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In which I give up the reins to… Colin!

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[written by colin {see if you can pick out the various literary references!}, very slightly edited by adrienne, few comments inserted by adrienne, pictures taken by colin and adrienne, pictures slightly edited by adrienne, pictures picked by colin. etcetera.]

I am not Adrienne.
My name is Colin, pronounced nearly the same as “Callin’.”
Names are important, as they tell you a great deal about a person. I’ve had more names than anyone has right to. But I was brought up as Colin. My father once told me it meant “victory.”
I have, of course, been called many other things. Some of them uncouth, although very few were unearned.
I have stolen a baby bear from its mother’s den in the dead of winter. I was knocked over by lightning at the top of Mt. Rainier. I once headbutted a car so hard that its driver ran away in panic. I skied in weather so cold that trees exploded. I’ve looked boldly over the edge at the end of the world and danced at the lip of an active volcanic caldera. I have walked across rubble-strewn fields where gods have died, loved women, and effortlessly done the impossible.
You may have heard of me.

It was late October when I got an email from Adrienne saying that her work would start after American Thanksgiving and she had a whole month free before then, so visit maybe? It was short notice and I had to work and move to California. I wrote it off in my mind.
Then, on the night of November 1st, I realized in my sleep that I could totally make it work!  So I did. 24 hours later I had tickets, a visa, and time off from work. Whee!
And then, even more last minute, Alexis decided to visit AG and BB at the same time! It would be a shindig!
I have looked over Adrienne’s blog posts and we pretty much did everything that has already been posted about, [and several things that weren’t!] except for finding a place to live. Now would be a good time to review what has come before in this blog. It’s quite worth a reread.
We didn’t ever manage to make it to Luna Park, but we saw it many times, lurking across the Sydney Harbor. That giant, vacant face continues to haunt my dreams, its sightless eyes searching, its gasping mouth ever more hungry.
Anyway, I’ll give my impressions of the many things we did, but each one will be shorter than Adrienne’s posts.

…

Flying
I flew MSP->LAX->SYD.  I arrived at the Minneapolis Airport early for the hassle that comes with international flight, and got to my gate to see the last few passengers get on an earlier flight to LA. So I jumped on that flight, last minute, to give me a longer layover in LA.
When I got there, I found out that Alexis also got on an earlier flight, and we were able to share airport dinner together on our extended layover. Fortuitous!
Long flight was long. Delta had lots of movies available for watching, so I watched some movies and tried to sleep and drank lots of water. LOTS of water. I was in an exit row with no seats in front of me and the bathroom right there, so I had so much water. I also consumed a great quantity of donuts that were wholly delicious.
I flew into the night, watching the time get earlier and earlier, until the sun came up and I was in the future in Sydney.

…

Cockatoo Island picnic and Circular Quay
Adrienne and Alexis met me right after customs (which were painless and had a terrific contraband-sniffing dog) and we took public transit and a walk to the house. Sunlight! Real summer sunlight! Flowers and birds and grass and leaves on the trees! Happiness in seeing Adrienne and Ben again.
After handing over American goods that had been requested (largely oatmeal), and exchanging gifts, we took a ferry to an abandoned shipyard island that is clearly haunted by Deep Ones who perform unspeakable rites to hideous dead gods on moonless nights. Their loathsome gibbering echoed in the cries of the fetid seagulls that flocked, like hordes of malformed rats, around us any time we paused, as if searching for weakness, or food.
From the “man-made” structures on the island, it is clear that modern Australia is built of the blood and suffering of its many prisoners, poor souls sent far from home to suffer torments in a land under permanent martial law where giant spiders literally hide under the bark of trees to ambush unsuspecting prey.
We had a picnic.
The opera house was not as big as I expected, but did loom nicely against the cloud-marbled sky. Its looming was brilliant and clean and the arching sweep of the roof made for a remarkably friendly loom. It loomed, nicely.
I was pretty jet lagged by now, and my memories of the day are hazy at best. There are mental scraps of lying in the grass in the sun, interesting bathrooms with mirrors and wobbling counters, snakelike trees, and jumbles of rocks that were not to be climbed upon, but which Alexis climbed anyway. Because she is Alexis, and awesome like that.

