P.S. 'New' Phredde story at the
end of the newsletter.
It's cold, it's cold, it's cold, the wombat droppings have frozen white
whiskers out the back door, and the garden is filled with king parrots and
currawongs down from the high country where it's even colder than here, all
munching bird seed and paddling in the fountain and yelling at each other. Yelling at us too, sometimes, if Bryan
doesn't put out the bird seed RIGHT NOW every morning.
Every
winter we get to the shortest day and I think, hey, wow, this winter is going
to be easy, it's half over already!
And every winter right after the shortest day the REAL winter descends
and the grass turns white every morning and the oranges and mandarins get
sweeter - oranges are really juiciest when it gets cold.
Cold
weather means you need more tucker to keep warm, especially if you're a wombat.
Mothball is industriously eating these days, head down and chomping all
afternoon. She gets up about
lunchtime and wanders over to the pool for a drink - scaring the king parrots into the loquat trees,
then starts steadily eating, as though she isn't going to miss a single blade
of grass.
Bryan
doesn't know it yet (he thinks we should let her find her own tucker) but I'm
going to start feeding her again. There just isn't much grass about by
mid-winter and it's dry too and, besides, her pouch is bulging just a little
bit, so maybe there is a baby wombat there... just what we need, I hear Bryan
say, another wombat to bash up the garbage bin. But maybe any baby of Mothball's
will be a nice, sweet, POLITE wombat.
Well, we can dream
Mothball
definitely does have mange though. It's a horrible parasite for wombats, spread
by feral foxes. We've dosed her for it every few weeks ever since she came back
to her hole in the garden, but she
gets reinfected as she visits other holes. I wish there was some way we could get rid of the mange in
the wombat holes, but they go down far too deep. The itch is really annoying her, and her eyes are becoming
crusty - in other words, I'm worried.
But perhaps a better
feeding will help.
Books
The
latest books are still 'Ride the Wild Wind', the book of horse stories, and
'White Ship'. 'Diary of a Wombat' is out next - I can't wait to see it, and
then 'Phredde and the Leopardskin Librarian', with a totally new sort of cover
(for the first time everyone will be bable to see what Phredde and Pru and
Bruce look like - just in case anyone can't imagine a handsome prince who is
really a frog except he's a normal kid too. Well, sort of normal.)
Travels
Just
back from Rockhampton and Gladstone, which were great - can't wait to go back
there. I was put in a room with a ghost in Rockhampton but I think the noise
from the juke box below was too loud for the ghost, as she didn't appear.
This
month Bryan and I are heading down to Bega where Dad and I will open the Family
Literacy Project, then on to Candelo for the Field Day. And then in
August… no, I don't even want to THINK about August, as I'm dashing all
over the place which serves me right for agreeing to do so much and I was a
TWIT… but we'll leave that for next month.
DMAG Writing Competition
Several
peole have emailed in asking for a writing competition- well, no, I'm not going
to run one, but DMAG is, and there are great prizes. contact DMAG at PO Box
2300 Balgowlah NSW 2093, or call 02 9400 5451. If you are feeling like
practicing your writing skills you can also send them an article or book
review.
In the Garden
At
the moment we're eating avocadoes by the bucketload, tangelos, cumquat cordial,
navel oranges, limes, lemons, kiwi fruit, quince jelly, pomegranate juice,
cumquats, sapotes. Just picked Lady Williams and Sturmer Pippin apples and a
few other fruit I've probably forgotten and the veg garden is giving us carrots
- orange, red, yellow and white ones, and a gorgeous purple skinned one too -
beetroot (four colours including stripes), lettuce, chicory, radish, broccoli,
cauliflower, silverbeet, bok choi, spinach, cabbage, spring onions, dried beans
(from the dried beans hanging on the trellis), snow peas, leeks, celery and
again I've probably forgotten most of it but those are what I picked this
morning to make soup.
As
for planting: have put in a few onion seedlings, but I don't bother with much
else till the ground warms up. But
the following is more or less a 'what to do' summary for this month.
What to do in July
Plant: Fruit trees, berry
plants, summer flowering seedlings (look in the nursery), roses, onion
seedlings.
Watch out for: Prune roses. Spray deciduous plants with Bordeaux if you have
fungal or leaf spotting problems.
Destroy: Soft green patches of
bindiis (pour on boiling water or selective bindii killer). Spray Bordeaux to kill overwintering
spores of diseases like fruit rot, black spot, curly leaf etc.
Cook: Anything citrusy, like lemon
butter; dry mandarin peel for summer cooking.
Daydream: Borrow gardening books from the library, order flower, herb and vegie
catalogues and dream of the garden you'll create next year!
A Simple Way to Make a Large Concrete Pot
Fill
a wheelbarrow - or even a hole - with damp sand. Make a pot shaped and sized depression. (Another pot is a
great way to do this). Smooth it out. A wide shallow pot shape is the easiest
to start with. You can get fancier
later on as your skills grow.
Mix
one part concrete, two parts sand and three parts gravel with water until
sticky but not sloppy. Pour it
into the depression. Smooth out
the inside roughly (not too heavy handedly or you'll press too hard and ruin
the outside shape. The inside shape
doesn't matter too much - it'll be full of dirt).
Smooth
out the edges and poke a stick down the bottom a few times to leave some holes.
Leave
a few days to dry (cover from the rain if necessary).
Pull
it out and you have a pot. A bit
rough and sandy, but this only adds to its rustic appeal.
If
you don't want a plain grey concrete pot, ochres are quite cheap from hardware
stores. You only need a very
little to change the concrete's colour.
