Saturday 11 April 2015

Camels and Melons and Cows ... Oh My!

Hi everyone,

Typing this on Sunday morning with a coffee beside me and the radio on.  I was going to write yesterday up last night but by 11pm I was falling asleep!

Productive day yesterday.  I spent the early morning sprucing up this blog and also culling my list of blogs to follow (by and large, I cut blogs that hadn't been updated for 6+ months).

Around midday the dog and I went down to one of the outer paddocks to do some manual weed cutting.  We have some cows that are calving at present and they're in the paddock with the best water supply (3 troughs of bore water).


Anyway, there are two particular weeds that were a concern.  One was camel melons.  Camels were brought to Australia as beasts of burden in the nineteenth century, often with Afghan cameleers as their handlers.  The story goes that the Afghans brought the melons out as feed for the animals.  As weeds go, camel melons are relatively benign: they're not poisonous, but they're inedible (that is, as long as you're not a camel) and the vines would easily spread and render ground unproductive.


The other thing I was cutting was Bathurst burr.  I'm pretty sure Bathurst burr is the only plant outside the world of cryptobotany that actually has an agenda - in this case to be as nasty as possible.  It can't possibly be eaten by animals because it's covered in thin thorns nearly an inch long.  For some reason it attracts hordes of black ants so picking it up by hand is unpleasant. And it blends into dry terrain so well that it's easy to miss when cutting with a hoe (it's common to miss one despite walking within two feet of it).


The cutting was, in any case, a good workout for the arms and back, and the dog and I walked a total of about 6kms doing it.  It was a bright warm day and so I was working with my shirt off (ladies, no swooning in the back!) on the basis that I was so far from the main road that anyone who wanted to ogle deserved all they'd get for their troubles.  Usually when I do this sort of thing I talk to myself or the dog a lot - ideas, plans, troubles and everything.  I can tell you, Roly is a good listener.


The other thing I tend to do is sing - When I'm doing manual work I love that old Cajun song "Colinda" -
Colinda was de prettiest girl in all the bayou-land
And all de boys'd dance wit' her and try to hold her hand
Her momma always chaperoned Colinda day an' night
She didn't want no Cajun boys to hold her daughter tight


The other is Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine" (yes I know it's a girl's song; no I don't care).  One cannot help but be a romantic!

While I'm on the subject of music, I'll recommend Cajun Radio from Lake Charles, Louisiana: they have a great webstream for Cajun and creole music.


After we'd finished cutting weeds the dog was utterly tired and didn't want to go anywhere, so I spent some quality time tailoring my CV to apply to a job a few hours away with a bank and sent that off.  Legs were tired after yesterday's long run, so I went for a gentle 17km bicycle ride to loosen them up.  When I got back the dog and I hopped in the car to go and see if there were any new calves.  I saw one black cow a long way off from the mob (usually a sign they're calving) and with its tail out stiff.  Usually that's a bad sign and suggests they're having trouble calving, which then means taking them up to the yards and getting the pulling tackle out.  I was thinking "oh crap... I really don't want to deal with this" as I drove over.  What did I see?  Momma cow cleaning a perfectly strong newly-born black calf.  Hurray!  She wouldn't let me get close enough to see whether its a bull or a heifer, and my phone was flat (hence no photos), but it was with a sense of relief that I drove back to the house.

Today's plans are a bit low key.  Some yoga and weight-work in terms of fitness work, and write a letter to Grace and Rachel.  Oh, and there's some meat I need to boil up for the dog.  I thought about going to Mass but have decided against it for reasons I may talk about in a later blogpost.

Hope you're having a good weekend too!

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