…

Tidepooling
There was an eel! I touched it! Sea slugs! Marine life sticking to the rocks! Tiny things with too many legs or no legs! An octopus!
The eel was a moray, which I recognised but couldn’t remember why they were dangerous. As it turns out, they have hooked teeth, very strong jaw muscles, and a very simple jaw structure. They cannot let go when they bite people, even in death. There was no biting, and there was eel touching. It was smooth and strong and boneless, like a tongue.
The octopus was very tiny and fascinating. I’m always impressed with their combination of alienness and intelligence. It makes them both strange and understandable. You can see their reactions clearly and ascribe understandable motivations to their actions, but the way they carry out those actions is incredibly foreign.
After we poked at it for a bit, it got fed up and squirted ink. We were so fascinated by the ink swirling in the currents between the rocks that we ignored Mr. Octo and he got away. Clearly, it is a good defense mechanism!

…

Aquarium
I was tired and the darkness and music and many screaming children in the Sydney Aquarium was unpleasant. But I enjoyed seeing the dugong, which are creatures like manatees but in Australia that eat a lot of lettuce. They are apparently closely related to elephants, and they did have a certain Sea Elephant quality to them. The sea turtle was out in the sun and not available for viewing.
Alexis got a hot meat pie and we all sampled this Australian pop-culture delicacy.

…

Blue Mountains
Adrienne’s post on the Blue Mountains is spot on! It is my favorite place in Australia! There was so much to see. The Darwin trail gave an understanding of the evolution of the landscape as you approached the falls. It was a gradual buildup of many tiny details into a huge gorge full of trees and geological structures and carved sandstone!
We picnicked at the top of the falls, watching young people jump the guard rail to pose right at the edge. The curving stone path across the river was made of giant sandstone stepping stones, its gentle curve and solidness contrasting to the rushing water. My sandwich was peanut butter, nutella, and banana: thick and delicious.
We braved the many stairs and made our way to the base of the huge waterfall. We roamed among the slippery polished rocks of the river and cauldrons in the stone and mists in the air. Every dozen yards was a new biome with an entirely different climate and vegetation. There were tunnels of plants, tunnels of rock, and rainbows in the air.
It was one of my favorite places and there was so much to see and experience that I still want to go back.
On our return to the train there was an event that I promised Adrienne could describe, so she better get on that. [ok ok!]

…

Australian Museum
It was raining when we went to the Australian Museum. The skeleton room is indeed amazing as was described and the attention to detail in the exhibitions is marvelous. I marveled.
We spent the better part of the day there, and thus were able to see most of the exhibits and get full details on about half of them. There were turtle skeletons!  Turtle shells are made from a ribcage-like structure, which I had known, but what I didn’t realize was that their shoulder blades are inside of their shell! It was obvious when I thought about it. This means that somehow, through iterative changes, turtles evolved their shoulder blades through their ribcages (which is ridiculously unlikely), or that there was an evolutionary branching to having shells that happened before shoulder blades were fully formed. It could be a case of parallel evolution in action! Am I right about this? I don’t know much biology.
There was also a sea sponge skeleton made out of silicon (!!!) and a giant stuffed wombat and amazing insect exhibits. They had spiders weave their webs over black backgrounds so that you could see the structure easily!

 …

Featherdale Zoo
So you know all those crazy Australian creatures with funny names? Yeah, they’re all made up. All of them. What, you think there’s really a creature like a man-sized rat that hops around and boxes? Or a beaver thing with a duck’s bill that lays eggs? Or the so-called “Wombats” or “Wallabies” or “Koalas.” Even their names sound made up!
Anyway, I want a wombat for a pet! They are like giant marmots that have gotten extra cute with their larger size. They have a bony structure in their rump that they use as shield when they burrow into their holes with their butt sticking out! They also crush predator skulls against the tunnel roof with their back legs and bony butts! They can run at 25 mph! Their poop is square! SQUARE POOP!
I also fondled wallaby testicles, because, well, Adrienne did it. And how often do you get that chance?

