Bits and Pieces.

 

Spotted this interesting beetle outside the back door. Strange and iridescent markings.

For a while I had noticed that the steps down the side of the house, outside my workshop, had been slowly rotting away and the brick path was sinking in places. Not bad for forty years. The original railway hardwood sleeper steps cost 5c each, mates rates, and have now been replaced with treated pine ones at $16.00 each which are supposed to be good below ground for another 40 years.

 

While doing this I had to cut back a big creeper on the shed. It was a lovely red flowering passion fruit vine but it will grow back very quickly. It was amazing what a difference it made in the workshop, I can now see through the windows and don't need the lights on all day. It was also getting in the water gutters and blocking them with its leaves.

Once a project like this is started it leads on to others. There are a row of paper-bark trees behind the workshop that run from front to back of the block and which need trimming back every few years. Normally this would necessitate a lot of trips to the local tip but fortunately our very good friend Larry has a large petrol driven wood chipper that we can borrow.

The start of the wood chip pile which will end up as nice mulch for the garden.

Watch this space as the next job is to cut back the row of pines down the long side boundary. The pile will grow and grow.

We couldn't understand why there was an increasing pile of mud and grasses half way down the front drive. We though it may have fallen off the underside of a visitors car until we looked directly above it and found this nest. Its moulded around a branch about 25m above ground and has PeeWee chicks in it.