Kitchen Garden Forum

Lucky you, it,s been years since I found one of these in our garden and this one moved surprisingly quickly too before I could call my husband iut to come and have a look at it. . Can,t think why people are scared of them as they,re perfectly harmless. The only native snake here to beware of here is the adder, snd ai suspect a lot of them have sadly met a horribly painful end in the recent dry grassland and bush fires.

I have a friend who emigrated to Australia 3 years ago to live in a fairly rural area and her other half has developed a quite remunerative hobby snake catching and depositing them back into open country from the domestic gardens where they often make themselves u welcome visitors.

Sometimes I'm surprised Australians reach adulthood with so many venomous snakes & spiders, box jellyfish and sharks.

Funnily we do survive Stephen as the do's & don't's with the id & avoiding upsetting them was pretty much grounded into us by the time we went to school & then re-enforced. We really had a red back in the outside loo & one in the laundry when I was a child, but the non dangerous giant huntsman in my bedroom was way more scary. I had the shark alarm go off in Noosa while body boarding but fortunately just a sting ray - oops yep just like the one that killed Steve Irvin & it went right under my board. Had another shark encounter up that way when one breeched the nets while we were skinny dipping at night - those patrol guys were way more scary for a minute or so with their lights until we saw the fin, then modesty was forgotten in a blink. Had a nasty jelly fish sting but fortunately not a box jelly fish but the welt was like a cauliflower & a trip to the ambulance station as the vinegar wash made no difference. The snake experience was one wrapped around under the car when we found when we had a flat tyre - no idea of the type but it was pretty angry & hissing lots so went back into the car with torch patrol until we saw it move away. (You can imagine the girlie & boy angst & noise).

It wasn't until I got here that I had further encounters - with Adders who are pretty brave compared to most OZ snakes. The first joined our picnic & went right over the rug & the 2nd moved onto the plot with me for a couple of years. Luckily female but her boyfriends were well feisty but thankfully short visits.

I came up against a very aggressive mouse, once….

The gardens around here, look like it’s the end of August!

OH!

A lot cooler this morning….good working weather, and I need that with the list of jobs I have written down…completely unachievable!

oldherbaceous wrote:A lot cooler this morning….good working weather, and I need that with the list of jobs I have written down…completely unachievable!

O.H. Maybe time to engage cook as a part time secretary ?

We have 16 degrees today and quite a bit of cloud, though not planning doing any of this work business you talk about..........

Dear Shallot Man, it was Cook that wrote the job list…

Back online via an old pc that was banished to under a front room chair in 2014 but can only access email account and only two websites, the Diesel Traction Group preserved diesel loco page and also by chance a website of a company that sell s/h computers......

Hard drive has totally failed on my regular almost as old pc.....and I'm here now via other means.

..so could well be a little absent for a while...not that that is anything unusual.!!

C.

...and whilst I remember, for Shallotman, I checked and my dad was out Egypt way earlier than I thought, 1948 to 1951. Out via 'big boat' from Liverpool and then flown about via DC3 and Vickers Valetta. Not sure of his role there but believe he drove a typewriter.!!

...and I forgot to say...2.5mm rain here, 6am or just after.

C.

Makes it sound as if your old pc has cogs and chains, Clive….

I see, (The Secret Garden) is on channel 5, Clive….

Sprockets gone..!! ..........or something like that I said at the time it failed...


When I was at school the computers did have sprockets and a winding handle. With just one regional Olivetti huge cast metal thing that used to visit the schools by rota and spit out a bit of punched tape............


...maybe I'm sat in the "secret garden" with Cinderella nearby........

C.

Talking about ancient computers reminded me of the first computer I came across in my working life. It was installed in a massive specially built room in the place where I worked which had to have special air conditioning installed if I remember correctly, and all the equipment looked as if it had come from outer space. It's hard to believe that the Iphones many people have now probably have many times the computing power of that installation!