…

Sydney Harbor Bridge and the Sydney Tower Eye
Alexis and I crossed the famous and distinctive Sydney Harbor Bridge. There are tours that climb the curving structure, but they are a bit pricey. So we walked along the pedestrian walkway of the bridge, which was free!
The bridge reminds me of a modern version of the Brooklyn Bridge – cables and trusses and stone support towers, but everything is new and has a cleaner design. It is a cathedral of iron and wind.
The air on the bridge, and in fact all along the coast, was both wet and dry at the same time. It was definitely sea air; slightly salty and fresh and full of the ocean, but the wind was dry and parched. It’s like when you run water over a dry sponge. It’s wet, but it’s also going to absorb all that moisture soon. All the air in Australia felt like a giant dry sponge, even when it rained. [This is an amazing description!]
After crossing the bridge we went to an Irish pub with a live house band that sang all the irish folk songs about being imprisoned and sentenced to transportation. I had excellent Bangers and Mash.
Then we went to the Sydney Tower Eye to meet Adrienne and Ben. They had been off at SCUBA all day. The Sydney Tower is a Space Needle like building, tallest in Sydney and second tallest in all of Australia, with a 360 degree panoramic viewing deck at the top. There was a storm threatening to hit the city as we walked, and I rushed to see it come rolling in from the top of the tower, but I was disappointed! The storm faded into the thirsty air.

…

Cronulla Beach
This was one of those rocky beaches with crashing waves and jumbles of rocks to scramble over and interesting geological features, like Avoca beach. It was probably my second favorite place after the Blue Mountains. Waves splashing up into the air, water rushing over rocks, through crevices and tunnels, in and out with each surge. Sadly, I cannot do its beauty justice.

 …

Blue Mountains 2
We went back! There was more to see! There’s still more after multiple visits!
The easily notable thing about this trip was our breakfast. We went to the little cafe that Adrienne bled all over when she hurt her hand. I had a cappuccino and an order of scones with cream and jam.
They sprinkle cocoa on top of the cappuccinos there! Why is this not done everywhere? [agreed.]
The scones were not like American scones. They were not lemon ginger scones or raspberry maple scones or cranberry whole grain scones; they were scones. Just scones. And, partaking in the very essence of a scone, they were divinely fluffy biscuity breadstuffs with a perfect texture. AND CREAM! Oh, we loves it! With biscuits and jams and butters, my precious. I was euphoric with every morsel, my head spinning and unable to stop grinning or sighing with delight.
If I was to ever have breakfast with David Bowie, I want it to be scones with cream and jam.
There was also a wild kookaburra, which was nothing less than a little fluffy gentleman. They are my favorite birds.

 …

The Maritime Museum and Thanksgiving dinner
Alexis left before I did, to make it home for Thanksgiving. After she left, Adrienne, Ben, and I went to the Sydney Maritime Museum and had a jolly time together. I’m really grateful that I was able to spend so much time with Ben this trip. The more we interact the more I like him.

There was a working, full scale replica of Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour! It had tours and apocryphal facts from the guides! Cook’s trips were honestly pretty amazing. Apparently he was criticised after his first major journey for not exploring far enough, so on his next two he basically explored the entire Pacific. His maps of the New Zealand coast are so accurate that they were widely used until the 1970s.
There was also a destroyer and a submarine and a super lifeboat with its own life support system and ability to keep functioning in an oil inferno. It could drop 30 feet without damage and propel itself even if completely upside down.
Then we went home and cooked American Thanksgiving! Chaos was in the tiny kitchen with us as everyone cooked their own dish at once! Yet somehow, it worked. No collisions, no one really in anyone’s way; we twirled and danced and chopped and stirred and sang. It was exhilarating and delightful and triumphant. We each made tasty tasty food for a tremendous dinner: stuffed bell peppers, mashed potatoes, and pie.
I really like pumpkin pie, but there are no pumpkins in Australia. None. They have a orange watery thing in boxes called “Pumpkin” Soup, but that looked dubious at best.
I thought about the dilemma  and decided: beets are a lot like pumpkins! So I made a beet and butternut pie with pumpkin spices, roasting the beets and then pureeing them, and it was DELICIOUS. The roasted beets added the right amount of sweetness and texture, with just a hint of beety goodness. Plus, it was a very fetching purple color! I recommend this substitution to everyone in the future.

