It wasn't that nothing happened last week, but I couldn't be fagged writing it down. However, something of particular note occurred today. It rained! Boy, did it rain. First up, here's the veggie patch, which has had a fair old amount of elbow grease rubbed into it since the piccies for Sat 7th June. I hope you're impressed. Those are actual plants in the bottom left corner, I'll have you know. Proper ones 'n' all, not just weeds. And there are two water containers up there too. Do you know how much 200 litres of water weighs??!
You may remember the piccies of the dams when we first looked at the house on the 10th Jan - here's the bigger dam again from then, to save you going back:
Just about empty. Now, neither of the dams had any runoff channels leading into them, which we realised once enough rain had fallen to allow it to start running over the surface, so there was a lot of water running down the side of the road, and running off any old how down the gully slope. We decided that was OUR water, so what was needed was Green Gully's own Rio Grande. Out with the mattock and shovels, and here we have it (hover over pictures for captions):
All of which then spills in a magnificent cascade down into the larger dam. Look, its practically full after just one day:
Yeah, I know; if I leave my tongue in my cheek for that long, I'll end up biting
it...
The magic part was that 24 hours after the dam started filling, the night is now raucous with about a zillion frogs croaking at the top of their lungs. Where the hell did they all come from?
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Its rained a bit more, and we can tell that there's a blocked channel by the driveway in front of the house. For this, we needed to find the end of the pipe that goes under the drive, then check out if we can cut another channel to get this runoff to the dam.
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The answer is "not easily", as there is the little
matter of an outcrop of rocky-mountain-high in the way, so instead we dig
a bloody great hole and put another 200 litre water butt in it. A bit of
placcy guttering is being trialled as an input channel.
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Which is good, 'cos it allows me to talk about my waterbutthole in a public place whilst claiming that I'm not being rude. Its a very deep waterbutthole (she sez proudly); you can only see the top third of it in the photo above. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the ants in the bottom of it were speaking Chinese. Here's the view from the driveway, after David lit the barby. There aren't any T-bones sizzling on top; its not quite barby weather at the mo' so he's using it to burn off the leaf litter and bark he's been raking up. Now's the time of year to get rid of some combustible stuff before summer and the bushfire season come round again. You can see the bore pump in the left front corner with a hose on it, and that's the plastic carport with the Triking, Mosquito and Guzzi back behind it. The 2 other buildings in the rear distance are our neighbour's sheds. We had a bottle of gas delivered, and Steve the gas guy told us that he thinks the neighbour is a glassblower - Steve says that he certainly gets through a satisfyingly large quantity of gas. We must take a bottle of wine over and have a sticky-beak.
Oh - and Happy Birthday to Ally (we worked together at EPC\Veveos where she used to moonlight at the Grosvenor House Hotel over the road). She's now Night Manager at The Grove so drop her a line if you fancy a posh hotel break http://www.thegrove.co.uk/ AND she's married Kevin from Durban, lucky guy!
Not that they're spoilt or anything, but the cats now have a sofa each. Only 3 boxes left in the living room compared to the piccie back on 24th May (hmm - Greebie had glowlamp eyes in that one, too)! I've swapped the rugs around so that the green one is in the dining area and the silk job is between the sofas. I am going to have to change those curtains...
A visit back down to Jo's block, as the Cobaw Ridge Winery 2 doors up from her (ie about half a mile, as we discovered when we walked it) is having Winter Warmer wine tastings during July. Today was Pinot Noir. What I can remember is that I thought that the 2007 was an excellent big young wine, the 2006 is what you would expect a year on from the 2006, the 2005 was quite a bit softer, the 2004 was a LOT softer and less complex, then it all gets a bit hazy, tho' there was a stonking one, which was either 2001 or 1991. I should have written it down at the time... Those of you who were at our wedding and\or the pre-wedding Garden Party may have managed a sip of the case of Cobaw Ridge Chardonnay and Shiraz that Jo sent over to the UK for us.
As I had expected to get a bit tiddly, we had put two (not one, but, count them, two) foam matresses in the back of the car, which is either an estate (for our UK readers) or a station wagon (for our Skips), as well as two feather-down duvets/doonas and a brace of pillows. We also took down some bullboar sausages, a local speciality around Newstead, which had a lot of Italian-Swiss immigrants during the goldrush which tasted a treat after cooking on the barby under the umbrella. After yarning around the campfire pit and admiring the night sky for a bit, we inserted ourselves into the back of the car, and then spent the night ensuring that we breathed, snored and turned in unison. Farting was punishable by expulsion, which seems a bit rich after consuming bullboar sausages, but then again so are the farts, so David occasionally turned a lovely colour as he manfully strove to keep 'em in. There are no photos, thank God.
Thought you might like some action shots of the Croquet Club in full swing, as it were. Hover your mouse over each one to read the captions explaining the play. I'm going for a Test Match Special feel, here.
David's newest erection includes ropes to get it up (snigger, snigger).
Look - it rained last night, and the waterbutthole gets very full very quickly.
We think we might need to rethink this one. The tanks are full too, and we have overflow! So we pump out the waterbutthole into the Rio Grande, then pump the overflow tank into the waterbutthole.
Possibly another rethink is required. After which Jaynee concludes that there's no way around it, she needs to dig another watercourse through the high and rocky outcrop. So the Colorado is born.
A minor break from the Colorado in order to dig in a drainage pipe for the lower end of the horshoe drive. We found some magic pipe made from recycled plastic which is just as strong as the big concrete ones but a fraction of the weight, and so really easy to lift and manoeuvre, can be cut with an ordinary handsaw, and gives that good recycling buzz. Its here, for anyone interested in trying to source green things: http://www.rptgreenpipe.com/
OK, so we cheated - a nice young man happened to be driving by in a JCB, who wasn't completely averse to the idea of lending a hand for a little extra pocket money.
All this digging can't be allowed to interfere with one's Friday pursuits, of course.
And the Colorado is open for business. We buy 2 new 500 litre waterbutts from Bunnings for the tank overflow, and pump from there into what was the feeder trench for the original waterbutthole (waterbutthole, waterbutthole) ...
... where a carefully positioned diversion device (aka brick) sends it into the mighty Colorado, through the rockies...
... to finally join up with the last stage of the Rio Grande's journey, thundering into the dam. Must sort out some sort of hydro-electric project a la Snowy Mountains Scheme at this point. Maybe next month.
