Category: pets

Australia · family · grandchildren · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · pets · spring · Tweed Valley

Another day of visitors

Joanne3 Comments

Regular readers of my blog will be familiar with my lovely kookaburra visitors, but today, this particular kookaburra was joined by a very unlikely companion – a Currawong. It could be my imagination (although I don’t think it is) but the kookaburra does not look very impressed to be sharing its breakfast table. And the currawong, usually very shy birds who wait in the background to clean up any tiny droppings of food after the other birds have left, looks very – let me think – Entitled? Dominant? Demanding?

There’s nothing unusual about my next photo. Brontë always uses Forrest as a cushion when they spend time lying around outside.

I spent a while out in the garden this morning, working on an area that needs a fair amount of attention. I need husband’s help with this particular garden though. My son-in-law used wooden sleepers to build the garden edges about ten years ago, and now the wood is starting to rot and needs replacing. There’s a low retaining wall that needs replacing as well, so we are working on getting the job done before summer.

Around midday, my first “people” visitors arrived – my daughter, and baby Eli. I got a few adorable little smiles from six-week-old Eli today, and my goodness he is growing fast! His little neck is so strong and he moves his head around this way and that, seeming to want to take in everything around him.

Just before my daughter headed home, my eldest son arrived. His wife is away in Sydney for a few days, so Ben visited for dinner. I think I’m appreciating my visitors more than ever before, now the Covid restrictions are easing.

And once again, a very enjoyable day ended with a beautifully tinted sky. 🙂

Australia · garden flowers · gardening · in my garden · mangoes · Mount Warning · native Australian birds · palm trees · pets · photography · recipe · spring · Tweed Valley

A Day Spent in the Garden

Joanne14 Comments

There is a hazy film hanging around the valley today. Apparently, a blustery storm travelled across the state from west to east – so to the New South Wales coast – yesterday, kicking up dust as it went. My guess is that this is the tail-end of the dust, and we haven’t had any rain to wash it away.

Tonight my body aches from head to foot, but I’ve had the most wonderful and productive day in the garden. I’ve done a lot of pruning with the garden shears today, so even my hands hurt! By 3 pm I decided to call it a day, but paused to look over what I’d accomplished. Up in the pecan tree I could see several Figbirds, so zoomed in on them with the camera to get a close shot. The light, or rather lack of light, wasn’t in my favour, so it’s not the best photo. If you look closely though, you might notice the ring around the eye of the bird in the fork of the tree – that’s the male, and the other bird higher up the tree is a female.

Those cheeky birds were pinching my mulberries! I went down to have a look at the tree, and some of the fruit are looking pretty scraggly now, as you can see.

I decided to go right down the back and see how the orchard is going. We’ve done a lot of clearing down there during winter. The whole area had been taken over by gamba grass, which is classified as a weed in our area, but we’ve got rid of most of it now. We have to keep a lookout for any new shoots coming through though.

My poor grapefruit tree looked pretty dismal when we found it amid the grass, but look at it now! It’s covered in flowers, and I’m so pleased to see it looking so incredibly healthy. It’s quite an old tree, I think we planted it about twenty-five years ago, and every year up until now it ends up covered in huge grapefruits. It looks like it will be the same this year too.

As you can see, the whole valley has the smoky-haze appearance today. If you look closely at this photo though, on the right there’s a bare-branched tree with more figbirds in it! I think it might be a Jacarada tree, so I’ll keep an eye on it and get some photos when it flowers.

And here are the figbirds closer up! I wonder, are they all after my mulberries?

Another tree in flower is my Pomegranate. This is a fairly new addition to the orchard, but it had some beautiful big pomegranates on it during summer. There’s quite a few flowers on the tree now, so I could be in luck again this year.

Our lovely old Mango is preparing for summer fruit too! I had a great time last summer making Green Mango Chutney with freshly picked fruit from the tree and the next day my eyes were puffy and I had blisters on my face, hands and arms. It turned out to be a reaction to a poisonous substance in the sap of the mango tree that I had an allergic reaction to! But the chutney was great. 😉

While I did my gardening, my son’s dog Forrest – who lives permanently at my house now because it’s the only place she’s settled – and my Labrador, Bronte, followed me everywhere. They are good company, but it’s very difficult to get them to sit still long enough to get a photo of them. This photo of Forrest is a tad blurry, but the best I could get.

The Figbirds often sit atop these bunches of palm tree berries and I’ve often taken photos of them, from a distance,  munching away on them. They were too busy with my mulberries today and seemed to have forgotten the berries, so I got a much closer photo of them on my way back to the house.

This is a Prince of Orange in my pool area.

And these pretty Daylilies are in the pool area too.

I absolutely love Evening Primrose flowers. They are such easy plants to grow, they are basically the plant-and-forget variety. And every summer the plants multiply, so I get even more flowers.

I love the closeup detail too, the veins through the petals and the dainty yellow carpel and stigma in the centre. (I think that’s what they are called, so correct me if I’m wrong.)

The only way I could get a photo of Bronte today was when she was on the other side of the pool fence. Every time I pointed the camera in her direction, she would run to me for a pat, so you’ll have to excuse the shadow of the fence across her fur. Actually, I’m surprised the sun shone long enough to form a shadow, it’s been such a dull day. It’s been very warm though, I think about 27 degrees Celsius, so around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s a high temperature for a spring day, but cooler weather is predicted in a few days.

