Another Domicidal Limb

Here are a few pix of another homicidal limb—or domicidal, since it was attempting to destroy our house. Since it landed at 4AM, the noise of branches landing on the roof woke us up, and completely freaked out the cats.

Fortunately, it actually landed right on the edge of the house, shattering all the little sticks at one end on the roof (1st picture, taken at the time), and shattering a few plants with the main branch at the other (2nd, taken in the morning). (That is my new lime tree you can see knocked over, it was a very welcome house-warming gift: thanks Leonie and Pete!)

Looking up at the tree, (3rd) you can see where the limb fell from, and you can see the limb that was dangling next to it, which was threatening to come down as well.

Since there was not a breath of breeze about when the first limb descended, we were a little worried that the slightest breeze would bring down this other—bigger—branch. So, I tossed a bit a rope over the branch with a noose around then end and pulled it down (4th) …

I then cut it up for firewood (5th). The branch was 5 meters long and fit perfectly into one of our firewood boxes!

I hope the tree was watching very closely: this is what we do when you throw a branch at us. First the noose, then dismembered and the fire! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

The Back Garden

There is going to be a big difference between our front and back gardens. For one thing, I will be master of the back garden, M. will be mistress of the front garden.

The back will be mostly vegies, herbs, fruit trees and (possibly) chooks; the front will be mostly native (and indigenous, where possible) plants.

Of course, the "front garden" is really made up of three different areas; and the back is made up of two, but that is the subject for another day.

Even though there are still a trillion things to do inside, yesterday I gathered up a 20 meter tape measure some stakes and a level and mapped out the back yard. I have worked out, more or less, how much room we have and have sketched out a rough plan for the garden. Here is the plan:

The red "X" marks the spot where the following photo was taken …

… so you can see what a fantasist I am!

The existing path will stay. At the end of the path will be a 7x3m greenhouse/glasshouse/hot-house, and tucked up in the left-hand corner (from this perspective) will be an open-air potting bench and compost bins.

Along the fence on the left-hand side of the path (again, from the perspective of the photo) will be a row of fruit trees.

On the right-hand side of the path will be five raised garden beds. The three furthest of these will be mostly annuals, in rotation; the two closest perennials and herbs.

The long rectangle in front of the fruit trees is a bench; and the spot where the "X" has been placed is on another bench, but this one will be covered one way or another, since it has to act as a privacy barrier. (Actually, the greenhouse is also a privacy barrier of sorts.)

The two fruit trees closest to the "X" will be in barrels. In a few years time the area they occupy (which is about 6m long and 1.5 to 3m wide) will be a chook house and run. I may even make it larger, and get a few more chooks, but council regulations may prevent us getting too ambitious in this direction.

It is also possible that the fruit tree closest to the potting bench may be replaced by a monster water tank, but since this is a couple of meters above roof height, and water would have to be pumped into it, I am not sure how practical this is. Still, it would be well-hidden, close to the glass house, and could gravity-feed all the fruit-trees and raised garden beds (and double as a back-up water supply in case of fire). So if we can work out a way to do this …

Below the glasshouse, on the far right-hand side of the path (just behind the spot where a fruit-tree stump still stands) we are thinking of putting a mulberry. It will have to be a well-pruned dwarf, otherwise our gutters will end up full of fruit! But, according to my permaculture book, they do well in moist spots, and this is a moist spot. In fact, I'd be hoping it would reduce the water that flows through the retaining wall into the garage every time it rains.

I will do posts on some of the individual elements of this design another time. But now it is time to get back out there!

Prints

These are the prints we have grouped in the hallway. Arranging them was fun (on the ground). Repeating that arrangement on the wall … not so much fun. But I think they look okay. All we need to do now is clean them!

Three of the prints are by Karin Ryan, a Gippsland artist. They were bought by M. and I from Tin Shed Arts Gallery in Malmsbury in 2004. We went for an Easter day trip and spent a lazy thousand dollars before lunch. (The colour one—"Blind Love"—is M's; the other two—"After the Flood" and "A Blanket of Peace Descends Upon the Earth"—are mine.)

