Hi All
how to begin a blog for the first time... this has taxed my thinking after my son announced he had set up a blog for me. He was kindly prodding my procrastination. I am at the same time setting up a web site, which is still under construction, hopefully before this week ends I will have it all together. My passion is odd plants bearing fruit, vegetables and flowers that can be eaten - forgotten plants, rare and indigenous plants.

I live in Canberra, Australia, it is autumn and the trees are turning golds and reds - just glorious. I was flicking through Edna Wallings' book Letters to Garden Lovers (2000), and her May entry for 1942 caught my eye. Edna wrote "I look at the trees and say, 'Bless you for giving us such beauty and making so little demand upon out time and expenditure. By the time you receive this, the autumn foliage should be a dream!' The same statement could be made seventy-one years later. Autumn foliage continues to bring beauty to the landscape and joy to our hearts even to those that do not have a green thumb or a garden. Mother Nature at her best! My heart fills when I see a beautiful day dawning, big blue skies, reds and golds shimmering, cockatoos screeching overhead and chooks [hens] scratching in the backyard.
Cheers, Dianne.

Hi again,
I watched an interesting event today. At this time of the year and for the rest of winter a number of cockatoos will pass over hoping to pick up some food, left over chook food. There is one, I like to think it is the one that came with an old cockatoo who no longer comes. They were the first two. Of course I had to feed the frailer old one. And whether it was learned from the old one visiting or this cockatoo is bolder, it often lands and walks up and down the window sill staring into the kitchen. It has allowed us to look closely at the cockatoo and I am fascinated by the feathers that rise up and cover the birds beak when it is cold, But when one has its foot in the door all the relations are invited to join them. Not something we are too keen on. Cockatoos can be very destructive, chewing all sorts of things just for the fun of it.

Because I have two groups of chooks, I feed them in different spaces so that all of them will get a feed in morning rather than only those at the top of the pecking order. One feeding area is outside a large caged area and one inside. The caged area is affectionately called the Taj Mahal because it has a high white netting roof. I looked out the kitchen window and there were the cockatoos sitting around waiting for the chooks to finish. It always amuse me that flight birds will not take on a chook - crows/ravens, currawongs and cockatoos will take flight if a chook makes a run towards them. The game cockatoo was on the door into the Taj Mahal, checking out the seed that lay there, but it was inside, the bird hesitated, kept looking. When I next visited the kitchen there it was inside the Taj Mahal - I was impressed that the bird had overcome fear and understands the safety of our back yard. Or perhaps it was just hungry and this was a free breakfast.
cheers, Dianne.

 Hi

I am still on the chook theme. Spying a competition for a grandpa feeder, something I am lust after. I was reminded of a time my son and I were watching our first 4 Issa’s free-ranging over our backyard from the kitchen window. All of a sudden there was a commotion, a chook had found something tasty and everyone was chasing her. We noticed what appeared to be a tail hanging from her beak. At the sight of only a tail the other chooks lost interest and turned away. To our amazement the chook regurgitated the body belonging to the tail – a mouse! The other chooks spied the mouse and again started chasing her. She again gulped the mouse, the other chooks lost interest in just the tail hanging and turned away, up would come the mouse body again, the other chooks would notice and chase her, this was repeated a number of times until the mouse holder swallowed the mouse whole! After that she was known as the Mouse Catcher and her story was told many times over Cheers Dianne