So that was my day today, a wander around the garden after I finished my chores there, and it was a wonderful change from sitting at my desk. I’ll have to get back into uni tomorrow, but I think I’ll feel better doing so after having a break. 🙂

Australia · birds · in my garden · Mount Warning · pets · Tweed Valley · winter

Something Different – A Sun Stripe and Two Ibis

Joanne8 Comments

It didn’t surprise me to see the sky covered with cloud this morning. I’d woken up a couple of times during the night feeling hot, and it had been cold when I went to bed. The cloud cover holds in the humidity every time.

At first I thought Mount Warning would look drab and grey all day, until a colour caught my eye at around 6:45 am – orange. Just one strip of sunlight shone along the base of the mountain, which seemed odd considering the sun always hits the top of the mountain first.

I took photos, then asked my husband if he had an explanation for the unusual phenomena. He said the sun’s rays would have been peeking through a tiny horizontal slither in the clouds, so the top of the mountain remained in the shadows.

How unusual it looked! The sunny stripe only lasted for a couple of minutes, then it was gone.

My Big Man Bowie seemed awfully interested in something outside today too. While I sat on my sofa, reading for uni, Bowie jumped up over me to get to the window in a hurry. I wasn’t overly concerned, I imagined he’d heard a bird in the bird-bath just outside the window.

When Bowie turned and looked at me though, I thought I’d better investigate. He doesn’t usually look that amazed by a simple bird!

It’s not the best photo, taken through the window and flyscreen, but here are the culprits – two Ibis in the front yard!

These birds are the Australian White Ibis, otherwise known locally as “Bin Chickens” due to their scavenging ways. They’d each make two of Bowie, and he’s a large cat too.

No wonder poor Bowie looked so stunned! 😉

Australia · family · Mount Warning · pets · Tweed Valley · winter

Another dull day … and Bowie!

Joanne4 Comments

For the third day in a row the weather is dull. The sky, which is mostly white with an occasional grey cloud is showing no sign of allowing the sun to peek through – there’s not a single crack in the cloud cover where the sun’s rays could escape. Rain is predicted, but so far we haven’t had a drop.

Given that there’s not much to say about dull weather I decided it would be a good day to introduce the newest member of our family.

Introducing Bowie, a seven-year-old Rag-doll X Tortoiseshell.

My mother-in-law originally named him Beau when she got him as a tiny kitten, but last year both of my in-laws went into aged care. To cut a long story short, my father-in-law had a fall at home in early May, broke his hip, then spent some time in hospital. For many practical reasons he couldn’t return home so he was the first to go into aged care. Meanwhile, as my mother-in-law couldn’t cope with being alone, she also went into aged care, leaving Bowie “homeless”.

However, in our family, the concept of a pet being homeless simply doesn’t fly! Once they become a member of our family, that’s where they remain. So Bowie moved in with me and my husband.

Miss Tibbs was a tad concerned about the “intruder” for about two seconds, but in her usually way she took the changes in her stride and learned how to co-exist with another cat very quickly. Tibbs and Bowie are not besties yet, but they do occasionally play chasing games around the house! I guess there’s hope that they will become great friends yet – he’s only been here a few months.

Bowie – (as in David the singer – Beau is far to proper a name for this happy man!) is an extremely affectionate cat and loves nothing more than to sit somewhere soft and comfy. He’s not huge on sitting on our laps though. He’s loving the soft rugs I have sitting on the bed and the chairs now the weather has turned cold and nuzzles into them like they’re his best friend. He also has a habit of sitting on the back of my lounge chair at night and nuzzling into the back of my head!

I’m sure though that Bowie’s new best friend of all is my printer. He loves it!

As soon as he hears the sound of the printer, he’s up on my desk like a shot!

I’ve also discovered that I have to grab my printed pages fast – Bowie’s claws have gone through a couple!

Bowie really is the quintessential “curious cat”!

This gorgeous boy fits into our family as if he’s always lived here, and now we couldn’t imagine our home without him. ❤

Post Script – After such an incredibly dull day, the sky tonight looks pretty amazing!

birthdays · blessings · family · gratitude · pets

Portrait of a Twenty-Year-Old

Joanne8 Comments

She made it! The Queen of my pets, beautiful Phoebe, celebrated her twentieth birthday on Sunday. Or should I say her people-family celebrated for her. I’m sure Phoebe thought it was just another day of sleeping, eating and having snuggles with her people.

Phoebe gave us quite a scare just over a week ago. We thought she wouldn’t see her twentieth – that’s ninety-six in human years – but after spending a night at the vets on an intravenous drip containing fluids and antibiotics, she came home again the next day. She amazed our wonderful vet by pulling through! He was convinced we’d all but lost her.

I wasn’t convinced. I needed to find out the problem before I could make that unmentionable decision. And I’m so glad I did.

She’s still on medication for a severe infection, but look at her now – bright-eyed, happy, and purring with contentment.

Phoebe was born on the 3rd February 1999. My kids – who were all still little ones at that time – found her in a pet shop. How could any of us resist her? We brought her home with us in April 1999, and she’s ‘grown up’ with my children, various dogs, birds, cats who have lived here temporarily when one of my children have moved back home, and she takes our busy household in her stride.

For the first ten years that we had Phoebe she was an outdoor cat, venturing out every morning, returning home either when it rained, or it was time for dinner. After she came indoors for her meal, that’s where she stayed for the night, usually curled up on the end of my bed. When we started to notice her panic when we let her outdoors, we decided to keep her inside. We’ve been told that she probably started to lose her eyesight around that time. And in the last couple of years we’ve noticed her hearing isn’t the best either. When the arthritis set in, she stopped jumping up onto my bed at night, but she still loves to curl up on a comfy chair.

It would be lovely if Phoebe made it to another birthday, and maybe she will. But for now, I’m just so thankful she’s well. And happy. ❤