This is a very exciting photo, allow me to explain. You know how we call all our King Skinks Voldemort, they abound in our shed and woodpile. But we have one special Voldemort that has lived inside this old settee that is just outside our bedroom window for about a year. He/she has become relatively tame as I feed him (let's call him a he for simplicity) banana and he is quite used to our presence. We aren't on touchy feely terms with him but he will happily allow us within a a couple of metres of him.
Anyway, just after Christmas, Paul and Sam were returning from the beach and they saw a great hullaballoo going on on the other side of the driveway. There was a huge Wedgetailed eagle on the ground battling with Voldemort, and the eagle won, carrying him away to be devoured. We were rather devastated about his, and mourned him for quite some time. Well, look who's back!! The skeptics among you will say that it is a different Voldemort, but we don't think so. He came running up when I threw some banana and gobbled it up (it took me months to get him tame enough to do that), and he is behaving the same way as always, doing his cruise around the outside of the house, sunning himself in the same spot, so we are happy to say it is him, and the eagle grabbed one of his relatives. Anyway, we are very happy to have a King skink back outside our bedroom window, giving Neo the shits....they have staring contests through the glass. :-) This photo shows Voldemort atop the settee and Gerald the girl magpie hanging out with him...she has learned there is food to be had when Voldemort is out.
Speaking of birds, this is another exciting photo for us. In case you are wondering, it is the bums of two female Red Eared Firetails, a beautiful little bird that fossicks on the ground but we rarely see them near the house. So the fact that they were on the grass in the back garden makes us very happy indeed.
This is yesterday's harvest. The peaches have all but finished now, gosh that's been a treat. We are starting to get some of the Italian Sugar Plums, the oval purple things. They are often dried to make prunes apparently, ours are not lasting long enough for that ha ha.
The peach on the left is from a small tree that blessed us with about 15 fruit. It is an Elberta peach, a freestone yellow fleshed variety, and boy was it yummy. The nectarine on the right is a white fleshed Goldmine variety, we got the grand total of two because we ran out of nets so the green parrots got into the heavily leafed tree and secretly scoffed the lot!
Our friends Mel and Sheila came to stay this week, we have seen them for three years so it was lovely to catch up. Here they are at the ever beautiful Shelley Beach Lookout.
We drove down to the bottom of the cliff and had a wander on the beautiful Shelley Beach. It really does have shells now, for quite a few years the shells disappeared, but there are huge piles of them here and there now.
Such a lovely, photogenic beach it is.
Back in the paddock we have the chicken who thinks she is a kangaroo once again. She is so funny, she just loves hanging around with them.
Speaking of kangaroos, have I ever told about how I name them? Their names are always very sensible, to do with how they look usually.
Lucy, the old girl, is so named because she has the most amazing, long, curled eyelashes, so she is named after Lucille Ball.
Patience, the slightly younger old girl is so named because she patiently waits outside our bedroom window every morning for a breakfast snack of a handful of rolled oats.
Growler, another female, is so named because she does!
Split, another female, is so named because her right ear is split in two from tip to base.
Elsa has a very faint, very long triangle on her forehead, it reminds me of an ice tower, so she is named after Elsa, a character from the movie Frozen.
Quirrell, another female, has two dots and a line on the back of her head that looks a bit like a face, so she is named after Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter, who had the face of Voldemort on the back of his head.
Rabbit, Lucy's daughter, is so named because she was the scrawniest joey we have ever seen and looked just like a rabbit. She is easy to identify now because she is missing half an ear.
Julius, one of the dominant males, has a distinctive roman nose so he is named after Julius Caesar.
Floyd, one of the younger males, is very very beautiful so he is named after an American bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd.
Professor Moody had a punch up and had a revolting eye injury and now he has a distorted eyelid, so it seemed most apt to name him after the eye patched Prof Moody from Harry Potter.
The new, huge alpha male is called Ano. He has an enormous body and a tiny head which reminds me of the cartoons of overly muscled men on steroids, so Ano is short for Anabolic Steroid Boy.
Nash is a two year old male who got himself caught up in wire when he was little. My neighbour freed him and he thanked her by biting her, so Nash seemed an approriate name for him.
I will stop now although there are many more, but I thought you might be amused by the way my mind works. :-)
Until next time xx
:-) Lovely.
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