Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

Can you see that unassuming white pipe sticking out of the ground beside Steve?  That is our journey to the centre of the earth in search of water.  A man with a big truck and lots of pipes and drills turned up, and finally, after drilling 50 metres down, 44 of those through solid granite, we have water.  We haven't found a gusher, but a deep, consistent, slow flow that will work well with our plans to pump into a tank.  We will be getting a submersible pump that will sit down the hole at 42 metres, with high and low sensors so it will automatically pump into the tank when enough water has filled the pipe.  And the tank will have a float switch that will turn off the bore pump when the tank is full.  Sounds very sensible and efficient yes?

The new tank will sit next to the existing shed tank, so that they can share the pump to the reticulation lines and taps.  This also means that the two tanks' water will mix (I learned a new word, this is called 'shandying'), the benefit of that is that the small amount of salinity in the bore water will be diluted with the rain water in the other tank.  The salinity of the bore water is pretty good actually, we were relieved, apparently roses would not be happy, but as I don't grow roses then it's no problem.  We'll get the water tested once the system is in place, to find out the mineral content, that should be very interesting to find out the chemical components of water that lives 50 metres below the surface.

 We recently had an eight tonne truck of cow poo from the local dairy delivered, for the growing of all things good.  What also came with it is a plague of bushflies!.  Normally we don't have many flies this time of year and this lot are a pain in the bum, they are all sitting on the walls of our house and hanging round the door, sneaking in when we go in and out. 

 The good side of this (I do like to be Pollyanna and see the good in everything) is that all the little birds have realised that the flies are here, and early in the morning the flies are too cold to move, and the birds spend hours darting around, gobbling the flies up.  Hordes of little birds all fluttering around the windows, it is very entertaining.  On the watering can is a delightful little fantail, they are the experts at eating flies off our house.

 And the blue wrens (who have very little colour at present, as it's not breeding season) also arrive en masse for a group assault, they like to pick off the flies that are on the flyscreens. 
The silvereyes are not particularly interested in the flies, instead watching the proceedings from the bird feeder that contains some dessicated coconut, they love that.

 Neo has been having a pink fit with all these little birds dancing around outside his windows.  He throws himself at the windows in the vain attempt at having bird for breakfast, and the birds don't even care, it's as if they know that he can't get them.  Alas no Neo, no birds for you, so instead he runs around the house, chasing the odd fly that has snuck inside, and the reward for his efforts is his satisfied chomping as he chews that fly up!

 I had to pull some valencia oranges off the tiny tree the other day, there are too many for the tree to support and there was danger of little branches breaking.  Although they weren't ripe, I squeezed them, added sugar, and enjoyed the very first glass of home grown orange juice.  Yay! :-)

 I thought this was an interesting visual of a plant that wasn't being watered enough, and then was.  I was amused to see these carrots having a new lease on life now that they are getting sufficient water, imagine how fat the whole carrot would have been if I'd watered enough from the word go.  Next summer we will have big fat carrots with our new water!

 A while back my friend Ruth gave me a few bits of bearded iris with some pieces of root attached.  They have grown really well and I am being blessed with the first flowers, aren't they lovely!  And what I really like about these plants is that they are evergreen, unlike Dutch iris that lose all their leaves. 

 I've been doing some more embroidery.  I tried my hand at 'long and short stitch' embroidery, which is rather time consuming, but I like the result.  Another description of this is 'thread painting', perhaps a more apt description, as it involves layering colours to blend.

 I've done a bit more to the forest floor piece, adding french knots and drizzle stitch along the underside of the log.  Not sure what I'm going to do next.