…

The Final Day
On my last day in Australia I got stuck in an automatic bathroom. The Let Me Out button did not work and there was no handle on the door on the inside! Seriously! What happens if there is a power failure? After trying all the obvious things and deciding that it was just broken, Adrienne went off to make phone calls to find someone to help. I was left to fight off claustrophobia. I pondered my situation.
Windows – too small to climb through. Toilet – already used. Sink – source of fresh water in emergencies. Floor – public bathroom tile, pretty gross. Button that was supposed to open the door – broken. Other button – plays annoying music. Door – no hand-holds to force it open against the machinery. Machinery – where was the machinery?
Summoning up all my video gaming experience, I found a maintenance duct and crawled through.  I pushed against a heavy darkness made of spiders, twisted my lithe form around the corners that riddled the labyrinthine ducting, and clambered through the tangled, greasy clockwork of the mechanisms. At one point, I had to leap from platform to moving platform above a floor of deadly spikes. There was one level that was covered in ice. Finally, I faced the Doom Rattler, a giant poisonous snake with spider legs. With quick footwork and flexible timing, I tricked it into biting its own tail three times and thus defeated it. The exit was before me! I opened the maintenance door from within. Glorious, spider-free sunlight was mine once again!
Adrienne returned and I was all cool and mysterious about how I escaped. [he would not tell me!!]

The two of us walked far and wide across her neighborhood. There was a mall and trains and a blue tongued skink and, eventually, the outskirts of the Olympic Park. Our talk wandered along with us. Excitement was considered, friendship was remarked upon, good times and bad were visited once again. The sadness of life is easier with friends, even if they are far away, across mountains and oceans and time itself. I confessed that I’d always wanted to be thrown out of Woolsworths and she… Well. She can speak for herself. [no. no thank you.]

There is more, of course. There is always more to tell. But for now we can leave the two of them sitting there, in a patch of velvety English grass on the outskirts of the Olympic Park, as the sun begins to set. They talk, and share themselves, and be with each other.

In which Australia begins to feel like home

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Yesterday Ben gave me an early christmas present!

And by early christmas present I clearly mean pointed out a dead flying fox!

We were walking home from the train station after a pretty underwhelming trip to the zoo when I walked right by it. Fortunately for me, Ben saw it and knows me well.  We kept on to home where I turned straight around, grabbed a broken tupperware and some strong shears, and walked right back to it where lay. I cut off the head, stuffed it in the tupperware, returned home, buried the head under the tomato plant, and recycled the tupperware. In a month I’ll be the proud owner of a sparkly clean flying fox skull! Best accidental christmas present ever, or what?

In which I lose all of my arachnophile credibility

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Ben and I were sitting on the couch, enjoying some wine, and watching Deep Space Nine, a rather engaging episode, the one where Sisko, Dax, Wharf, O’Brien, and Kira get trapped in a James Bond-inspired holodeck program due to a transporter accident, and Julian and Garak have to keep them from being deleted while their patterns are recovered. You know that one? It’s good! But right around the time that Sisko was enjoying being the bad guy and running Julian for a loop, and Garak was making a cutting yet witty comment, Ben said, “Oh god! A huntsman!”

Cue screeching record sounds. Ben pointed to the curtain hanging beside me and I glanced at it long enough to see a dark shape before I levitated across the room and it went out of view.

And get this, Ben goes to his computer immediately and tweets:

This is BEFORE locating said spider. He’s a modern boy. In his defense, he was at his computer to pause Deep Space Nine, because one must concentrate when searching for giant spider.

I’m not going to blame the wine for my reaction because, as Ben followed up with:

So, now, cue shrieking and headlamps and gingerly examining the large heavy curtains to determine that the spider has moved on, to places unknown.

Ben kept repeating, “but how did it get in??” and I kept repeating, “oh god oh god oh god.”

Both are valid statements, I think. We eventually located it behind the TV stand on the baseboard. The new challenge was capturing it. I resourcefully used the TV antenna to herd it and that only backfired a little bit when I herded it underneath the television and out of sight.

