Chateau Poulet Progresses

As the chill of winter sets in, we decided to put a settee undercover by the front door and it is rather nice to take advantage of the occasional sunny late afternoon, sitting in a sun drenched stupor, surveying the world.

 

I have a collection of pot plants near the front door, in lieu of the house garden that we have yet to start and I have thoroughly enjoyed the camellia flowers that have burst forth into pink glory over the last couple of weeks.  I have two camellia plants and they are very special.  They were a farewell gift from a couple of dear patients from the surgery I worked at in Perth, and the elderly gentleman is a retired horticulturalist and he actually bred these two camellias himself, naming this one after his wife.  Lovely eh.

The other scene from the sun drenched settee is of course our visiting roos, they look just like a flock of grazing sheep in this photo I think.  We have about ten regulars and have counted up to 19 at times.

They like to come in and sunbathe on the west side of our driveway in the mornings, lying around for hours having a lovely time.

In the meantime, work continues on Chateau Poulet.  Here is Steve levelling the sand ready for the concrete floor.

What a job that was!  We needed about 250kg of concrete so we mixed it by hand on the ground in 5 separate piles, churning over the mix of sand, cement, gravel and water with our rubber gloved hands, like mixing a giant cake mix.  With hindsight, rubber gloves was a stupid idea of mine as the finger tips were all shredded to bits by the rough mix so we had concreted fingers that went all rough and horrible.  No matter, all good now.  Anyway, da-dum, here we have one spiffy, broom finish, 50mm concrete floor. 

Whilst it rained, Steve busied himself in the shed making a couple of nest boxes.  He copied a plan from off the Internet, which suggested having a sloping roof on it so the chooks don't sit on the top and poo everywhere, fair enough.  The lip along the front is only about 8 cm high, which, when straw has been added inside, may not be high enough, but that is easy enough to add another lip of wood to make it higher.  Hard to know what chooks like, it will be a case of wait and see.

 Here is the man himself, busy adding the hardie board for the outside walls.  It's looking pretty good eh!  They even have a window!  Our neighbour gave it to us, she was cleaning out her shed.  It's an old four paned wooden window, but the two end panes are broken.  We've decided to have glass only in the two middle frames for light, and Steve will attach mesh to the top and bottom gaps then hinge on a couple of wooden shutters, so we can open or close them as the weather suggests.  There is even a question about whether to have a curtain inside ha ha ha. 

 Isn't it the most gorgeous little chook house!

 In the background you can see the Management Committee, hard at work surveying the scene.

The wildlife around here has taken a keen interest in proceedings, here you can see Steve busy building, being watched by two kookaburras on the highest branch, two galahs two branches down, and numerous sleepy kangaroos in the background on the right.

On a final note, we had another weird moon the other night, I call it the Cheshire Cat moon.  Isn't the crescent shape normally at the side?  We thought it strange to see the crescent at the bottom.  Anyway, it was very beautiful.