The central print is Dürer's Melancholia, the most written about image in the history of art, and a personal favourite since I was a teenager. I bought the print from the Kupferstichkabinett [The Museum of Prints and Drawings] in Berlin in 1994.

The remaining print, the one at top left, I bought at a sale of work by art students at Tas. Uni. in 1992 or 93. I have no idea whose work it is. I wish I did. It would be nice to see what they went on to do.

In the background of the top photo is J's own—much superior—art school production, "The Water Test" of 1993; and in the background of the bottom photo is (the edge of) a wonderful Deco mirror that M. inherited.

* * * * *

We watched Martin (1977) over the weekend, a very strange vampire film by George Romero that we should have watched ages ago (and which I should be discussing on our other, sadly-neglected blog). And like so many films of this era, we spent the evening saying to each other "Check out that carpet!" "Did you see those curtains?" "We are going to have to find one of those."

In terms of decor it doesn't quite equal Kiss Me Kill Me (1973), but …

[note wood-paneled ceiling, the row of ceiling windows and the cool phone]

[note the brown shag pile carpet: excellent (lollies are a bonus)]

[note the colour of the fridge]

[note cool red wall phone (at left) and the distinctive wallpaper-over-light-switch (at right)]

Tree Lopping

Tree Lopping is a mild term for what we did this weekend, but I think we will be in for quite a bit of real tree lopping in the months ahead, so this was a taster.

We started, with a dead tree—no idea what it was (except that it was %#!@ annoying, because of the way the branches were tangled up together**)—overhanging the back corner of the house.

Every time the wind picked up, I expected the whole thing to fall into M's study. So it had to be removed. The only problem being, as aI said, that it was hanging over the back corner of the house, so any branch that was lopped off it would fall straight through our tissue-paper roof. Cut a branch and "instant-skylight"!

Here is a crappy photo of the tree from before we moved in (it is the twig, on the far right, next to the steps).

And here is another photo, taken from closer to the house, mid-demolition.

(To give you an idea of scale, that ladder is four meters when it is fully opened up like that, so the "twig" was about eight meters high, and the main trunk, about ten meters long.)

Anyway, with the help of some well-placed rope, we were able to safely bring down one branch at a time. (Safely, but not without a regular dollop of fear.) Eventually, it was just a stump

We have left the stump intact so that we can use it as a lever when we dig out the roots, a much less pressing—and less stressful—job.

* * * * *

While we were removing this tree, we had another visit from a Telstra technician (our fifth?) to move the modem which was installed a few weeks back. The signal was so weak that we couldn't actually use our computers without first running a data cable the full length of the house!

Now we have a computer connection that works, but our digital TV thingy (the T-Box?) still doesn't work. So we will, no doubt, require another visit from a Telstra technician to finish the job started some moths back, back in the before-time.

**The branches, even when safely on the ground, were almost impossible to break down into pieces without injuring yourself because of the way they clung to each other in unexpected and bloody-annoying ways. It was like trying to disentangle yourself from a cupboard full of coat-hangers, or a Barrel full of monkeys (as in these!).

Our New Top-of-the-Range Stereo System

This is our new Sanyo, "All in One" Quadraphonic Stereo system: a DC 8500K.

It was an epic journey picking it up today from Ivanhoe, and I still haven't tested it, but am hoping to be able to play some records for the first time since I left home!

It was another eBay find: I bought it for $200, after the auction ended without attracting any interest at $280. (See here.)

What is wrong with everyone? A genuine four-channel sound system! Just plug in your ipod or your CD-Player and off you go … I hope.

BTW: this is what I found out about it online (here).

These units were sold around 1975/1976 and were top of the range due to being not just a radio but a very nice piece of furniture (by 1970s standards).

Amplifier Section

Peak Music Power 160W (120W music power)
Frequency Response 20—50,000 Hz ± 3dB
Power Bandwidth 30—40,000 Hz
Tone Controls BASS: 100 HZ ± 10dB
TREBLE: 10 KHz +/- 10dB

What's the bet they were advertised in Playboy?