I ran to get a glass tumbler to capture it with, to which Ben’s response was, “what are you doing?! That’s not nearly big enough!” After a few attempts at gingerly trying to place the glass over the spider, and a few more shrieks and jumps because that thing is fast and kept teleporting to the other side of the room, I concluded Ben was right, rejected the ceramic bowl he was offering, and found the perfect spider-catching container: the clear plastic cheese dish.

I dumped our freshly grated parmesan into the proffered bowl, and used the handy cheese-dish-feature, the foot, to grip it steadily, and managed to capture the spider on the fourth or fifth try.

Transparency is key. How do you know you’ve really caught it? Are you going to lift it up and *check*?

Only at this point did I ask myself why I was freaking out so much. It was a huntsman, a spider that might give you a few puncture marks out of self-defense, but nothing more severe than that. It’s a lovely house-guest, really! They hunt cockroaches!

I’m sure part of it was the surprise, and even the somewhat pleasant feeling of an adrenaline rush in a safe situation, sort of like a rollarcoaster ride. But they’re the wrong shape to be loved by me, the wrong size, and they’re blazingly fast. And they come out of nowhere.

In the end, it wasn’t even that big. The one I found in a funnel web on a tree was bigger. But this is our home, our couch, and most definitely our curtain, and I think you’ll understand if we were wary and twitchy for the rest of the night.

 

In which my heart grew three sizes

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Ben and I have spent three months, almost exactly, in Australia so far. It’s been odd being so removed from most everyone we care about. I’ve never been five hours’ flight away from most of them for more than a few weeks in my life. Odd is a good word for it. It’s an odd feeling knowing that if a friends’ relationship should dissolve, if a relative should have a health crisis, if a relative should die, that it would take $3,000 and several days to reach them. It changes what it means to be supportive.

Our internet is tres flaky right now, and that won’t change till I start working (whole ‘nother story) because strange regulations here require you to have employment in order to give a company your money to get a reliable connection. The absurdity of this aside, it means video-chat has been impossible, so we’re left with emails, chat, and skype-calls.

There have already been several times where I’ve wished I could hop a quick flight to spend the weekend with someone having a hard time, and I know there will be many more. So I write emails, try to stay on top of correspondence, write this blog to give people a sense of what our life is composed of now, and try to chat real-time as frequently as reasonable.

And then five weeks ago Colin decided to visit Oz for two weeks! One week later Alexis decided to visit for two weeks!

It is, again, odd, to go from complete separation to hosting two of the more important people in your life. Shocking, wonderful, exhilarating, exhausting, and odd.

Alexis left a week and a half ago, Colin a week ago, and now I’m letting you know where I’ve been – having a blast vacationing with them, and then recovering. I’m so so happy they were able to visit, and especially that they were able to do so before I (finally) start work. We spent days rooting around tide pools. We walked endless rocky beaches. We took two trips to the Blue Mountains. We encountered fascinating wildlife. We visited the Australian Museum, the Maritime Museum (Colin), the aquarium, Sydney’s tallest building on a beautiful day, took ferries, picnicked, walked islands, explored historical ruins, played in parks, ate interesting food, and generally used every moment.

Colin, Alexis, thank you for visiting Oz! PS you might disagree but I love how utterly disorganized we are in this picture.

In which I… In which I… dude. Just, awesome!

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I think I found a huntsman!

Recently, Ben and I travelled the hour and a half to Viive and Ian’s house to take another rambling walk with Duke and Brandy. They were excited, as usual. They pulled us up hills, as usual. They dragged each other around while one was trying to pee, as usual. It was great fun! They seem to enjoy it, based on their wag wag wag VIBRATING pre-walk ritual once the leash appears, but holy crap they do not cooperate. And it’s hilarious.

Ben and I trade turns holding their leash, because while they are helpful getting up hills, one’s arm and shoulder also happen to go a bit numb after a while. We spend the time laughing at the dogs, looking for birds, and singing rounds of Kookaburra Sits In An Old Gum Tree and singing All I Want Is A Proper Cup Of Coffee faster and faster where Ben’s unwavering duty is to perform the deep “boom boom” necessary during the chorus.

We looked for new paths and found an interesting stretch along a dried up creek bed, then headed back to our normal route through several parks, many of which have several of the strangely blackened web-covered trees I’ve mentioned before.

