he is affectionally known about 2 months ago. He'd fallen out of his mum's pouch, and not sure why she didn't push him back in, but by the time we found him he was lying there, very still and cold. Popped into a warm pair of hands and cuddled all the way to the local wildlife carer I was amazed at how unfazed he was.

The carer called us back a fortnight ago to ask us if we'd pick him up and care for him till he'd gained enough weight to be released. He needs to be released where he was found. We have an enormous population of eastern barred bandicoots. A nocturnal marsupial they love digging up 'corbie grubs', curl worm. The wedge shaped holes are all through my garden and across the block. They do sometimes dig up tubers and eat my strawberries too. But I'm willing to share. They're endangered and near extinction on the mainland, we have a good population here. Something that will change when our feral friend the fox builds up his population. He is here already.

Trev is absolutely in love with Billy Button, he hangs around his neck in a pouch for most of the day. We feed him mealy worms, curl grubs, chopped up egg, oats and grated apple and special milk formula. He is gaining weight steadily, which is good, but we're facing the re-release sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully he won't come back because there's been a dog (Nuju)forced to salivate for too long...

The Age of Stupid

Wondering if anyone can help me out here. I purchased a copy of the Age of Stupid a month ago from the UK for a community free screening. It's next week, the DVD hasn't arrived and it now seems they forgot to send it - sending it now, but it's unlikely to arrive in time.

Has anyone got a copy they'd be prepared to lend me? Or better, a place I can buy one in Aus?

Just another day in plastic paradise - not

I've seen Cryptic Moth Productions movie Addicted to Plastic, it showed bird autopsies where the cause of death was pieces of plastic - take a look at the link of corpses of albatrosses with bottle tops, pen lids, lighters and more in their stomachs. A sad endictment on our disposable lives that others lives are disposable as a result.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

Thanks Lynn for sending on the link.

Mud Madness

Trev has a new appendage to his name, it now goes, Poor Trev.
It's a fine thing to be able to say no-pvc, strawbale, no concrete - make all the rules and then bugger off into the garden and leave him to it. Not strictly 100% true, but close enough. Still, he's hard at it, and now with all the strawbales up, tensioned and true, he's charged up for more progress.

Trev's trimmed two sides with the whippersnipper and with lots of stuffing around figuring out how best to do it, we've bought a simple metal backpack sprayer, filled it with clay slip - which is thin clay slurry about the consistency of paint, and Trev kills his left arm pumping it up and spraying.

There's been a lot of web searching and phone calls to make. We've finally found pvc-free electrical cables - at 4 to 5 times the price of normal wiring. (anyone know of a cheaper source?) - pvc free plumbing is still being fine tuned with our ideas changing so often we're hard pressed to keep each others latest decision. Often touting completely different ones to different people. The windows, - to make them or to have them made, that is the question. Time and money being incredibly difficult as we don't have much of either. Still, we only have a $13,000 mortgage so far. Though this is expected to blow out soon with electricity, plumbing and windows being major expenses.

I'll add a whole heap of photos of the appreciating-everything-Trev-does, kind. Some stage soon I'll add what's going on in the garden, which is starting to look bloody marvellous if I do say so myself.