* * * * *

Actually, now that I think about it I did abandon a lovely 60s (valve-powered) Radiogram when I departed Mt Nelson at the end of 1987, but kept one of the speakers from it for years. The sound was amazing. I am looking forward to hearing "Song to the Siren" on this one. (And I will post some photos in situ once it is in situ).

We Are Connected; Therefore We Exist

I can't hope to do justice to the excruciating torture that was moving. M. and I made many trips—in convoy—in our cars, hired a van for a day on two separate occasions; and coughed up the best part of $2K to pay four men to spend ten hours moving the books and the furniture.

This ten hour day—sixteen for us—was the main move, and it would have taken a lot longer than ten hours had the removalists not called up a ute to ferry the boxes and furniture up the drive from the monster truck that they had been forced to park on the road (the strapping young removalists took one look at the drive and nearly fainted).

Two weeks later (our first night sleeping here was the 20th—Day 23) we have unpacked most of the boxes and have arranged most of the furniture. We also have phone, internet and TV.

Telstra & Co. did not actually show when they said they would—shocking, I know—at which point I realised they had no idea what they were doing, and I could not believe anything they said they were going to do. So I gave up on them, and all things telecommunicational.

To my surprise, everything was connected last Friday—no photos of the closed highway, alas. We were not given a phone to connect, so I connected my old one. On Saturday night we had our second big storm** and in the morning the phone stopped working. So, after six weeks of waiting, we had the phone on for just over 24 hours!

Another three days later a technician came out and declared the old phone dead. Who killed it? No idea, though I suspect they took one look at the Optus logo and sabotaged it. M. thinks I am paranoid. Whatever. I fished a funky phone out of a bin at work and connected it last night and hey-presto! We are connected to the world again.

Today we spent another small fortune having a new power-board installed, with circuit-breakers and so on. Beautiful. And safe. Our intrepid electrician made it up the drive with a little more grace than last time. He even offered to return to do more work for us once the roof is fixed …

The roof. *sigh* We were told it was cactus. In fact, the bank didn't want us to buy this house because the roof was described in a building report as needing replacing. It took us the entire settlement period to persuade them they were wrong, that it didn't need replacing before we moved in. Well, um, they might have been right.

The first descent storm (it has been raining for the last forty days and forty nights) sent sheets of water washing over the gutters and all over the stuff that was sheltering under the eves and under the back verandah—stuff we needed to get into, but couldn't get into, the house.

With the down-pipe cleared, the guttering doesn't leak anywhere near as much, but it ain't water-tight out the back. And crawling around on the roof, meant I got a good look at it, and it is awful: dented everywhere, patched and glued, it should leak like a sieve!

And today I got to clear the gutters at the front. The guttering is fine, but the roof has bowed up, two or three inches clear of the rafters, high enough that you can see right in under the roof, see the rotting insulation and the electrical wiring. High enough that I can't hose the gutters clean after brushing them.

It will certainly not last another winter. I just hope that it lasts the summer and that it doesn't mean we have to wait until the summer of 2011/12 to enclose the car-port.

Speaking of which: the first step in getting the car-port enclosed was trying to establish what sort of cement slab is in it, so we can work out if it will support brick walls etc. To that end I ordered copies of the original plans from council, which arrived shortly after we moved in. What a revelation! I will save the plans for a separate post but one fact needs to be mentioned: the date. I was told when I ordered the plans that this place was built in 1975.

It seems that this is wrong. The plans are dated 16 July 1969. Of course, even if the house were approved and built without delay, the house would not have been completed until early 1970—so it is still Our Seventies House but, it is only just a seventies house. M. thinks that it is possible that it was not built until 1975 … but I think that the 1975 date must refer to something else. I will do some digging and find out.

**The storm brought down two very large branches from our gum trees. One of them—about ten to fifteen meters in length—fell about twenty or thirty meters onto the street number and the drive. The boards and poles were completely destroyed and the drive was blocked. Another branch, long dead, and not quite as large, missed the house by about three meters at the back. I punished this branch by chopping it up and burning it!