As is my wont, I peered into the largest funnel webs looking for residents and tried to lure them out. I was successful once, but what I got surprised me, and well maybe just a little bit freaked me out, because it wasn’t the brown house spider I expected, but, I think, a huntsman!

Huntsman, or Sparassidae, spiders are the one species that creeps me out a little, both because of their size and their structure. I love orb weavers, with their bulging abdomens and spindly legs, hanging from their webs or awkwardly walking across the ground.  Crab spiders are elegant with their bright colors and long, graceful, first and second legs. Wolf spiders have a certain charisma about them, while they hunt through undergrowth and tend to their young, eyes reflecting lights at night like tiny diamonds. Tarantulas are giant friendly teddybears of spiders, furry and stout, with fascinating behaviors. Jumping spiders are simply adorable with their large eyes that track you and respond to your movements, and expressive, often colorful, pedipalps with which they wave in the air to communicate and clean their chelicerae. And on and on.

From Wikipedia.

But huntsman are the one spider that teaches me empathy for those that really can’t tolerate any spider, because of too many legs or hairiness or eyes or movement or whatever. Because to me, huntsman are simply constructed in a proportion that squicks me out on a deep level. Their legs are too long, and not stout and limb-like, or thin and delicate like some spiders. They’re long, so long, and thin (but not thin enough), and hairy. And they’re fast. And they’re big.

So I admit that I jumped when this guy appeared. And maybe continued to twitch a little.

But curiosity is an anti-fear of sorts, so I examined it, took pictures, and played with it with my probing tool.  He was maybe 5, 6 inches across? I’m not an expert in Huntsman, by any means, so this is only a tentative identification, but it was definitely *not* the spider that I think built the web. And what it was doing there, comfortably squeezed into the funnel dwelling? I have no idea.

Look at those chelicerae!

The fact that he wasn’t twitchy at all when I got close to take pictures helped a lot, which is good, because huntsman spiders are common all over Australia, and in fact I’ve been looking forward to finding one. To my knowledge they can more normally be found under loose sheets of bark and other narrow, flat spaces, rather than in other spiders’ funnel webs. But really, he’s beautiful.

The downsides of bug hunting or: In which Adrienne continues her trend of being absolutely irresistible to biting insects

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<<may not be suitable for younger audiences>>

The trials and tribulations of bending over to hunt strawberry-devouring beetles at night with a headlamp in flimsy pajama pants are not multitudinous. They are narrow, limited, and rather predictable, in fact.

Last night’s bite tally:
one: knuckle
one: jaw
five: ASS

Why did there have to be mosquitoes here? Aren’t there enough terrible and painful and dangerous creatures without the boring old mundane mosquito? I’m disappointed, Australia. I thought you were more interesting than this.

In which I discuss the particulars of some bugs being completely awesome, and others being annoying little buggers that need to die

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Last night I was out in the garden checking for beetles (more on that later) when I saw a tiny spider traversing between a cauliflower plant and a stick I’m using to tether a growing pepper plant. Anyway, this spider, it was traversing on a line of webbing, and it was carrying what I thought at first was a fly. On closer inspection it turned out to be a shiny droplet of water, like those that collect on the edges of some leaves at night as the air cools. It was carrying a droplet of water! When it got to the stick, it perched near the tip and sat still with the droplet, and as I watched, the droplet slowly grew smaller. Did you know that spiders did this??! I did not know that spiders did this! Carry water droplets?

Watch, observe, question, and get your mind blown every day!

In a bit of quick research, I haven’t been able to find out if this is common or not (I assume it is, and I’ve just never seen it) as a spider behavior. I know some spiders carry bubbles of air underwater, and lots of bugs use surface tension to their advantage… but it never occurred to me that spiders might do this, even though I know that some spiders need water beyond what they get through their prey. Some drink from puddles, others drink when they consume their webs in the morning with dewdrops on, and some drink from dewdrops. It makes perfect sense that a spider might take its drink to a safer location, but I didn’t know, and wow, neat.

It might be like that time I was walking through a graveyard at night and saw hundreds of worms sneaking out of their holes, stretching, reaching for each other. I thought, whoa! I didn’t know about this! How cool is this! What if I’ve discovered a new behavior?!?

