Frog Motel

As a child in north Queensland I would find frogs hiding inside galvanised pipe fence posts. My recollection is that nearly all fence posts had a frog inside sometimes more than one.

A couple of years ago I mounted a couple of 90mm pipes vertically on a fence under a tree. They were to be frog refuges. I have never seen a frog near them.

Frogs do live at my address I hear them calling from the trees occasionally.

Listening to the radio recently I heard a representative of the local frog society recommending the vertical pipes as frog motels.

I have purchased some 40mm pipes (which is closer to the size of the galavanised pipes) to make more motels.

Colour confidence

The current fashion is definitely for all interior walls to be white. Its what you see on architecture shows on TV and in apartments on real estate websites. White on white on white - no offence and no personality.

I prefer colour on the walls.

I found a book in the library Colour Now by Kevin McCloud (2009, ISBN 978-1-84949-219-5). It has lots of complex colour combinations. To translate the colours into an obtainable paint colour I took the book to Bunnings and asked for the full Dulux Colour book I then compared the colours to select the Dulux equivalent. The paint desk at Bunnings had some natural light which helped getting the colours right.

The combinations in the the book gave me confidence to be bold.

Peak flow

The housing density in my suburb is increasing.
Formerly on a eight hundred square metre allotment there would be a single storey 3 bedroom house with a gravel driveway. Sixty percent of the area would be garden and trees. The downpipes from the roof would discharge onto garden or into a rainwater tank.

After development this same area will host two two-storey houses each with five bedrooms and a concrete driveway and a very small garden. The downpipes discharge onto the street.

The roofs and concrete driveways are impenetrable (I would hope) to rain so it must flow off. This makes the peak flow after a storm higher than before.

The solutions include rainwater tanks, soak pits and using gravel instead of concrete. Also leaving room for a garden would be nice.

Storm recovery

There have been a couple of intense storms lately. The creek is no longer a dry bed - it is flowing. The grasses, shrubs and trees around the creek are looking much better.
The intense water movement shifted a lot of debris. Many of the plants the environment revival group planted have become buried in flotsam. In other spots overland flows have scrubbed the soil away exposing plant roots.
So the group has spent a couple of hours digging around to ensure the plants survive the flood.

Garage Sale

On the weekend I was assisting at a garage sale.

It was noticeable that the majority of enduring items were ceramic, glass, metal and leather. The plastic stuff was usually brittle and or tatty.

People came and went and some found something desirable. A lady found a masonite suitcase it was over 60 years old - older than me - and she wanted it for her suitcase collection. Several people found something to turn into a xmas present. One man went away with a box of xmas decorations.

It did not raise a great deal of money but maybe the purpose of a garage sale is to create happiness.

Give a Crap

A friend made a mistake.

As an ethical consumer they ordered environmentally friendly toilet paper. But they ordered too much and generously gave away boxes of the stuff. I benefited to the tune of one bulk buy box (48 rolls). The paper was the premium product 3-ply bamboo toilet paper on double length rolls.
Its good stuff I will be re-ordering when I eventually run out.

The brand is Who gives a crap.

Merry Melodies

Tunes from my childhood make me happy.

Years ago when I was feeling depressed I watched old episodes of Doctor Who - Just the opening tune made me feel a bit better.

Recently I re-discovered another tune from my childhood The Robinson Crusoe background music:

I listened to this record with my siblings oh so many times. The background music is better known as Tchaikovskys 5th symphony.

I think that  Tchaikovskys 5th became unpopular in Australia because it was combined with Paul Hogan and used to advertise cigarettes.

Die Hard

I enjoy re-watching a favourite movie at the right season.
One of the best xmas movies is -- Die Hard with not only Bruce Willis but also Alan Rickman. And Beethoven wrote the music for them.

Watching today I noticed for the first time the polluted Los Angeles orange sunset at the start of the movie. Pollution shown as is in the Columbo TV series and taken to extreme in Bladerunner 2049.  The Calfornians got used to the pollution.

The smoke haze over my home continues. The sky is white not blue. The air is not fit to breathe. Australias environment minister is in Spain arguing for Australia to do less to save the world. Where is Bruce Willis when you need him?

Native bees

Australian native bees are easy to care for. They need
1) A hive box
2) Sun in the morning
3) Shade in the afternoon
4) 18 deg celsius to fly
They are an easy to care for pet and they give a delicious honey.

