Thread: What's in your garden?

Originally Posted by Looper

A tree fell by the power line and narrowly missed taking it out.


I am going to start looking at solar options to go offgrid with a battery. The day is coming sooner or later when a big tree falls and takes out my power, and getting the poles fixed and the very hefty 95mm2 double cable restrung will likely come with a pretty hefty price tag.

Solar batteries can be hard to justify, but when they remove the reliance on a 250m long powerline through a forest of falling trees it can become fiscally feasible not to mention financially fruitful.

If I can get my solar skates on I could possibly avoid a proper spanking.

This could be a very prescient post. Is Alfred expected anywhere near you ? Going to be quite a few trees down in it's path. I see the AFL has forsaken TV ratings and the mighty dollar for once, and postponed the Brisbane and Gold Coast games because of it.

Originally Posted by mikenot

Is Alfred expected anywhere near you ?

It is indeed Mike

Alfred The Great


I was driving to watch the Alfredian surf when I realised there was something flapping around inside the car

Behold the bat-mobile

Got his echo-locators fired up

I considered ejecting him in suburbia but then thought it would be better to take him back to the forest

This freaked people out at the petrol garage as he was flapping around and sticking to the windows

Coont landed on my head while I was driving!

I've never thought about this before.

Do you have marsupial bats in Aussie or just the normal mammal bats that everywhere else has?

That chap haa a bit of a Trumpian hairdo going on.

The most commonly seen bats in Australia are fuitbats, AKA flying foxes. I get them in the forest. They love eucalyptus blossom and are the most significant fertilisation vector for gum trees. Without bats, the cute and cuddly koalas would be doing it tough.

Fruit bats are large creatures with good eyesight and no sonar, the size of a cat or small dog. Fruitarians.

That thing in my car is a normal fledermaus bat like in Europe, much smaller with the sonar ears and the tiny blind eyes. The size of a large mouse. Eats insects.

None of them are marsupials.

The only flying marsupials are sugargliders. They don't really fly, just jump and glide between trees. But much cuter than either bat family.

^ Bats aren't blind, Looper, that's a myth. Many have small eyes that are adapted to vision in low light, in which conditions they can actually see better than humans.

They use their ears more than eyes in many cases, and sonar of course, but 'as blind as a bat' is pure nonsense.

I spent my glorious Sydney days chilled out on Victoria Street and would cut back from the Opera House through the Botanical gardens upon an eve, only to find my good self locked inside there during one late stroll, where upon the skies went from 2H to 8B in around 10 seconds as 20 billion flying foxes all took to the air at once. You don't get that in Cor... Milano, I though to myself. I believe whilst praying.

Originally Posted by Mendip

^ Bats aren't blind, Looper, that's a myth. Many have small eyes that are adapted to vision in low light, in which conditions they can actually see better than humans.

They use their ears more than eyes in many cases, and sonar of course, but 'as blind as a bat' is pure nonsense.

Of course it is nonsense. That is why you never see a bat with glasses.

The size of this thing!

I like them, they don't hurt more than a bee sting you murderer

Originally Posted by Mendip

The size of this thing!

I remember when I lived in Chumphon I was lying on the floor watching TV and I turned around and one of them fuckers was sat right next to me. Used a brush to hockey hit that bastard out the front door.

^^ I netted it out from the bottom of the pool. Not a murderer but an attempted rescue, although it wasn't getting cpr.

Originally Posted by Mendip

Not a murderer

I know, you don't have it in you, not where nature is concerned. I left a whole area 1 Rai to stay wild and tbh its my favourite part of the garden as its full of insects, birds and reptiles.

Originally Posted by malmomike77

I left a whole area 1 Rai to stay wild and tbh its my favourite part of the garden as its full of insects, birds and reptiles.

I left the end of the garden wild and a small area behind the house which I can watch from the kitchen window. Then a cobra took up residence. Got that tall grass down to ground level right sharpish.

^ its not near the house

One of my orchids is in full bloom, spectacular this year.

Very nice, ao.

This was the cock and balls I did a while back

I thought I would my expand my oeuvre of lawn art with a bikini clad beauty for the titillation of passing light aircraft

I was drinking tea in my hammock today when a Honey-eater landed on the 4.5m tall agave flower. It hadn't noticed me so when I went lift up my camera it panicked and flew into the window and knocked itself out.

It came too and seemed to have a broken wing. You can see its honey-dipper tongue sticking out.

So I wrapped it in a swaddling cloth to keep its wing still and put it in an open shoe-box and gave it some honey-water.

I went gardening and was half expecting it to be dead when I got back but it had miraculously recovered and done a poo on my swaddling and flown away.

Originally Posted by Looper

So I wrapped it in a swaddling cloth

a kindly and very biblical approach, your handling of birds is extraordinary.

Originally Posted by david44

your handling of birds is extraordinary

A bird on the balcony is worth 2 in the agave bush, Dave...