And then I thought, oh. Earthworms. Nightcrawlers. Right.

But it was still a cool experience!

…

So, that was neat. But then I had to get back to my now nightly routine of beetle-hunting.

I planted our garden 3-4 weeks ago. Cucumber bushes, capsicums of different types, cauliflower, zucchini, an heirloom tomato, and some strawberries. These will all go very nicely with the forest of basil I’m cultivating in containers. I also have a small patch of oregano and thyme in there, but the basil gets to rule the place because, c’mon, duh. There’s feral rosemary growing by the back shed.

Our strawberries were doing well! We got two delicious berries from the largest plant. And then the flowers died. And some leaves fell off. The hell? It looked like the stems were being broken by something. No hail… no violent raccoons… And then some leaves developed holes. Aha! Bug attack!

I’ve patrolled for slugs and snails and seem to have conquered that problem, so this must be something new.

Ben went out that night to take a look and reported a couple of beetles. I took a vial out and came back inside with 20 or so tiny shiny obnoxious beetles that I was really quite unhappy about. They weren’t easy to see because they liked to perch just underneath leaves and quickly fell down into the mulch when disturbed. There seemed to be two similar but different types of beetles.

A bit of research and lots of looking through my watch glass led me to tentatively identify the less common type as Strawberry Root Weevils.

 

The other, more, shall we say abundant (teeming? seething?) type I think is the Strawberry Rootworm. They’re shiny, whereas the others are dull. They have shorter snouts. They are both really freaking annoying.

Images from bugguide.net

So now this is my routine: Go outside with a headlamp once it gets dark, examine every inch of the strawberry plants, get bit by mosquitoes, collect beetles, rant upon returning indoors. Repeat 3-4 more times before bed.

This is the majority of my haul over the last three nights. I left one vial outside and they baked in the sun. Not sorry.

The first night I came back with over fifty. Subsequent nights have had massively reduced yields, thankfully. They will attack other plants, but I have found them primarily on the strawberries. Sadly, they have been reduced from something about half as large as this:

Healthy older plant across the yard

To (there are [were] THREE strawberry plants here):

&#(%&

I’m certain two out of the three will live, but I’m not expecting any more berries this year.

Conclusion? In the future, plant strawberries in containers using potting soil. In lieu of going back in time, however… well, none of the websites I’ve found suggest any treatments other than “give up, replant next year at least 300 feet away.”

Je refuse! We will carry on, little berry plants, and see what we might accomplish!

Let’s all toast to the stubborn drive to spend at least one hour with the skeeters each night hunting bugs. They are going DOWN. At least I get to find things like water-toting spiders!

The benefits of going green

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In Australia it’s uncommon to use a dryer to dry your clothes. This makes perfect sense when sun is your biggest export and you’re sometimes located under a hole in the ozone layer (I don’t know if that could in any way contribute to drying more quickly, but I like the mental imagery that UV irradiating my clothing brings to mind, the tiny water molecules comically agitating into gas going noo nooooo don’t do it!).

I kind of like the practice. Although it leaves lint everywhere, takes more time, and my ribbed tank tops don’t get tossed and ruffled back down to quite as form fitting a size, taking loads of wet laundry, quietly hanging them, piece by piece, suspending socks and underwear on an amusing clothes-pin octopus creature, is a rather meditative, peaceful activity.

yes I helped hang clothes before taking all these pictures. Yes that is a strange red octopus creature with socks hanging from it. This is our backyard, which we share with our landlords (the best ever). The shed in the background is where the laundry machine and an old outhouse toilet are located (indoor plumbing outdoors?). Our flat is the brick you see to the right of the trash/recycling/yard waste bins.

It gets you outside if you are otherwise engaged in some boring interior activity. You experience your clothing, exactly how big they are, how many pieces there are, and how long they take to dry. You get to watch them blow in the wind, and think about where to strategically place them so that there are no bird- and thus bird-pooping-trees overhead.

bloooooowing in the wind… To Ben’s left is a lovely little lemon tree that looks to have about 50 tiny lemons developing. To his right is our flat, the patio, and our landlords’ house. Our flat is composed of the first brick bit (bathroom) and then the beige painted siding area (kitchen). At the base of the brick (bathroom) is a bit of scrub that has since turned into my garden.

