Eucalyptus Country

I think I must have been bored this weekend because I started looking for trouble. Or maybe it’s because I was sick of being woken up in the middle of the night by a cat rummaging shopping bags out of the bottom of the little tube they were stored in. I’m sure most people either have one or have seen one – a mesh or cloth bag where you stuff the plastic shopping bag in the top and then when you’re ready to reuse them, you pull them out of the bottom.

Whoever came up with that ingenious design obviously didn’t think that cats would be remotely interested in pulling them out or they might have done away with the hole in the bottom altogether. Mojo probably wouldn’t give a rats about them but Rosie thinks that plastic bags are the best toy. She will find them in the most unusual of places and the noise of them being ripped apart in the middle of the night irritates me enough to wake me fully up.

So I decided that I could make my own. After all, I made my own stuffing for a DIY camera bag (let’s not speak of its dismal fate after we returned from Tasmania) and it wasn’t overly challenging. It wasn’t overly neat either but it served the purpose at the time. And what with Rah whipping up all sorts of things with her sewing machine (with varying degrees of sucess),  I figured I could probably make my own dilly bag. I made one of these things in high school and I’m pretty sure it only took a double period of classes – so it should be a cinch right? Well it would have been – if I was still 12yo and remotely knew how to thread a sewing machine. Fortunately, my machine caters for complete dummies like me and prints the threading instructions on the machine itself instead of in the instruction manual which is probably lost by now.

It took me about 2hrs to make one simple little dilly bag. Sewing bloggers all over the world are probably laughing right now. Even Rah is probably laughing at me. But that’s ok, because in the end, I finished what I set out to do. Here it is, hanging nicely on my pantry door from its far too long draw cord.

This was not supposed to be a block that was tricky to landscape. But because of building covenants, it meant that the retaining wall we normally would have had constructed on the boundary line had to be brought in by half a metre or so. Something to do with retaining walls not being permitted over a certain height where they occur on a boundary. We possibly should have gone for a lower retaining wall on the boundary and had a greater slope on that side as we originally had in our plans. The developer thought it would be better raising the height to allow for better side access.

Consequently we are left with this tricky bit along the side of it as it isn’t wide enough to plant anything and turf would simply die there. I think something needs to go there but I’m at a loss as to what it should be. A couple of those long staked citronella burners maybe?? Or a bit of lattice work attached to the fence to put a creeper on?? Or some plants in hanging baskets hooked on the side of the fence with some feature lattice behind them??

Any bright ideas??

It’s only taken almost six months.

But I can now say that I have a backyard. Of course it was always there but a whole heap of barren soil just doesn’t seem to paint the picture of an ideal Aussie backyard. A typical Aussie backyard should have turf in it and now ours finally does.

So now I can embrace the rain when it pours down instead of getting mild panic attacks. I can put some plants in the ground that are well and truly over due for planting. The fence can get put up. Not to mention the cats will be excited because once the turf has established, they can finally have their cat park back.

Bliss!

Because we are a somewhat techy household, we seem to have an abundance of computer towers kicking about the place. I’m not entirely sure what all of them do, only that we have them. Only one of them is what would traditionally be associated with a computer, another is a server and a couple of them have something to do with TV tuners and streaming free to air TV. In any case, most of them tend to live in a room that doubles as my gym.

That’s fine, only it looks messy and I don’t like it. So when I saw this particular item on Ikea’s website, I thought it was brilliant and a perfect solution. We could store the towers in there, everything has its place and even though we would leave the door open on the unit, it would at least look a lot tidier. So off we go to Ikea on a Saturday. Now those of you unfamiliar with the land of Ikea shopping won’t understand the significance of going to Ikea on a Saturday. You’ll probably be thinking that’s what most people do.

And that’s exactly the problem with going to Ikea on a Saturday, or even a Sunday. Because that’s when every other Tom, Dick and Harry in a 3hr radius from the store chooses to go to Ikea. Seriously, I once met people who had especially driven down from Gin Gin (about half a day’s drive away) to get their Ikea fix. The place is crawling with bodies and heaven help you if you want to go against the flow of traffic.

But we thought the end justified the means, so off we went to get our cabinet. We did what we usually do and back cut through the food court to get to the self serve area. Only then it dawned on us that we might want to have a look at it and make sure that it would suit our needs. The dimensions seemed fine as displayed on the website and in the photo, there’s clearly a computer tower sitting on the bottom shelf. But for peace of mind, we thought best check it out first.

So about 30mins later, trying to fight our way through the incredibly irritated people going in the correct flow pattern, we found what we were looking for in the show room. It looked fine….until we measured the internal dimensions. Even though the cabinet is 60cm deep, the internal measurements are at least 10cm less than that, allowing for door at the front and room for plugs at the back of the tower. I’d measured the towers at home and thought it would be perfect because it would need to be at least 58cm deep. As it was, the tower would have been hanging out the lip of the cabinet and we’d never be able to shut the door.

Maybe that’s not so much a big deal as we would probably leave it open for ventilation anyway, but for the price, I really would want it to be able to function in the way it is supposed to. At nearly $500, it’s a fairly expensive bit of portable shelving. We had a look at a lot of their other products, even ones that were not closed in – they all have the same problem in that they are too shallow to accommodate even the smallest of our computer towers.

So the search continues. If you’ve seen anything in your travels which might be more suitable, I’d love to hear about it.

It’s been a bit of a long road trying to get it done but at long last, the retaining wall is looking that little bit closer to completion. There is still a little bit more to do towards the front and around the other side of the house just off the alfresco.

But the main thing is it seems to be happening now, as opposed to the two or three months where nothing happened at all. So hopefully now it won’t be too long until there is a fence!

This weekend will probably be all battle stations working out where the garden beds are going to go before organising the turfing and fencing. Fortunately we have a lot of side access at this property so it is not as vital that we get the garden beds done before the fence goes up. It will feel good to finally feel like we can do something with the landscaping as opposed to the watching and waiting that has been going on for the last couple of months.

So finally I feel like I’ve got something to cheer about – even if it’s not quite finished yet.