Not much of a bugger really....

On Saturday the tree in the drive lost a branch and Matilda was on it with gusto, looking for bugs.



This particular tree which is a Hibiscus with yellow flowers, attracts a form of bug that Wayne calls 'Ladybirds'. In fact Brisbane ladybirds look pretty much like British ones and perform a similar function for the plant, namely feeding in one form or another on the bugs that eat the plant. One such ladybird is called the Mealybug ladybird, and it lays its eggs with the eggs of the Mealybug. The gestation period of the Ladybird is shorter, and it hatches with a fierce appetite for.....Mealybug larvae...Nice. As it turns out, these bugs that the girls were pulling off the tree are called Harlequin bugs, and they come in lots of varieties of two basic colour schemes. The males are blue with orange spots and the females are orange with blue spots. Canny that eh? But far from serving a similar function to the Ladybird, they actually suck the juice out of the plant. We saw the ants having a passing nip but not really moving them on.

Another couple of Brisbane bugs that we've not seen but are part of this family are the 'Metallic Shield' bug:



and the 'Green Jewel' bug:



I've tried to put some of the bugs we've found into a box so that i can pin them to a display at some point, and the Girls keep finding dead ones for my 'collection'. But as yet, every time i find an unusual one, and put into a container, I feel bad about it and let it go. Don't think I'm going to get much of a collection. I might try to get a butterfly net though if I see one. Crocodile Chris I'm not!



A temporary home for 'spot'...



The ants got this one....




Later on Saturday, we went to the circus. I don't remember having been to a circus, so if I have Mum, put me right. Anyway, I duty fully took my camera, thinking 'Blog' of course....and it ran out of battery very early on. So you've only got a few pics of this, instead of the choice ones that I'd imagined that you'd have of fantastic feats of daring. As it happens, it WAS a fantastic display, although some of the acts were a bit tired. The Lion tamer was so on top of his job that Andrew commented on his demeanor to Daile, saying; 'Looks like he's getting a lot of job satisfaction eh?'. On the other hand, the man that you see holding the balloons was the star of the show, performing with acrobat kids, juggling with fire and all the usual, plus an award winning troupe of dogs that he had. Anyway the kids all loved it, and that was great.













Tomorrow we're off to the airport (Daile and I), and we've got to get up at 3.45 as she's flying down to see here sister Leanne in Newcastle. The kids have got little 'I love you' bits of paper that they'll find over the 3 days that she's away. Nice when she does that sort of thing....such a nice Mum. They always love it when they come across one.

Better go, or I'll not wake up. :-)

'ternal animals

Just a quick one tonight, cos I HAD to tell you what Phoebe said! She declared when she and I were out in the truck yesterday that she knew that birds were 'ternal animals'. I said 'they're what darlin?' 'They're ternal, and Bats are NOT ternal !' Ha ha. This is a case of deductive reasoning at its most flawed methinks. Makes you wonder how they're seeing things at the same time that you're assuming that they are seeing things in the same way that you are.... I wonder what she was deducing at this moment? 'NOT-sure'? (Click the pics to get a better look)



..or this one, which was shot in London (before you worry about our parenting out here!).



Hopefully 'NOT-dangerous' is not embedded as a cognitive short-cut in this case!

Happy Halloween...!

Well not much has happened since my last confession, except I’ve ripped the end of my index finger on my left hand, and this typing is actually painful. Do you realise the privations that I put myself through to bring you all this blather? No I thought not….but I DO.

Today we put down a deposit on a 3 bed house for rental….that is for us to rent to someone else. It kept me awake a bit last night, cos its ‘negative cash flow’…i.e. the rent is less than the mortgage, and it’s a fair bit less….so we’re taking a long view here. Neither of us have any kind of pension, this despite my having paid into a ‘with profits’ Scottish Widows pension for 14 years…. I’d have been better off if I’d just put the money in a bank to be honest…or almost. I hope they choke on it…nice aren’t I? He he.

Today is halloween...and the girls got very excited. The next door neighbours kids, Anya and Sophie came over and they all went out to get lashed up on toxic sweets. The MOST toxic sweets that they got however were from their NANA! We ARE the spawn of the horn headed geezer here honest! The only benefit is that they don't make so much noise when their teeth are stuck together!

(I’m still in pain here by the way!!)

Anya is the ‘White Witch’, and Sophie and Phoebe are both ‘Sister Witches’ and Matilda is a ‘Spider Girl Witch’. Phoebe waddled round the whole thing with the broom between here legs….ha ha. Looks spooky though eh?

But what about this picture that I took…of a ghost. Can you see it looking in at the window?

I was just passing by tonight and I saw it, and had my camera....which i perched on the window sill of the truck.

I this was from the truck too...last night.



and finally, here's a funny thing I found....



That's it, so HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Concrete, brakes, surf and dancing...what more could you ask for?

Well, we’ve just had a lovely weekend and a busy one. On Saturday, we took delivery of a cubic metre of concrete for the pad of a shed that we’ve bought to put all the things in from the garage that we’ve made into a room. The bloke sold us a bit short however and we ended up putting bricks into the pad to raise the level of the concrete over them. It looks OK now though and the shed should arrive on Wednesday, and I’m looking forward to that, so that the room can become a play room proper….that is when its not my OFFICE!!!!

I’m sitting in it now, and really enjoying having a bit of space to myself whilst the others all chat and watch the TV. I’ve got a fan mounted on the wall near me, and my funny little light that I got at IKEA. As you can see, it needs a clear out. The roller shutter is still on one end, but Bernadette has ordered a made to measure sliding door for that space. It won’t be here for a while though so this is it for now.

After the concrete was done, I replaced the rear pads on Daile’s car and we set off for the Gold Coast, where Daile had thought it might be a nice idea for the kids to see some sea. Amazingly enough we’ve not actually taken them to the beach since we came here, and Phoebe has been asking to go there since she got her fantastic sunglasses from Joe and Sarah. (She wanted to sunbathe!!!) (Ha, and that with a Mother that panics about sunburn). Our kids always look like they’ve been painted white when they first start off out there…with all the cream that they get blathered with. Daile would tell you at this juncture that the incidence of skin cancer is higher here than anywhere else in the world….so with good reason eh?

We had a lovely time in the surf, and the I went to take some pics for Molly of reflections (for a project she’d doing), with Daile’s little camera, (not wanting to bring mine onto the beach), whilst the kids went shell hunting and Daile kept an eye.

Then we went to Carlene’s for supper and had a really nice evening. We’ve been there all day today too, and the girls are really getting good with the swimming. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that they’re having swimming lessons…think I may have. Anyway, they’re capable of retrieving ‘jewels’ from the bottom of the pool now, so quite a marked improvement. Late in the afternoon we had a bit of a love in. Ian had arrived back from the game, and the team he coaches had won. (Gold Coast Blazes). He started to play some music up loud, and the Phoebe responded by dancing her legs off. In the end we all joined in…and here’s some pics to give you an idea.

The last pic is of some distant lightning that was coming in. Its reached here now and its about to piss down as I write.

So there you have it.

Hush hour

Some of you may remember that I mentioned about the problem with the main access highway from Ipswich to Brisbane, the 'Ipswich Highway'. There are plans to widen, re-build and generally not address the problem of too many cars...remember? Well out of interest, I went to have a look at the highway on that site that I found for you last night...and guess what... It's not busy. Just aflter 8 am and look at it:



What do you call that? NOT congestion eh!
Even the centre of town isn't THAT bad. Perhaps they decided not to go to work today......