And of course it saves energy.

But the best part, and you will probably only appreciate this if you are both a girl and forgetful, but the best part is that you can run your lip-balm sunscreen through the wash with no resultant giant grease stains! Huzzah!

recently laundered

Gull Gull Gull Gull DUCK

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Today Ben and I went to an IMAX showing of The Last Reef. The film isn’t an important component of this post other than to say that if any of you ever have the chance to see amazing sea life up close and huge and in 3D you should absolutely do so. Wow! Also, I suppose I should add re: the film itself that it was a nice version of the whole “humans are destroying the world and should stop and it’s awful and depressing” in that it actually made a case for individuals changing their behavior and gave examples of how they could do so. Much more impactful, I feel.

Anyway, we were going downtown to this showing and we stopped at a Woolies (Woolworths, a grocery store. Ozzies shorten EVERYTHING) and picked up some french fries because, well, hot crispy delicious potato, duh. And also it was lunch. Shut up, mom, we ran out of time! The movie was an hour earlier than I thought! And I had a salad for breakfast! We walked the couple of blocks from the train station/grocery store to the waterfront where the theater was located and found a nice shaded stone bench to have lunch on.

Shortly after we sat down a seagull arrived and loitered, pacing in front of us while we ate. Conversation wandered but kept coming back to the seagull. We wondered how brave it would get, and how close it would come. Ben was going on about how terrible it is that humans teach wild animals to beg and did it just keep watch for anyone who came by to sit down and eat? So of course I had to throw a bit of potato to it. How could I resist? The seagull leaped into the air and gracefully caught the potato, and halfway through Ben turning to glare at me three more seagulls arrived. And the original seagull growled at them! Have you ever heard a seagull growl?? It was snaking its head up and down, bringing its head back into its body and fluffing its feathers and growling at the other birds.

I fell over laughing. It was so vicious! So commanding!

Eventually the other birds retreated enough that the seagull calmed down and stayed silent. So I threw it another potato.

I had to!

Ben took the fries away.

…

I really wish I’d taken video of the gull doing its thing. I figured it was hilarious and common enough that it would be easy to find on a birding website or on youtube, but I’ve just spent the last two hours trying to ID the gull and find an example of the sounds we heard.

I believe it was probably a Silver Gull, a very common species around Australia. Or a Red-Billed Gull which is more common to New Zealand. It’s main identifying feature was its dark red feet.

I can’t find any recordings of a territorial or aggressive or any call that matches what we saw. Oh well.

Avoca Slugs

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Periodically, these past couple of weeks, I’ve felt like I’m back home in Ann Arbor walking down State St. on a football Saturday. Because Ozzies are CRAZY for footie (rugby, didjaknow). We got off the train downtown at Central Station one night to look at a scrap metal dragon…

(aside: it was there to advertise for an art festival of agricultural art, or art by people in agriculture, or something. We fully intended on going but when we told Viive and Ian about it and told them where it was (just past Wagga Wagga!) they told us that it was 8 hours away. So, no, not going. But we still got to see the dragon!)

… and were greeted (terrorized?) by a roar of chanting and clapping, shouting and singing. Nearly everyone was dressed in either red or blue, and most wore scarfs broadcasting their allegiance. Grown men stood by ticket turnstiles handing out tiny pennant flags. It’s footie finals! GET READY FOR THE FEVER! The bulldogs were playing the swans that night, and that, folks, is what I thought about when I wrote this title. The Avoca Slugs? The Avoca Sea Slugs? The newest rising star in the world of footie! I’m having fun imagining it, anyway.

So, we had a neat wildlife sighting when we went to Avoca Beach. A lovely little sea slug in a tide pool! I wish I could change shape like that. It could curl up into a tiny racquet ball, or stretch out to the size of a small fruit bat.

I know slightly more than nothing about sea slugs or how to ID them, but it is mostly black/dark brown, with some speckles. It was unwilling to unfold its skin flaps to fully reveal its gills, but they were there. Perhaps Dendrodoris nigra?

I think it has quite a nice grin.