A honey-eater departs the blooming blossom as a Rainbow Lorikeet watches and a Butcher Bird eyes me beadily from the railing for some hot dogs

I did not feed him today as it is not healthy for them to eat junk food every day.

He then followed me round the forest while I was working and snagged all the bugs that got turned up by my activities. A more healthy option.

Surprisingly he also ate a dead cockroach that I had killed when it raced across my t-shirt as I was drinking tea in my hammock the day before. I did not know they would eat dead insects that were not still wriggling.

Originally Posted by Looper

A bird on the balcony is worth 2 in the agave bush,

Fnaar fnaar...

When we first moved into this house I told the wife that it was English custom to Christen every room in the house, including the balconies!

Yeah... that never happened.


Anyway, big rain today so I walked around checking the guttering and drainage.



That thing is tree frog spawn. The white 'spawn bag' will gradually dissolve and the little tree frog tadpoles will drop into the water butt. They should be quite big when I return in a month.

Originally Posted by Mendip

The white 'spawn bag'

Originally Posted by Mendip

They should be quite big when I return in a month

I've heard its an Isaan delicacy

Originally Posted by Mendip

The white 'spawn bag'

Originally Posted by Mendip

should be quite big when I return in a month

Lookout ladies of the passport office

Oranges are popping and crackling on the orange trees

Broke out my $17 Kmart juicer

These oranges have a lot of seeds but they have killer sharp sweet juice

Like nothing you have ever tasted from a carton

Snakes Alive !
Sorry but no photos for this post, as I was a bit busy at the time of events!
Our garden seems to be snake central lately. Last weekend I was walking down to the bottom of our garden and saw a tail disappearing over the back wall, just a quick glimpse of brownish grey so no idea what it was. Then when I get to the wall and look over there is a black snake, about 1m long, slithering along the track towards me, so a different villain. It goes past me and on up the track to become somebody else's problem.
A few days later I go down to the compost bin and see yet another snake, this time inside the wire netting. This one is dark brown with black markings, small head but thicker body. It tries to escape through the wire mesh but no way was it's body fitting through 1 inch mesh so it gets stuck with about 15-20cm of head and neck sticking through the wire. The compost bin is 1.2m wide and 90cm high mesh. This thing had 15+cm outside, it's body across the compost bin with it's tail jammed up in the corner and the tip just above the top, so easily well over 2m long. I don't believe in killing snakes unless you have to but if I left it there stuck in the wire then the wife would see it sooner or later and freak out. So I get the rake, twirl the snake around it and pull it backwards...but when I get it free it tries to escape through the mesh again ! Repeat the process, same result. 3rd time I get it out and quickly dump it outside the bin..on the opposite side to me ! Then it slithers off to the wife's clump of lemongrass in the corner, her problem now ! It must have moved on by the time she went to get some lemongrass the next day so her ignorance is bliss which I didn't want to spoil by telling her about it.
Then yesterday she tells me she saw a green snake fall out of the tree next to her cactus house...ok, probably a common golden tree snake, nothing to be too worried about unless you are a gecko. This afternoon i'm sitting at the dining table and catch movement out of the corner of my eye....there's a f..ing snake inside the house! It disappears under my desk, and i decide that this is no time for thai culture and bare feet inside the house, where are my gumboots? get them on and start poking around with a broom, snake moves under my filing cabinet and curls up inside the base of it.
So I send the wife to grab the trolley while I keep watch, then load filing cabinet on to trolley complete with snake and wheel them outside on to the verandah. Tip cabinet on it's side and see the snake curled up inside, the snake was a golden tree snake, about 60cm long. Poke it a bit and it drops down and slithers into the crate of water bottles nearby. Move the crate to over the edge of the verandah and poke at it again. This time it drops out and slides away....as far as the bedroom aircon unit where it goes up into the ducting!
Now the wife is REALLY freaking out...it's going to go up into the bedroom, she screams.
It cannot get in, I say, the workers sealed the hole with silicone after putting all the piping through (well, I saw them do it with the other unit)
And the aircon inside is sealed, there's a filter to stop anything getting in (I hoped).
She's banging on the duct trying to scare it out but I finally convince her that won't work, just leave it to come out, which it does eventually.
Then a bit later when things were back to normal i'm on the verandah looking out over the garden and hear the wife opening the sliding door, then an almighty scream. I turn and see ANOTHER golden tree snake slithering along the wall.... slithering sounds too slow, this thing was really moving, it covered the length of the verandah in seconds then was out of sight at the other end of the house in the time it took me to go 2 strides to the corner of house. This one was much bigger, so probably the one that fell out of the tree yesterday.
So it seems we have 2 golden Tree Snakes in our garden...you wouldn't want to be a gecko around our place. As long as they stay in the garden and out of the house I'll let them be, but I can't speak for my wife! But I will be keeping the grass cut as short as possible, not an easy task at this time of year. And sealing the bottom of those aircon ducts would probably be a good idea!