Native Bee Hive in workshop - OATH design

You can find Hive designs at sugarbag.net website. 
A good book about native bees and keeping stingless bees is The Australian Native Bee Book by Tim Heard (ISBN 978-0-646-93997-1).

Light a candle

The Observer has an article about people becoming anxious about the climate emergency. I don't think being anxious helps the planet.

One of the factors of the emergency is biodiversity.

The local environment group plants native plants along a creek creating habitat for native animals. We also remove the worst weeds. The community enjoys the improvements. We feel good and the environment improves.

It is better to lit a candle than to curse the darkness.

The article refers to the Imperial Colleges Grantham Institute which has list of nine actions for ordinary folk:

Incidentally the book mentioned in a previous post gave similar answers with analysis: Time to eat the dog? - the real guide to sustainable living by Robert and Brenda Vale- ISBN 978 0 500 28790 3

Cough Cough

I'm coughing, the neighbours are coughing.
The towers of the city are barely visible though the smoke haze.
All day the heat has been intense though the sun has been dim.
The sunset was dim and diffuse.

Bushfire has made this city unhealthy and unpleasant.
Burning coal to extend bushfire season and make fires more frequent and more intense seems to be a bad idea.

Plastic bathroom

My bathroom practices seem to generate a lot of plastic waste.
So I am attempting to reduce the amount of plastic I throw away.

1) Snore strips
To aid my breathing at night I was sticking plastic strips across the bridge of my nose let more air in. But it meant that there was waste plastic every day. I now use a nasal spray. The spray still has a plastic spray on top of a glass bottle so it is a reduction not an elimination.

2) Cotton tips
I remember that when I was a child they were rolled-up paper with cotton on each end. Now most brands are plastic sticks with cotton on each end. But, good news, the rolled up paper ones are available - only one brand in one size packet and not the jumbo containers of the plastic ones. Still available is available and still pretty cheap.

3) Soap
I have been using liquid wash from a plastic bottle with a pump dispenser. Soap bars are still available but try finding one without palm oil. Palm oil mostly comes from plantations that used to be rainforest. Even Palmolive seems to have mostly palm with little olive. But some research revealed The Australian Olive Oil Soap made without palm oil and no plastic packaging.

4) Shampoo
My beloved has found a that the hairdresser will refill bottles with shampoo and conditioner at a reasonable price. The formula supplier produces a product without palm oil and is committed to ethical/green principals. The brand is Everescents.

5) Next is shaving without a disposable plastic razor. I shave with a safety razor for the first time last night.

Seasonal Music

I enjoy the holiday by avoiding shopping and going to parties with my friends and family. This year I am preparing the music playlist for the family dinner.

I like to put together Xmas songs that are not the usual songs. Bing Crosbys songs for example are played so much that I have banned them. And the Wham song Last Xmas is sung by everyone. So when I go to op shops I look for any unusual Xmas CDs, Sometimes there are one or two songs that are not old carols and are not the common fare.

So far I have about 6 hours worth of unusual Xmas songs gleaned from nineteen different albums. Including:
One of the family album by Graeme Connors
The O.C. Mix 3 Have a very merry Christmukkah  album from the TV series
Christmas with Kamahl
A winter symphony by Sarah Brightman

$ - Unit of measure for Emergency

Extract From The Guardian website:

Emergency = R × U = p × D × τ / T

In a comment article in the journal Nature, Schellnhuber and colleagues explained that to understand the climate emergency we needed to quantify the relationship between risk (R) and urgency (U).

Borrowing from the insurance industry, the scientists define risk (R) as the probability of something happening (p) multiplied by damage (D).

For example, how likely is it that sea levels will rise by a metre and how much damage will that cause.

Urgency (U) is the time it takes you to react to an issue (τ) “divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T)”, they wrote.

Then looking at the units of measure:
      p is a number - no units
      D (Damage) is in dollars
      τ and T are time and cancel each other out.
So an emergency is measured in dollars.

That is something politicians can understand.

Enduring Plastic

Plastic can last a long time.
In 1988 or 1989 when I was renovating a old Queenslander (style of timber house) I bought a tool box from the discount table at the local Mitre 10 hardware store.
I still have it and with a clean it could pass for new. It was made by Cooper Tools and was branded "Home Improvement" from the name of Tim Allens TV show.

My yellow toolbox at thirty years old.

I think it could last forever.